Why Committees?
Committees are essential to the effective operation of
legislative bodies. Committee membership enables members to
develop specialized knowledge of the matters under their
jurisdiction. As "little legislatures," committees
monitor on-going governmental operations, identify issues
suitable for legislative review, gather and evaluate
information, and recommend courses of action to their parent
body.
The Senate currently operates 24 of these
fact-finding, consensus-building, policy-recommending
panels. Although many are almost as old as the Senate
itself, senators periodically update their jurisdictions and
resources to meet the evolving demands of modern American
life.
Types of Committees
The Senate maintains
three types of committees. These include standing, select or special, and joint
committees.
Standing Committees (16)
Standing committees are permanent bodies with specific
responsibilities spelled out in the Senate's
official rules.
Special and Select Committees (4)
Select and special committees are created for clearly
specified purposes and, although those that currently exist
are now considered permanent, they did not necessarily enjoy
that status at their inception. Special investigating
committees, such as the 1973 Select Committee to Investigate
Presidential Campaign Activities (the Watergate Committee),
expire after they submit their final report to the Senate.
There is no substantive difference between a select and a
special committee. In earlier times, select and special
committees lacked authority to report legislation to the
full Senate, but some now have this power. While members of
standing committees are formally designated by Senate
resolution, members of select and special committees are
officially appointed by the Senate's president or president
pro tempore. (See the "Appointment" section below.)
Joint Committees (4)
In earlier years, both houses of Congress used joint
committees more extensively than they do today for purposes
of legislative and administrative coordination. (For their
first century, the Senate and House of Representatives
supplemented their individual rules with a system of joint
rules, but these proved cumbersome and were abandoned in
1889.) At present, the Senate participates in the Joint
Economic Committee, Joint Committee on Library of Congress,
Joint Committee on Printing, and Joint Committee on
Taxation. As their names indicate, they either perform
housekeeping functions or conduct studies.
Committee Membership
Appointment
The committee assignment process
in the Senate is guided by Senate rules along with party
rules and practices. Most new members arrive at the Senate
with a "wish list" of committee assignments. They recognize
that appointment to committees with a special impact on the
interests of their states and regions can promote their own
legislative effectiveness. For Senate party leaders, the
committee appointment process offers a means of promoting
party discipline through the granting or withholding of
desired assignments.
Until the mid-19th century, the Senate made committee
appointments either by vote of the full body or decision of
its presiding officer. The first method proved inordinately
time consuming; the second provoked controversy and
dissatisfaction. Finally, in 1846, members agreed to a
procedure under which both political parties within the
Senate would submit for the full body's approval a slate of
members to fill the various committee seats. This new plan
fostered development of Senate party conferences (Democrats
informally use the designation "caucus"). Independents and
members of third parties have received committee assignments
through one or the other of the major party conferences.
In the practice of recent years, party conferences
convene before the start of each new Congress to elect
leaders and determine committee assignments. Each party
conference appoints a "committee on committees" to prepare a
roster of members it wishes named to the party's
specifically allotted committee seats. The percentage of a
party's representation within the Senate determines the
percentage of seats it will gain on each committee, although
exact numbers are subject to negotiation between party floor
leaders.
Party conference rules provide that each newly
elected senator may choose a committee assignment before any
other newly elected member is allowed to make a second
committee choice. New senators make their selections
according to a priority system that gives first choice to
those who have previously served in the Senate, then to
those with prior House service, and finally to those who
served as their state's governor. All other new members have
their order of choice determined by random drawing.
The Role of Seniority in Selection of Chairmen and
Ranking Members
Traditionally, the majority party member with the
greatest seniority on a particular committee serves as its
chairman. When the Republican Party gained the majority in
1995, it altered its conference rules to allow Republicans
on individual committees to vote by secret ballot for their
committee's chairman, irrespective of that member's
seniority. This adjustment was a logical consequence of the
party's larger decision to place a six-year term limit on
the service of its chairmen or, when in the minority, its
ranking members.
Service
Senate committees are divided, according to relative
importance, into
three categories: Class A, Class B, and Class C.
Senate Rule XXIV specifies that committee chairmen and members be appointed
on the authority of a Senate Resolution, unless otherwise
ordered. The rules also provide the following assignment
limitations:
A, B, C's. Each senator may serve on no more than two
Class A committees and one Class B panel. There are no
limits to service on Class C panels.
