Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: 110th Congress Convenes Under Democratic Management, 1/08/07
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june07/congress_1-08.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Does your community have representatives in the House of Representatives and the Senate? If so, who are they and to which party do they belong?

2. Which party is in control of Congress?

3. How often does control of Congress change?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What change recently took place in the Senate and House of Representatives?

For the first time in a dozen years, both the Senate and the House of Representatives are under the control of the Democratic Party.

2. Name five issues the 110th Congress is expected to address.

Democrats, who took back control of both houses of Congress in November's elections, have pledged to increase the minimum wage, cut student loan interest rates, fund stem cell research, end subsidies to energy companies and increase scrutiny of the Iraq war budget.

3. What is the make-up of the Senate and why could this be a problem for Democrats?

But with a thin 51-49 lead in the Senate, Democrats will require additional support from Republicans -- a Senate rule requires 60 votes to overcome filibusters, long speeches that can kill legislation.

4. Who is the new Speaker of the House and where does this person stand in the line of presidential succession?

Democrat Nancy Pelosi of California is the new speaker of the House of Representative and has vast influence over what gets done over the next year.

She is also now second in the line of presidential succession -- behind the vice president -- making her the most powerful woman in U.S. political history.

5. To what level do House Democrats hope to raise the minimum wage?

Scheduled votes involve increasing the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour...

6. What issue do Democrats favor that President Bush has vetoed?

...and expanding stem cell research.

If the bills reach the president's desk, President Bush may find new use for the veto pen he's used only once in his first six years in the White House -- to prevent new stem cell funding.

7. What are "earmarks" and what effect did they have on the previous Congress?

Republicans applauded changes that would ban lawmakers from accepting gifts from lobbyists and that would ask members of Congress to disclose "earmarks," the name given to unidentified pet projects.

Republican had proposed the legislation in the previous Congress after some members were found guilty of accepting bribes from lobbyists and corporations in return for earmarked projects.

8. What is "pay-go" and why does it concern Senate Republicans?

But with Democrats proposing tax cuts for middle-income families, Senate Republicans said "pay-go" would allow Democrats to justify tax increases, which Republicans generally oppose.

"The last thing we need to do is to be raising taxes in this country, and 'pay-go' is the first step toward raising taxes," said new Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Associated Press reported.

9. When do the Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader want U.S. troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq?

The Democratic leaders requested that U.S. troops begin withdrawing from Iraq within six months.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Research which parties have controlled the Senate, the House of Representatives and the White House over the past 20 years. How did legislation differ between time periods when one party controlled both the Congress and the White House and when control of the two branches was split between the two parties? How was one-party control better or worse? What does your conclusion say about the current Congress?

2. Pretend that your political party is taking over the majority in both the House and Senate. What issues do you think are important? How would you go about creating legislation and law? How would you deal with those in the other party?

3. How do you think change of power in Congress will affect the campaigns of candidates in the next presidential election?

Write a 300-500 word essay on either of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.