CHAPTER XIV

THE COMMITTEES OF CONGRESS

WHEN Congress first met in 1789, both Houses found themselves, as the State legislatures had theretofore been and still are, without official members and without leaders. The Senate occupied itself chiefly with executive business, and appointed no standing committees until 1816. The House however had bills to discuss, plans of taxation to frame, difficult questions of expenditure, and particularly of the national debt, to consider. For want of persons whose official duty required them, like English ministers, to run the machine by drafting schemes and bringing the raw material of its work into shape, it was forced to appoint committees. At first there were few; even in 1802 we find only five. As the numbers of the House increased and more business flowed in, additional committees were appointed; and as the House became more and more occupied by large political questions, minor matters were more and more left to be settled by these select bodies. Like all legislatures, the House constantly sought to extend its vision and its grasp, and the easiest way to do this was to provide itself with new eyes and new hands in the shape of further committees.

To avoid the tedious repetition of details, I have taken the House of Representatives and its committees for description, because the system is more fully developed there than in the Senate. But a very few words on the Senate may serve to prevent misconceptions.

There were in 1892 forty-four standing Senate committees, appointed for two years, being the period of a Congress. They and their chairmen are chosen not by the presiding officer but by the Senate itself, voting by ballot. Practically they are selected by caucuses of the majority and minority meeting in

secret conclave, and then carried wholesale by vote in the Senate. Each consists of from two to thirteen members, the most common numbers being seven and nine, and all senators sit on more than one committee, some upon four or more. The chairman is appointed by the Senate and not by the committees themselves. There are also select committees appointed for a special purpose and lasting for one session only. Every bill introduced goes after its first and second reading (which are granted as of course) to a standing committee, which examines and amends it, and reports it back to the Senate.

There were in the fifty-second Congress (May 1892) fifty standing committees of the House, i.e. committees appointed under standing regulations, and therefore regularly formed at the beginning of every Congress. Each committee consists of from three to sixteen members, eleven and thirteen being the commonest numbers. Every member of the House is placed on some one committee, not many on more than one. Besides these, select committees, seldom exceeding ten, on particular subjects of current interest, are appointed from time to time.

The most important standing committees are the following: -Ways and means; appropriations; elections; banking and currency; accounts; rivers and harbours; judiciary (including changes in private law as well as in courts of justice); railways and canals; foreign affairs; naval affairs; military affairs; public lands; agriculture; claims; and the several committees on the expenditures of the various departments of the administration (war, navy, etc.).

The members of every standing committee are nominated by the Speaker at the beginning of each Congress, and sit through its two sessions; those of a select committee also by the Speaker, after the committee has been ordered by the House. (Senate committees sometimes sit during the recess.) The member first named is chairman.

To some one of these standing committees each and every bill is referred. Its second as well as its first reading is granted as of course, and without debate, since there would be no time to discuss the immense number of bills presented. When read a second time it is referred under the general rules to a committee; but doubts often arise as to which is the appropriate committee, because a bill may deal with a subject

common to two or more jurisdictions, or include topics some of which belong to one jurisdiction, others to another. The disputes which may in such cases arise between several committees lead to keen debates and divisions, because the fate of the measure may depend on which of two possible paths it is made to take, since the one may bring it before a tribunal of friends, the other before a tribunal of enemies. Such disputes are determined by the vote of the House itself.

Not having been discussed, much less affirmed in principle, by the House, a bill comes before its committee with no presumption in its favour. It is one of many, and for the most a sad fate is reserved. The committee may take evidence regarding it, may hear its friends and its opponents. They usually do hear the member who has introduced it, since it seldom happens that he has himself a seat on the committee. Members who are interested approach the committee and state their case there, not in the House, because they know that the House will have neither time nor inclination to listen. The committee can amend the bill as they please, and although they cannot formally extinguish it, they can practically do so by reporting adversely, or by delaying to report it till late in the session, or by not reporting it at all.

