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Understanding The Congressional Committee Assignment Process
What is the freshman member assignment process and what are the possible congressional committees?
Most United States citizens have a hard time deciphering what actually happens in Congress. Despite its low legislative productivity rate, Congressman and their staffers actually perform quite a bit of arcane and circuitous work.
Lobbying is partly built around this principle — that there are only a select group of insiders who are experienced enough to help a client navigate the Byzantine procedures and rules.
One of the least understood (yet, perhaps most important) of these rituals are Congressional committee assignments.
What is a Congressional Committee?
The congressional committees are subdivisions of the U.S. Congress that concentrate on specific areas of U.S. domestic and foreign policy and general government oversight. Congressional committees review pending legislation and recommend action on that legislation by the whole House or Senate. The congressional committees provide Congress with critical information related to specialized, rather than general subjects.
