A unicameral congress can best be described as a. a congress with one chamber but is formally divided into party sections. b. a congress that contains one house, with no formal separations. c. a congress that contains two houses, but each represent the same party. d. A congress that contains two houses, with no formal separations.
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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. The principal institution of representative democracy in the United States, Congress is defined in the first and longest article of the Constitution. The Constitution vests all legislative power in the Senate and House of Representatives, requiring them to assemble at least once every year. The length of each Congress is two years, normally divided between a first and second session. The Constitution enumerates a list of congressional powers that include taxation, borrowing and coining money, regulation of foreign and interstate commerce, establishment of post offices and post roads, creating a court system, raising and supporting military forces, and declaring war. It further authorizes Congress to make all laws "necessary and proper" for exercising those powers
Following American independence, the first national government under the Articles of Confederation (1781–1789) consisted of a unicameral Congress, in which each state had one vote. That Congress lacked the power to tax or to regulate commerce, nor could it compel the states to comply with its actions. Economic decline and civil unrest encouraged the states to send delegates in 1787 to a Constitutional Convention to devise a more effective central government. Seeking to make the government more powerful without allowing it to grow autocratic, they divided authority among executive, legislative, and judicial branches and further split the Congress into two houses. Through this system of checks and balances they prevented any single branch from gaining absolute power.