In one or other of these ways nineteen-twentieths of the bills introduced meet their death, a death which the majority doubtless deserve, and the prospect of which tends to make members reckless as regards both the form and the substance of their proposals. A motion may be made in the House that the committee do report forthwith, and the House can of course restore the bill, when reported, to its original form. But these expedients rarely succeed, for few are the measures which excite sufficient interest to induce an impatient and over-burdened assembly to take additional work upon its own shoulders or to overrule the decision of a committee.

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The deliberations of committees are usually secret. dence is frequently taken with open doors, but the newspapers do not report it, unless the matter excite public interest; and even the decisions arrived at are often noticed in the briefest way. It is out of order to canvass the proceedings of a committee in the House until they have been formally reported to it; and the report submitted does not usually state how the

members have voted, or contain more than a very curt outline of what has passed. No member speaking in the House is entitled to reveal anything further.

A committee have technically no right to initiate a bill, but as they can either transform one referred to them, or, if none has been referred which touches the subject they seek to deal with, can procure one to be brought in and referred to them, their command of their own province is unbounded. Hence the character of all the measures that may be passed or even considered by the House upon a particular branch of legislation depends on the composition of the committee concerned with that branch.

Some committees, such as those on naval and military affairs, and those on the expenditure of the several departments, deal with administration rather than legislation. They have power to summon the officials of the departments before them, and to interrogate them as to their methods and conduct. Authority they have none, for officials are responsible only to their chief, the President; but the power of questioning is sufficient to check if not to guide the action of a department, since imperative statutes may follow, and the department, sometimes desiring legislation and always desiring money, has strong motives for keeping on good terms with those who control legislation and the purse. It is through these committees chiefly that the executive and legislative branches of government touch one another. Yet the contact, although the most important thing in a government, is the thing which the nation least notices, and has the scantiest means of watching.

The scrutiny to which the administrative committees subject the departments is so close and constant as to occupy much of the time of the officials and seriously interfere with their duties. Not only are they often summoned to give evidence, they are required to furnish minute reports on matters which a member of Congress could ascertain for himself. Nevertheless the House committees are not certain to detect abuses or peculation, for special committees of the Senate have repeatedly unearthed dark doings which had passed unsuspected the ordeal of a House investigation.

After a bill has been debated and amended by the committee it is reported back to the House, and is taken up when that

committee is called in its order. One hour is allowed to the member whom his fellow committee-men have appointed to report. He seldom uses the whole of this hour, but allots part of it to other members, opponents as well as friends, and usually concludes by moving the previous question. This precludes subsequent amendments and leaves only an hour before the vote is taken. As on an average each committee (excluding the two or three great ones) has only two hours out of the whole ten months of Congress allotted to it to present and have discussed all its bills, it is plain that few measures can be considered, and each but shortly, in the House. The best chance of pressing one through is under the rule which permits the suspension of standing orders by a two-thirds majority during the last six days of the session.

What are the results of this system?

It destroys the unity of the House as a legislative body. Since the practical work of shaping legislation is done in the committees, the interest of members centres there, and they care less about the proceedings of the whole body. It is as a committee-man that a member does his real work. In fact the House has become not so much a legislative assembly as a huge panel from which committees are selected.

It prevents the capacity of the best members from being brought to bear upon any one piece of legislation, however important. The men of most ability and experience are chosen to be chairmen of the committees, or to sit on the two or three greatest. For other committees there remains only the rank and file of the House, a rank and file half of which is new at the beginning of each Congress. Hence every committee (except the aforesaid two or three) is composed of ordinary persons, and it is impossible, save by creating a special select committee, to get together what would be called in England "a strong committee," i.e. one where half or more of the members are exceptionally capable. The defect is not supplied by discussion in the House, for there is no time for such discussion.

It cramps debate. Every foreign observer has remarked how little real debate, in the European sense, takes place in the House of Representatives. The very habit of debate, the expectation of debate, the idea that debate is needed, have