United States Congressional Subcommittee
A congressional subcommittee in the United States Congress is a subdivision of a United States congressional committee that considers specified matters and reports back to the full committee.
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. Service on subcommittees enables members to develop expertise in specialized fields. Subcommittees diffuse the legislative process. For the most part, they are independent, autonomous units with written jurisdictions, and, pursuant to longstanding practice, most bills are referred by a full committee to them.
General requirements for establishing subcommittees are established in House or Senate rules, but specifics with respect to subcommittee assignments and their jurisdiction are left up to the parent committees. Committees have wide latitude to increase or decrease the number of subcommittees from one congress to the next, including renaming or reassigning jurisdiction among previous subcommittees. Some committees, like the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, often retain a predictable subcommittee structure from year to year, due to the set duties of each subcommittee in drafting annual spending bills. However, even these committees are not immune to organizational changes. New subcommittees on Homeland Security were created in 2003 to handle funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and underwent a joint reorganization during the 110th Congress to better coordinate annual appropriations between the House and Senate.
The respective party conferences in both the House and Senate also provide their own rules, traditions, and precedents with respect to the subcommittee assignments, chairmanship of subcommittees, and even the number of subcommittees members can serve on.
Read more about United States Congressional Subcommittee: House Subcommittees, Senate Subcommittees
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united and/or states:
“I am a freeman, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“We are apt to say that a foreign policy is successful only when the country, or at any rate the governing class, is united behind it. In reality, every line of policy is repudiated by a section, often by an influential section, of the country concerned. A foreign minister who waited until everyone agreed with him would have no foreign policy at all.”
—A.J.P. (Alan John Percivale)
“It is impossible for a stranger traveling through the United States to tell from the appearance of the people or the country whether he is in Toledo, Ohio, or Portland, Oregon. Ninety million Americans cut their hair in the same way, eat each morning exactly the same breakfast, tie up the small girls’ curls with precisely the same kind of ribbon fashioned into bows exactly alike; and in every way all try to look and act as much like all the others as they can.”
—Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe (1865–1922)