CHAPTER 5 SECTION 4
Congressional Committees
THE PURPOSES OF COMMITTEES
• Committees ease the workload and are the key power centers in Congress.
• They allow members of Congress to divide their work among many smaller groups.
• Committees listen to the supporters and the opponents of a bill.
• This is where compromises are worked out, and decide which bill will or will not have a
chance to become law. Most bills never get out of the committee stage
• Committees also hold public hearings where they help the public learn about key
problems and issues facing the nation such as; organized crime, prescription drugs, etc. 
KINDS OF COMMITTEES
• Congress has four basic kinds of committees:
• 1. Standing Committees
• 2. Select Committees
• 3. Joint Committees
• 4. Conference Committees 
STANDING COMMITTEES
• Early in its history, Congress set up permanent groups to oversee bills that
dealt with certain kinds of issues. These are called standing committees
because they continue from one Congress to another.
• The House and Senate create their own standing committees and control
their areas of jurisdiction, occasionally adding or eliminating a standing
committee when necessary.
• The majority party controls the standing committees and select the
chairperson for each, who are members of the majority party as well. 
SUBCOMMITTEES
• Nearly all standing committees have subcommittees.
– Each subcommittee specializes in a subcategory of its standing committee’s
responsibility
• Subcommittees, like standing committees, continue on from one Congress to
the next. 
SELECT COMMITTEES
• Each house of Congress may create temporary committees called select
committees.
• Select committees usually study one specific issue and report their findings
to the Senate or the House.
• Select committees were set up to only last for one term of Congress, but
some have been renewed over multiple sessions that later would become
permanent committees.
– The Select Intelligence Committee is one of these relabeled committees. 
JOINT COMMITTEES
• Joint committees are made up of members of both the House and the
Senate, and can be either temporary or permanent.
• Joint committees usually act as study groups with the responsibility for
reporting their findings back to the House and Senate.
• Joint committees do not have the authority to deal directly with bills or to
propose legislation to Congress, but rather review research and present their
findings. 
CONFERENCE COMMITTEES
• A conference committee is a temporary committee set up when the House
and Senate have passed different versions of the same bill.
• The job of the conference committee is to resolve the differences between
the two versions of the bill.
• After the conferees agree on the bill it goes back to the House and Senate for
final approval before going to the President, but the bill needs to be
accepted as whole, meaning amendments cannot be added. 
CHOOSING COMMITTEE MEMBERS
• Members of Congress may request to be put into a specific committee
because the political parties assign members.
• Each member may only serve on a limited number of standing committees
and subcommittees. 
THE COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSON’S ROLE
• Along with party leaders, chairpeople of standing committees are the most
powerful members of Congress.
• They decide when their committees will meet, which bills they will
consider, how long they will consider them, when hearings will be held
and which witnesses will be called to testify for or against a bill, hire
committee staff members and control the committee budget, and
manage the floor debates that take place on the bills that come from
their committees. 
THE SENIORITY SYSTEM
• The seniority system gave the member of the majority party with the
longest uninterrupted service on a particular committee the leadership of
that committee.
• In 1995 Republicans, who were the majority at the time, ruled that
chairpersons of House committees could hold their positions for no more
than three consecutive terms. 