Committees in Congress

HOW DOES CONGRESS DO ITS WORK?

Congressional Committees

The 535 members of the US Congress do a tremendous amount of work on behalf of the American people. To make their work as efficient as possible, the tasks are broken down and assigned to smaller groups called committees.

Multiple Choice

Take a guess........How many bills were introduced in 2019?

• 850

• 3725

• 5749

• 8820

It would be impossible for every member of Congress to research, consider, and debate every bill. That's where committees come in!

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Committees do most of the work in researching bills and preparing for debate in each of the houses of Congress.

There are more than 20 committees in each house of Congress. The work they do is organized by the subject matter of bills.

Some committees are called standing committees. That means they are permanent because the subject matter they handle is always the topic of bills.

• agriculture

• armed services

• foreign affairs

• natural resources

• veterans' affairs

• energy and commerce

Here are just a few standing committees of the House of Representatives.......

And in the Senate,

• armed services

• budget

• foreign relations

• judiciary

Another type of committee is a select committee.

Select committees deal with one topic or circumstance and are temporary. Once the bill or bills dealing with that subject are finished, the select committee is discontinued.

At the present time, there are select committees on

• intelligence (Senate)

• ethics (Senate)

• climate crisis (House)

• modernization of Congress (House)

Joint committees have members from both houses to work more efficiently on a topic. They can be either standing or select. Examples are

• economics

• taxation

Conference committees are temporary. When the 2 houses of Congress pass different versions of the same basic bill, members from both houses get together to compromise on the details. The president can only sign a bill if it has passed both houses in the exact same form.

Within each of the committee types, smaller groups called subcommittees work on specific aspects of the bills.

Some committees are more important than others because of the topics they specialize in. Members of Congress try to gain membership on those important committees. Membership on all committees is party-based. The political party with the most seats in the House or Senate holds leadership in each committee. The chairperson is powerful because he/she controls when the committee meets and which bills they spend time on.

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One of the most important Senate committees is Foreign Relations. Both Presidents Obama and Biden served on this committee while in the Senate.