Power of Congress in US Politics

Committees

Standing (most important)

Standing committees are permanent, policy specialist committees that amend legislation

Handle the day-to-day running of Congress

Conduct investigations within their policy area (e.g. Senate intelligence committee and House intelligence committee are investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russian meddling in 2016)

Congressmen generally seek assignments on committees that are closest to the interests of their district/state

Have considerable power to help the parent chambers manage their huge workloads, but there are limits (e.g. can't legislate, can't force the executive, cannot implement policies)

They have 2 functions in both the House and Senate and a 3rd function in the Senate alone

  • 1. Conduct the committee stage of bills in the legislative process
  • 2. Conduct investigations within the committees policy area
  • 3. Begin the confirmation process of numerous Presidential appointments

House Rules Committee

Timetables bills on the House floor and attaches a "rule" to each bill outlining, among other things, the time given for debate and the extent to which each bill can be amended

Also prioritises bills on the floor of the house for their second reading (e.g. the democrats prioritised Iraq spending bill when they won the house back in 2006)

Its membership is smaller than other committees (13) and more skewed to the majority party. The Chair is considered one of the most influential posts in Congress

Conference Committee

Established to reconcile competing versions of bills passed in the House and Senate, as they're likely to be different (set up after 3rd reading is bills are too different)

They are ad-hoc

Once they've agreed the bill goes back to the floor of each house - if it is not passed it goes back and if that happens again it goes back to the standing committee who first considered it

Important as they're likely to draw up the final version of the bill - however this power is checked because the Senate and the House get to vote on the compromise version

Select Committee

Special investigative committees established to probe a specific issue. Normally ad-hoc and only deal with issues beyond the jurisdiction of standing committees (e.g. 9/11 committee)

Why are committees powerful?

Committee members tend to be more independent from their party

They have prestige - seen as necessary to cope with 1000's of laws passing through Congress

Viewed by members of Congress as an advantageous career move as it allows them staff, resources and influence over legislation (8 presidents and 8 vice presidents have served on the ways and means committee, as have 25 house speakers)

Executive scrutiny is accepted as main function (e.g. Hillary appeared before the house select committee on Benghazi to answer questions on how she used her personal email when Secretary of State)

Scrutinise legislation (filter legislation, bills are often thoroughly amended e.g. Affordable Care Act was stripped down)

House Rules Committee decides when or if a bill will be debated and the extent to which it can be amended

Scrutinise appointments

Are they too powerful?

Yes No
  • The top house recipients of money from military-related industries (Kay Granger, R-TX) served on either the armed services committee of a defence appropriations sub-committee
  • Committees are unrepresentative of the chambers (e.g. agricultural committees staffed by flyover states)
  • Chairmen abuse power (e.g. House intelligence chairman Devin Nunes appeared to undermine impartiality of russia-trump ties when he went to the white house to discuss it, possibly for partisan advantages)
  • Some committee are more important than others (ways and Means committee vs. The Presidential inauguration committee)
  • Influence of parties- the republicans abolished the seniority rule which tied promotion to length of service in Congress (but the democrats reinstated it)
  • The issue- if the legislation is considered important by party leadership, committees are often bypassed (had very little input when Trump was rushing to repeal Obamacare in 2017)
  • Presidential influence- Bushs Reps controlled Congress for most of his first 6 years in office (9/11 allowed him to force through a raft of measures that critics say were not properly examined)
  • Senators can kill a bill individually filibustering it

Committee chairs

Always drawn from the majority party (all Republican currently)

Seniority rule - the chair of the standing committee will be the member of the majority party with the longest continuous service in that committee

  • Has been modified recently and there are secret ballots for committee chairs and ranking minority members

The chair gets to determine the agenda by choosing what issues get considered

They manage the actual process of writing the bill (mark up) and then vote on the bill in the committee itself

Power - they control agendas, decide when committee will meet, control the committee budget, influence membership, supervise staff

House Speaker

Leader of the house, elected every 2 years by the entire house membership

Main roles:

  • Plan and implement the agenda of the house
  • Choose which members to recognise during debates
  • Rule on points of order and maintaining decorum

Specific powers:

  • Interpret and enforce rules of the house
  • Act as presiding officer
  • Refer bills to standing committees
  • Appoint select committee and conference committee chairs (Paul Ryan appointed Devin Nunes as head of House intelligence committee- gives power over committee as a whole)
  • Appoint the majority party member of the house rules committee
  • Speaker serves as the gatekeeper for any legislation that wants to enter (not likely to introduce any legislation hated by the Republicans currently)
  • Hastert Rule - the speaker cannot allow a floor to vote on a bill unless the majority of the majority party support it

Majority/Minority leaders

Minority leaders: Nancy Pelosi (D)- House, Chuck Schumer (D)- Senate

Majority leaders: Kevin McCarthy- House, Mitch McConnell- Senate

Act as day to day directors of operations on the floor of their respective house (hold press conferences, act as liaisons between their house and the White House)

Senate majority leader plays a key role in taking bills to debate on the Senate floor

House majority leader is no.2 to the house speaker

Posts can be used as launching pad into Presidency (LBJ in the senate)

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