Class A subcommittees. Within each of their assigned Class A committees, members
who are not full committee chairmen may serve on three
subcommittees, but they are eligible to chair—or serve
as ranking minority member of—only one of those
subcommittees. Appropriations subcommittee assignments are
exempt from this limitation. Chairmen of full committees may
chair only one Class A subcommittee among all their
committee assignments.
Class B subcommittees. Senators may also serve on two subcommittees within their
Class B committees. (There is no limit to service on Class C
committees.) The chairman of a Class B full committee may
not chair any Class B subcommittee, but may serve as a
nonvoting member of any of that panel's subcommittees.
"Super A" committees. Republican Conference rules limit party members to service
on only one of the so-called "Super A"
committees—Appropriations, Armed Services, Finance,
and Foreign Relations. Democrats observe the same practice
for three committees—Appropriations, Armed Services,
and Finance.
Same-state rule. Both party conferences provide that when a state happens
to be represented by two senators of the same party, the two
may not serve together on the same committee.
Exceptions. It is possible for a standing committee to temporarily
increase its membership if an agreement is entered by the
majority and minority leaders. As stated in Rule 25.4c, ". . . the membership of one or more standing committees may be increased temporarily from time to time by such
number or numbers as may be required to accord to the
majority party a majority of the membership of all standing
committees. When any such temporary increase is necessary to
accord to the majority party a majority of the membership of
all standing committees, members of the majority party in
such number as may be required for that purpose may serve as
members of three standing committees listed in paragraph 2.
No such temporary increase in the membership of any standing
committee under this subparagraph shall be continued in
effect after the need therefor has ended. No standing
committee may be increased in membership under this
subparagraph by more than two members in excess of the
number prescribed for that committee by paragraph 2 or
3(a)."
Operations
The Senate provides for committee operations through its Standing Rules XXIV-XXVIII.
Legislative Role
The Senate refers approximately 3,000 bills and
resolutions to its committees during each two-year
congressional session. Committees act on only a small number
of these measures. Some of these bills and resolutions are
introduced without expectation of immediate committee
consideration, but simply to call attention to issues or to
test the likelihood of future support. Others receive no
attention because they duplicate measures already being
considered. Yet committees consider hundreds of bills in the
course of their more than 2,000 public hearings and business
meetings each Congress. Unlike some other national
legislatures, congressional committees customarily summon to
their hearings a wide range of witnesses, including members
of Congress, cabinet officers and other administration
officials, representatives of business and labor
organizations, and members of the general public. At the
completion of the hearing process, committees "mark up" one
or more related bills, often preparing a consolidated or
"clean bill." In their authority to substantially revise
proposed legislation, committees of the U.S. Congress enjoy
powers not always shared by committees in the legislatures
of other nations.
Ultimately, committees report to the full Senate
approximately 500 bills and resolutions—one-sixth of
the legislation introduced each Congress. Occasionally,
individual members seek to bypass committees by objecting to
a measure's committee referral, thus keeping the legislation
on the floor. Members may also circumvent potentially
hostile committees by offering whole bills as amendments to
other bills at the time of their floor consideration. In the
Senate, unlike the House of Representatives, amendments
generally do not have to be germane to the subject of the
bill being amended. In the vast majority of cases, however,
members work through the committee system.
Investigative and Oversight Roles
Without significant investigative powers, Congress could not
effectively pursue its legislative functions. Decades before
he became president, Woodrow Wilson wrote that "the only
really self-governing people is that people which discusses
and interrogates its administration." He concluded that
Congress' "informing function should be preferred even to
its legislative function." With the passage of time, the
role of Congress has broadened from merely informing itself
to informing the nation. In the 1920s a reluctant witness
challenged the right of a Senate committee to force a
private citizen to testify. In the landmark case McGrain v. Daugherty
(1927), the Supreme Court firmly established a comprehensive
reading of congressional investigative power, noting that a
"legislative body cannot legislate in the absence of
information," and that "some means of compulsion are
essential to obtain what is needed." Approximately
one-quarter of all Senate committee hearings relate to
oversight of executive agency operations. In most instances,
standing committees serve as the Senate's principal
investigative arm, but the Senate has also entrusted this
responsibility to special and select committees.
Staffing
Until the second half of the 19th century, Senate
committees operated without either clerical or professional
staff. In 1856, the Senate authorized clerical staff to
assist committee chairmen and in 1884 provided clerical
assistance to all other members who did not chair
committees. Not until 1946 did the Senate significantly
change committee operations by providing for hiring of
professional staff. Previously, committees had to rely
principally on executive branch agencies and outside
interests for substantive policy information. Senate
committee staffs grew rapidly over the next few decades,
actually doubling during the 1970s. This increase occurred
as a result of Senate Resolution 60, adopted in 1975. S.
