It is one of the most powerful jobs in America that the Constitution never mentions. The majority leader decides what the Senate or House actually votes on, and what quietly dies without a vote.
The majority leader is the head of the party that holds the most seats in a chamber of Congress, responsible for steering that party's agenda and managing the flow of legislation on the floor. Each chamber has one for the majority party and a counterpart minority leader.
The Senate majority leader holds especially outsized power. By controlling the Senate's schedule, this one person largely decides which bills and nominations come up for a vote and which never see the floor at all. The power to not schedule something is the power to kill it quietly.
Remarkably, the role is not in the Constitution. The framers created Congress but said nothing about party leaders. These positions evolved as parties organized themselves, with the formal floor leader roles emerging in the early twentieth century.
Paired with the whip, who counts and rounds up votes, the majority leader runs the machinery of getting a party's program through, or blocking the other side's. It is leadership built not on a constitutional title but on the power of the party and the rules of the chamber.
