Congressional Committee of United States

Congressional Committee of United States

Introduction

History of the U.S. Congress begins with the Continental Congress, which met in 1774 in Philadelphia. The first bicameral Congress of the modern type got built in 1789. In 1800, they moved to the building of the Capitol in Washington. U.S. Congress is the legislature, of one of three senior federal governments the United States and its powers are defined by the U.S. Constitution. Congress is bicameral, consisting of the Senate and House of Representatives.

The House of Representatives has 435 voting members, each of which represents a constituency and get re-elected every two years. Seats in the House of Representatives get apportioned among the states based on population. The Senate has 100 members serving a six-year term. Each state has two senators regardless of population. Every two years, about one-third of the Senate gets re-elected.

Congressional Committee

Under the legislature of United States, lies a small body called Congressional committee which gets assigned, a certain duty for specific tasks. The Committees carry out a wide variety of functions, including fact-finding, reporting to Congress on the conduct of other branches of the government, proposing legislation and approving nominees for national office. Many scholars of American politics have identified committees as the method by which Congress does most of its work. The constitution did not establish the functioning importance of congressional committees. The role of the Congressional committee in legislation began almost as soon as Congress got established, but committees were initially ad hoc bodies, formed for specific purposes. Competing jurisdictions were common, and committees merge and separate as needed. The Legislative Reorganization Act, passed in 1946, regularized the committee system.

Types of Committees

Congressional committees are of various types out of which standing committees are of vital importance and large in number. Standing committees are permanent bodies, which employ their own staff on an ongoing basis, and have responsibility four major areas of policy making.

Special committees are Congressional committees convened for a specific purpose, customarily to investigate an issue of widespread concern. They investigate, and produce reports but seldom produce legislation. A small number of specific committees have evolved into permanent committees, which produce legislation, but these are the exception.

Joint committee includes both Representatives and Senators from a bicameral legislature. It draws its members from more than one association. There are four standing joint committees in the U.S. Congress: the Joint Committee on Taxation, Library, Printing and Economic Committee.

Leadership of Committees

Each Committee is headed by a chairman or chairwoman, usually from the majority party in the chamber. The most senior of the minority party members on the committee is called the ranking member. Committee membership is determined by a resolution of the chamber, but the names put forward as part of the resolution gets determined by the party leadership, who take into account the members' areas of expertise and seniority.

The figure varies from the committee to the committee of members of Congressional committee. The Senate committees are usually smaller than house ...