United States Senate

The profile

The Senate grounds itself in Article I of the Constitution, and its own account of its origins describes James Madison proposing a chamber that would be small, deliberative and independent of the larger and more democratic House, against George Mason's description of that other house as the grand depository of the democratic principle of government. Equal state representation, two senators per state, came out of the Great Compromise at the Constitutional Convention and is the settlement the chamber still rests on. It shares the legislative power with the House of Representatives and holds separately the powers to confirm nominations, to give advice and consent to treaties, and to try impeachments. On this beat the number that matters is 60. The chamber's own page on filibusters and cloture records that before 1917 its rules gave no way to end debate and force a vote, that the rule adopted that year allowed a two-thirds majority to close debate, and that in 1975 the requirement was reduced to three-fifths of all senators duly chosen and sworn, or 60 of the 100-member Senate. Because market structure legislation has not attracted sixty votes, the operative question on every digital asset bill since the GENIUS Act has been whether about a dozen senators from the minority can be brought across, and the answer on 15 September 2026, on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633, was no: 49 yeas to 50 nays, with four Republicans among the nays and one senator absent.