Res. 60 authorized each senator who was not a committee
chairman to hire a legislative assistant for each the three
Class A and B committees to which that senator was assigned.
Today, approximately 1,000 professional and clerical staff
members support the work of the Senate's committees.
Jurisdiction
Senate Rule XXV establishes standing committees, determines their membership
and fixes their jurisdictions. Setting jurisdictional
boundaries among committees has always proved troublesome.
While some jurisdictions apply to oversight of specific
executive agencies or precisely defined functions, others
are not so obviously described. As a result, a half-dozen or
more committees may claim jurisdiction in such broad policy
areas as the national economy or environmental protection.
While Senate Rule XXV also provides for select, special, and
joint committees, it does not spell out their
responsibilities. These are detailed in the Senate
resolutions that established—or updated—the
authority of these special panels.
Rules
Senate Standing Rule XXVI
(2) requires each committee to adopt and publish its own
procedural rules. These rules must be consistent with the
Senate's Standing Rules regulating committee procedures. The
provision for individual committee rules took effect in
1970. According to its sponsor, the provision's purpose was
to give "notice to all the world as to our procedures and
[to notify] any witness who is subpoenaed or otherwise
called as to his rights." For a useful compilation of these
rules, along with the appropriate Senate Standing Rules, see
the biennially published Senate document Authority and Rules
of Senate Committees.
Procedures
The indispensable role of committees in the
legislative process places great power in the hands of their
individual chairmen. Throughout the 19th century and into
the first half of the 20th, chairmen of major committees
frequently used this power capriciously and arbitrarily to
frustrate their opponents. In 1946, and again in the 1970s,
the Senate moved to democratize committee procedures. These
reforms included, but were not limited to:
1. Establishment of regular weekly, biweekly, or
monthly meeting dates;
2. Provision for special meetings with or without the
chairman's approval;
3. Authorization for minority members to select and
call witnesses;
4. Advance public announcement of hearings and
advance filing of witness testimony;
5. Public access, including radio and television
coverage, to meetings and hearings unless specifically
closed by a committee majority as provided in Senate rules;
6. Public access to a record of committee proceedings
and votes, and a formal public report of committee
activities during the previous Congress; and
7. Timely reporting of a fully documented resolution
authorizing committee expenditures.
Committees, except Appropriations and Budget, are not
allowed to meet for more than two hours beyond the Senate's
daily convening time, and not beyond two o'clock in the
afternoon, without the express permission of both party
floor leaders or their designees.
Subcommittees
During its earlier years, responding to new needs or
to accommodate individual members who sought the office
space and staff that went to chairmen, the Senate
haphazardly added new committees to the structure of
existing panels. This produced a large number of committees,
most of which seldom met or handled any legislation. Early
in the 20th century, there were nearly as many committees as
senators. Occasional consolidations of the number and
jurisdictions of Senate committees quickly gave way to
renewed expansion. The Legislative Reorganization Act of
1946 changed this pattern. Since that time, the number of
full committees has remained fairly constant, fluctuating
between 15 and 20.
From 1947 to 1977, pressure for expansion was
redirected from full committees to subcommittees. With a
growing number of postwar-era policy issues pressing for
attention under a tightly consolidated committee structure,
subcommittees naturally proliferated. Until reforms of the
1970s curtailed the practice, some committees—such as
Judiciary—maintained as many as 15 subcommittees, with
the full committee's chairman presiding over several of
them. Although the Senate currently places no formal limit
on the number of subcommittees per legislative committee,
the numbers range from none to seven. (The Appropriations
Committee has 13.) As noted above (under Membership), as a
result of recent reforms, a full committee chairman may now
serve as a nonvoting member of each of that panel's
subcommittees. But each full committee chairman may preside
over only one Class A subcommittee among all the full
committees to which he or she is assigned. This reform has
opened the opportunity to chair a subcommittee—or to
serve as its ranking minority party member—to a much
larger number of senators, including very junior members.
History—The Formative Years
Select Committee System (1789-1816)
The Senate created a standing committee system in
1816, more than a quarter century after its first meeting in
1789. The United States Constitution did not mention or
provide for committees in Congress. Prior to 1816, the
Senate relied on temporary select committees, the first of
which was appointed on April 7, 1789, to draw up Senate
rules of procedure. That committee filed its report within a
week and, by April 18, the Senate had resolved that 20 rules
"be observed." In those days, the Senate spent much of its
time acting as a "Committee of the Whole," a parliamentary
device for facilitating the legislative process.
