Do people sometimes use “Congress” to refer specifically to the HoR?

In my reading this week I’ve encountered sentences that seem to imply this.

OP Tipping - 08 November 2012 11:41 PM

Do people sometimes use “Congress” to refer specifically to the HoR?

In the United States, the term Congress refers jointly to both houses of that country’s national bicameral legislature, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Members of the Senate are typically referred to as “Senators”, whereas members of the House of Representatives are referred to as “Representatives”. Whereas the term Member of Congress applies to members of both houses, the terms Congressman and Congresswoman usually refer only to members of the House of Representatives.

--wikipedia

I’ve never encountered “Congress” applying specifically to the House of Representatives.

What were the sentences you read that seemed to imply this?

The term congress(wo)man is often used to specify a member of the House of Representatives.  I’m not sure how few zeroes you need for Google ngrams results to be significant but the phrase “Congress and the Senate” scores a maximum of 0.0000014898% in 1935.

Yes, it’s quite common. Just Google “Congress and the Senate” (using quotes) and tons of examples pop up:

“In Congress and the Senate, some names have changed, but the adversarial math stays much the same.” (CBC)

“With Congress and the Senate having such a similar level of importance...” (comment on a Guardian article)

“Is congress more powerful than the Senate?” (question asked on WikiAnswers)

I don’t think you’ll see it so often from journalists—the CBC quote above appears to be an exception—as they have style guides that don’t allow it.

Yes, people sometimes refer to Congress as meaning specifically the House of Representatives.

Thanks all.

What I’d been hearing was talk of the Republicans “retaining control of Congress”: not gaining but retaining. Only made sense if they meant the House.