United States Congressional Committees - Types of Committees

Types of Committees

There are three main types of committees—standing, select or special, and joint.

Standing committees are permanent panels identified as such in chamber rules (House Rule X, Senate Rule XXV).

Because they have legislative jurisdiction, standing committees consider bills and issues and recommend measures for consideration by their respective chambers. They also have oversight responsibility to monitor agencies, programs, and activities within their jurisdictions, and in some cases in areas that cut across committee jurisdictions.

Most standing committees recommend funding levels—authorizations—for government operations and for new and existing programs. A few have other functions. For example, the Appropriations Committees recommend legislation to provide budget authority for federal agencies and programs. The Budget Committees establish aggregate levels for total spending and revenue that serve as guidelines for the work of the authorizing and appropriating panels.

Select or special committees are established generally by a separate resolution of the chamber, sometimes to conduct investigations and studies, and, on other occasions, also to consider measures. Often, select committees examine emerging issues that don’t fit clearly within existing standing committee jurisdictions, or which cut across jurisdictional boundaries. A select committee may be permanent or temporary (all current select committees in the House and Senate are considered permanent committees). Instead of select, the Senate sometimes uses the term special committee (as in the Special Committee on Aging).

Joint committees are permanent panels that include members from both chambers, which generally conduct studies or perform housekeeping tasks rather than consider measures. For instance, the Joint Committee on Printing oversees the functions of the Government Printing Office and general printing procedures of the federal government. The chairmanship of joint committees usually alternates between the House and Senate. A conference committee is a temporary joint committee formed to resolve differences between competing House and Senate versions of a measure. Conference committees draft compromises between the positions of the two chambers, which are then submitted to the full House and Senate for approval.

Other committees are also used in the modern Congress.

• Subcommittees are formed by most committees to share specific tasks within the jurisdiction of the full committee. Subcommittees are responsible to, and work within the guidelines established by, their parent committees. In particular, standing committees usually create subcommittees with legislative jurisdiction to consider and report bills. They may assign their subcommittees such specific tasks as the initial consideration of measures and oversight of laws and programs in the subcommittees’ areas.

• Committee of the Whole — used by the House of Representatives, but not the modern Senate

• Conference committee — are joint, ad hoc groups formed to work out the differences between similar bills from both houses.

• Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is a statutory joint select committee created by the Budget Control Act of 2011, enacted on August 2, 2011. The act was intended to prevent the rapid process of sovereign default from the 2011 U.S. Debt Ceiling Crisis, and has been interpreted as a reaction to frustration over "partisan political wrangling" during an "already struggling recovery." The committee will have twelve members, six from the House and six from the Senate, evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.