standing committee

Examples of standing committee in the following topics:

• The Committee System

  • The House has twenty standing committees; the Senate has sixteen.
  • Standing committees meet at least once each month.
  • Today the Senate operates with 20 standing and select committees.
  • These select committees, however, are permanent in nature and are treated as standing committees under Senate rules.
  • It later became a standing committee in 1801, a position it still holds today.

• The Conflict-Resolution Function

  • Most legislation is taken into consideration by standing committees, which have jurisdiction over a particular subject such as Agriculture or Appropriations.
  • The House has 20 standing committees; the Senate has 16.
  • Standing committees meet at least once each month.
  • Almost all standing committee meetings for transacting business must be open to the public unless the committee publicly votes to close the meeting.
  • Committees may also amend the bill, but the full house holds the power to accept or reject committee amendments.

• Committee Deliberation

  • Most legislation is considered by standing committees which have jurisdiction over a particular subject such as Agriculture or Appropriations.
  • The House has twenty standing committees; the Senate has sixteen.
  • Standing committees meet at least once each month.
  • Almost all standing committee meetings for transacting business must be open to the public unless the committee votes, publicly, to close the meeting.
  • Committees may also amend the bill, but the full house holds the power to accept or reject committee amendments.

• The Oversight Function

  • Congress exercises this power largely through its congressional committee system.
  • These include authorization, appropriations, investigative, and legislative hearings by standing committees; specialized investigations by select committees; and reviews and studies by congressional support agencies and staff.
  • Some of the most publicized are the comparatively rare investigations by select committees into major scandals or executive branch operations gone awry.
  • The precedent for this kind of oversight goes back two centuries: in 1792, a special House committee investigated the defeat of an Army force by confederated Indian tribes.
  • Congressman Jim Greenwood, Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, gavels to start the hearing on human cloning.

• Conference Committee

  • A conference committee is a committee of Congress appointed by the House and Senate to resolve disagreements on a particular bill.
  • A conference committee is a committee of Congress appointed by the House of Representatives and Senate to resolve disagreements on a particular bill.
  • The conference committee is usually composed of the senior members of the standing committees of each house that originally considered the legislation.
  • Thus most major bills become law through using a conference committee.
  • But apart from this one open meeting, conference committees usually meet in private and are dominated by the Chairs of the House and Senate Committees.

• Oversight

  • In addition, House rules direct each standing committee to require its subcommittees to conduct oversight or to establish an oversight subcommittee for this purpose.
  • House rules also call for each committee to submit an oversight agenda, listing its prospective oversight topics for the ensuing Congress, to the House Committee on Government Reform, which compiles and prints the agendas.
  • The House Government Reform Committee and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which have oversight jurisdiction over virtually the entire federal government, are authorized to review and study the operation of government activities to determine their economy and efficiency and to submit recommendations based on GAO reports.
  • Some of the most publicized are the comparatively rare investigations by select committees into major scandals or into executive branch operations gone awry.
  • One of several committee rooms in Congress Hall, in Philadelphia, PA.

• Investigation

  • Congress exercises this power largely through its congressional committee system.
  • These include authorization, appropriations, investigative, and legislative hearings by standing committees; specialized investigations by select committees; and reviews and studies by congressional support agencies and staff.
  • Arthur Andersen witnesses testify at the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce House of Representatives (107th Congress) hearing on January 24, 2002.

• How a Bill Becomes Law

  • A system of committees considers law relating to each policy area jurisdictions in the U.S.
  • The committee system is a way to provide for specialization, or a division of the legislative labor.
  • There are three main types of committees—standing, select or special, and joint.
  • Senate rules fix the maximum size for many of its committees, while the House determines the size and makeup of each committee every new Congress.
  • The committee reports to the legislature, at which stage further amendments are proposed.

• The Staff System

  • Each congressional committee has a staff of varying size.
  • Majority and minority members hire their own staff, with the exception of two committees in each house: the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the House, and the Select Committee on Ethics and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the Senate.
  • These committees have a single staff.
  • In 2000, House committees had an average of 68 staff, and Senate committees an average of 46.
  • Committee staff includes staff directors, committee counsel, committee investigators, press secretaries, chief clerks and office managers, schedulers, documents clerks, and assistants.

• Debate over the Presidency and the Judiciary

  • During the Constitutional Convention, the most contentious disputes revolved around the composition and election of the Senate, how "proportional representation" was to be defined, whether to divide the executive power between three people or invest the power into a single president, how to elect the president, how long his term was to be and whether he could stand for reelection, what offenses should be impeachable, the nature of a fugitive slave clause, whether to allow the abolition of the slave trade, and whether judges should be chosen by the legislature or executive.
  • The Committee of Detail was a committee established by the United States Constitutional Convention on June 23, 1787 to put down a draft text reflecting the agreements made by the convention up to that point, including the Virginia Plan's 15 resolutions.
  • The committee shortened the president's term from seven years to four years, freed the president to seek re-election after an initial term, and moved impeachment trials from the courts to the Senate.
  • The committee transferred important powers from the Senate to the president who now, for example, would be given the power to make treaties and appoint ambassadors.