About Us
Congress: The Context
Understanding Congressional Decisions through Vectors
How do Members of Congress make decisions about the votes they
cast? Analogies offer a systematic and insightful way to identify
and make subtle inferences about factors involved in congressional
decision making. In this interactive exercise, Steve Frantzich,
Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy, uses
vectors to illustrate how competing influences, such as personal
preference or constituency interests, affect decisions.
Lawmaking [Expert Views]
Explore The Websuite
- The Dirksen Congressional Center Gateway
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A point of entry to The Dirksen Center's suite of Web sites.
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- The Dirksen Center
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Helping People Better Understand the U.S. Congress, its people, its processes, and the public policies it produces.
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- Robert H. Michel: U.S. Congressman
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Robert Henry "Bob" Michel - An American Republican Party politician who was a member of the United States House of Representatives for 38 years
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- AboutGovernment
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Links to more than 50 sites about the U.S. Congress, four major search engines, and to a handful of sites about the federal government more generally.
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- Congress for Kids
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Gives students access to interactive, fun-filled experiences designed to help them learn about the foundation of our federal government and how its actions affect you.
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- Communicator
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A monthly e-newsletter to stay current about changes to the other Dirksen Center sites, to learn about classroom uses of the information posted on them, and to hear about Dirksen Center news.
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Congressional Timeline
The Congressional Timeline developed and maintained by The Dirksen Congressional Center, arrays more than 550 of the nation's laws on a timeline beginning in 1933 and continuing to the present. A second timeline "band" depicts major political events of the period as a way to provide context for Congress's law-making...More
73rd Congress: March 9, 1933 - June 18, 1934
A meeting of the legislative branch of the U.S. federal government. The first session of Congress, known as the "Hundred Days," took place before the regular seating and was called by President Roosevelt specifically to pass two acts. March 9, 1933, The Emergency Banking Act...More
74th Congress: January 3, 1935 - June 20, 1936
The Soil and Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act allowed the government to pay farmers to reduce production so as to conserve soil, prevent erosion, and accomplish other minor goals. It was a piece of legislation passed in response to the Supreme Court's declaration....More
75th Congress: January 5, 1937 - June 16, 1938
In 1938 the Civil Aeronautics Act transferred federal responsibilities for non-military aviation from the Bureau of Air Commerce to a new, independent agency, the Civil Aeronautics Authority. The legislation also gave the authority the power to regulate airline fares and to determine...More
76th Congress: January 3, 1939 - January 3, 1941
On November 4, 1939, the Neutrality Act of 1939 was passed, allowing for arms trade with belligerent nations on a cash and carry basis, thus in effect ending the arms embargo. ...More
77th Congress: January 3, 1941, to December 16, 1942
The Lend-Lease Act was signed into law on March 11, 1941, a year and a half after the outbreak of the European war in September 1939, but six months before the U.S. entrance into the war in December 1941. It was called An Act Further to Promote the Defense of the United States...More
Dirksen Center Special Projects
Dirksen Center Special Projects is a series of multi-media projects rich in Web-based resources on a variety of topics from civil rights to editorial cartoons. We have posted them where it makes sense within our Web suite. But as the suite has grown, we suspect it has become more difficult to find these special projects.
To make them stand out, we have created the Dirksen Center Special Projects web page to host links to all our special projects listed below.