This improvisational system made the select
committees completely responsive to the Senate as a whole.
The Senate determined their jurisdiction and membership, and
they invariably complied with the will of the majority that
had created them in the first place. Furthermore, if the
Senate was not satisfied with the progress of a particular
select committee, it could at any time create another
committee to handle the same matter. The system also was
useful for its flexibility, as the Senate could, if it
preferred, dispose of legislation and nominations without
any committee referral.
For the most part, these early Senate committees
consisted of three members for routine business and five
members for more important issues. During the first session
of the First Congress, the largest committee, containing 11
members, was created to decide the salaries of the president
and vice president. Also in the first session, the entire
membership of the Senate was divided into two large
committees, with half the senators on the committee to
prepare legislation establishing the federal judiciary and
the other half on the committee to define the punishment of
crimes against the United States. These committees obviously
contained more members than was usual, and in the case of
organizing the federal judiciary, a smaller subcommittee
actually drafted the bill.
With the great number of temporary committees
appointed each session, the position of committee chairman
was not as influential as it would become later with the
establishment of standing committees. Chairmen were often
the senators who introduced the legislation, since they had
the most interest in the bill's passage. But generally the
chairman was the senator who received the most votes in the
balloting for committee members.
The chief disadvantage of the temporary committee
system was that it encouraged an unequal workload for
senators. During the first session of the First Congress,
for instance, one very able senator served on 22 committees;
a year later, in the second session, he was elected to 36
committees, while the average member served on only about 11
committees. Several senators served on only one or two, or
none at all.
The increasing business of the committees,
particularly in the handling of nominations, the pressing
needs of national defense during the War of 1812, and the
growing institutional needs of a body that was now over a
quarter-century old, all pushed the Senate toward the
creation of standing committees. In 1815, at the end of the
War of 1812, the stage was set for the Senate to consider
establishing its own system of standing committees. Meeting
in temporary quarters—because the Capitol Building
itself was under repair for damage that British troops had
inflicted during the war—members of the Senate were
most likely concerned about the permanency, continuity, and
stability of governmental processes. Perhaps struggling with
the issues of the war made members realize the need for
greater expertise and a more specialized review of
legislation. In addition, given the frequent movement of
House members to the Senate, we may assume that former
representatives brought with them a preference for the
standing committee assignments that had become common in
that body.
During the first session of the Fourteenth Congress,
meeting in December 1815, the Senate appointed a series of
select committees to report on various portions of the
president's annual message to the nation. Instead of
allowing these temporary committees to disband after they
had completed their immediate work, the Senate utilized the
same committees for other business during the session.
Standing Committee System (Since 1816)
During the second session of the Fourteenth Congress,
meeting in December 1816, the Senate agreed to create 11
permanent standing committees: Foreign Relations, Finance,
Commerce and Manufactures, Military Affairs, Militia, Naval
Affairs, Public Lands, Claims, Judiciary, Post Offices and
Post Roads, and Pensions. Five members were appointed to
each committee, with the exception of Commerce and
Judiciary, each of which began with four members.
The appointment of standing committees permitted the
Senate to assign long-term studies and investigations to
those panels, in addition to regular legislative duties. For
instance, the Commerce Committee's first assignments
consisted largely of compiling statistical reports and
conducting investigations required by the Senate on harbor
improvements, foreign trade, canal construction, and
shipping regulations. Standing committees also spent much of
their time handling presidential nominations and petitions
from citizens.
The significance of the change from temporary to
permanent committees was perhaps little realized at the
time. But this was a decisive moment in the institution's
history. The sheer mass and complexity of the Senate's
growing responsibilities demanded the division of labor and
specialization that a permanent committee system offered.
The changed structure of internal authority quickly became
evident, for instead of the Senate telling its committees
what to put into legislation, as it did in the years prior
to establishment of the standing committee system, the
committees assumed the prerogative of determining which
substantive provisions the Senate should consider, and they
became policy-making bodies instead of merely technical aids
to the chamber. Whereas the Senate formerly set the agenda,
the committees came to be, in effect, the Senate's
agenda-maker.
Further Reading
Senate Committees: Categories and
Rules for Committee Assignments (CRS) (pdf)
Committee Assignment Process in the
U.S. Senate: Democratic and Republican Party
Procedures
(CRS) (pdf)