The Committee System “Congress in Committee is Congress at work” - Woodrow Wilson (1888)

Committees are the most important organizational feature of Congress Consider bills or legislative proposals Maintain oversight of executive agencies Conduct investigations How do Committees work?

Committees as workshops When a bill is introduced in the House or Senate, it is usually referred to the committee with jurisdiction over its particular policy area Committees allow for a division of legislative labor, enabling the 100 Senators and 435 House members to consider approximately 5,000 bills and 50,000 nominations a year Means by which Congress “sifts through an otherwise impossible jumble of bills, proposals and issues.” How do Committees work?

Types of Committees (Standing, select, joint, conference) Standing: Permanent committees (last from year to year); agriculture, appropriations, armed services, budget –Process bulk of legislation Select (or Special): –Temporary, usually lasting only 1-2 years –Usually don’t have legislative authority, but study bills and make recommendations –Coordinate legislation that overlaps jurisdiction of several standing committees (Select committee on homeland security)

Joint committees: those on which both representatives and senators serve Printing, Taxation, Joint Economic Committee Conference committee: a joint committee appointed to resolve differences in Senate and House versions of the same piece of legislation before final passage Types of Committees How do Committees work?

Committee Practices The number of committees has varied; significant cuts in number of House committees in 1995, and in the number of House and Senate subcommittees Majority party has majority of seats on the committees and names the chair How do Committees work?

Congressional Staff Constituency service is a major task of members’ staff Legislative functions of staff include devising proposals negotiating agreements organizing hearings meeting with lobbyists and administrators Members’ staff consider themselves advocates of their employers How do Committees work?

The Growth in Staffs of Members and Committees in Congress,

How and Why Members Value Committee Assignments District Interests – Agriculture, Transportation, Armed Services Advancement in Party /Chamber – Rules, Appropriations Personal Interest Visibility – Homeland Security, Judiciary How do Committees work?

How assignments are made Formal Criteria In Senate, “Johnson rule” is followed: –All party members assigned to one major committee before someone gets a second major assignment –These are: Appropriations, Armed Services, Commerce, Finance, Foreign Relations In House, committees are ranked exclusive, nonexclusive, exempt –Exclusive can’t serve on any other standing committee –Can serve on two nonexclusive How do Committees work?

Informal assignment criteria Seniority…? Generally, committee chair = most senior member of the majority party. Republicans famously violated this 1995 with key committee chairs Newt Gingrich, House Speaker at the time, defended the new practice with an allusion to football, saying, “You’ve got to carry the moral responsibility of fielding the team that can win or you cheat the whole conference.” Since then, Republicans continued to depart from the principle of seniority in selecting committee chairs, often choosing on the basis of loyalty or fund- raising abilities rather than seniority. In 2007, Democrats returned to the seniority principle for choosing committee chairs. However, they altered traditional practices in other ways by offering freshman Democrats choice committee assignments in order to increase their chances of re-election How do Committees work?

Committee Leadership Leaders are chairmen and ranking minority party members –Chairmen have similar role over committee as Speaker has over House (a mini-legislature) –Can set agendas, allocate funds, arrange hearings –Can kill a bill by refusing to schedule it for a hearing or convening meetings when opponents are absent –1970s era: Subcommittee Bill of Rights –1990s: GOP centralization of committees Role of Appropriations Committee How do Committees work?

What happens in committees? 3 standard steps: public hearings, markups, reports 1. Hearings: committee listens to a wide variety of witnesses Explore need for legislation Provide a forum for citizen grievances Raise visibility of issue Educate lawmakers and public 2. Markups: members decide on bill’s actual language, conceptualize the bill –Outside pressures often intense during markup –Government in the Sunshine Act (1977) rules all markup sessions conducted in public (except Nat’l Security, some commerce, a few others) –After markup, if in a subcommittee, recommendations sent to full committee, which votes to ratify, conduct its own markup, return to subcommittee, or do nothing 3. Reports: If committee votes to send bill to floor, the staff prepares a full report summarizing results of committee research How do Committees work?

If you are a committee staff member and want to know the status of a bill, you can get the information most quickly from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is a federal agency within the legislative branch of the United States government that provides economic data to Congress. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is known as "the investigative arm of Congress" and "the congressional watchdog." GAO supports the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and helps improve the performance and accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people. How do Committees work?

4 types of conference bargaining: Traditional: participants meet, haggle Offer-counteroffer: sides suggest compromises, recess to discuss Subconference: groups address special topics Pro forma: informal preconference negotiations How do Committees work?

2 Theories of committee purpose Distributional: Committees give lawmakers influence over policies critical to their reelection –Those attracted to a particular committee are those whose constituents benefit from such policies –Filled with preference outliers, legislators whose preferences at odds w. membership of the whole Informational: Committees provide lawmakers with specialized expertise –Formulate policies that resolve national problems How do Committees work?