committee assignments in the house

The majority party members and the minority party members meet separately to select their leaders. Third parties rarely have had enough members to elect their own leadership, and independents will generally join one of the larger party organizations to receive committee assignments. A party caucus or conference is the name given to a meeting of or organization of all party members in the House. During these meetings, party members discuss matters of concern.

Learn more about the history of House leadership .

Speaker of the House

Rep. Mike Johnson

Elected by the whole of the House of Representatives, the Speaker acts as leader of the House and combines several roles: the institutional role of presiding officer and administrative head of the House, the role of leader of the majority party in the House, and the representative role of an elected member of the House. The Speaker of the House is second in line to succeed the President, after the Vice President.

Republican Leadership

Democratic Leadership

• Bills this Week
• Office of the Clerk
• Majority Leader
• Committee on Rules
• U.S. House of Representatives

• Document Search

There are no meetings scheduled for today.

117th Congress: House & Senate Committee Rosters

The US Congress – comprised of two chambers: the House of Representative and the Senate – considers, shapes and passes legislations into laws to govern the nation. The committees within each chamber serve an important role to help organize the work of the US Congress. Our publication lists final committee assignments for the 117th US Congress. The following House of Representatives and Senate committees are included:

House of Representatives:

• Agriculture
• Appropriations
• Armed Services
• Education & Labor
• Energy & Commerce
• Financial Services
• Foreign Affairs
• Homeland Security
• House Administration
• Natural Resources
• Oversight & Reform
• Science, Space, and Technology
• Small Business
• Transportation and Infrastructure
• Veterans’ Affairs
• Ways and Means
• Select Committee on Modernization of Congress
• Select Committee on Climate Crisis
• Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
• Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
• Commerce, Science, and Transportation
• Energy and Natural Resources
• Environment and Public Works
• Foreign Relations
• Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
• Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
• Indian Affairs
• Intelligence
• Select Committee on Ethics
• Special Committee on Aging

Congressional Rules, Leadership, and Committee Selection

Published on January 31, 2023

View the PDF version.

Every two years, at the beginning of each Congress, the House of Representatives is responsible for adopting rules that govern the procedure and process of the chamber, while the Senate uses its traditional rules and procedures. The adoption of these rules is necessary for sessions of Congress to run as smoothly as possible. Standing rules also dictate how party leadership and committee membership are selected. This is a basic guide to rules and procedures in both chambers of Congress.

Rules and Procedures in the House

At the beginning of each Congress, the House of Representatives must vote on a new rules package to determine the rules that will govern the body for the next two years. Before these rules are adopted, the House operates based on general parliamentarian rules. The House usually adopts the rules of the previous Congress and makes amendments the body feels are necessary. The rules package lays out the guidelines for the daily procedure in the House, how the chamber passes legislation, and other rules of decorum.

The House Committee on Rules is among the oldest standing committees and is the mechanism by which the Speaker maintains control of the House Floor. The House Rules Committee has two types of jurisdiction–special orders and original jurisdiction. Special orders, or special rules, determine the rules of debates on a matter or measure on the Floor and are the bulk of the Committee’s work. Original jurisdiction refers to changes being made to the standing rules. The Rules Committee can create or change almost any rule as long as a majority of the House agrees.\

Reporting a special rule to the House Committee on Rules is a process that begins with the committee of jurisdiction requesting a hearing by the Rules Committee. The Rules Committee then holds a hearing in which Members of Congress from the committee of jurisdiction can make their case.

Rules and Procedures in the Senate

Unlike the House of Representatives, the Senate, as a continuing body, does not have to adopt or readopt its rules with each new Congress. A set of standing rules govern proceedings in the Senate in conjunction with a body of precedents created by rulings of presiding officers or by votes of the Senate, a variety of established and customary practices, and ad hoc arrangements the Senate makes. The standing rules guarantee rights to senators, however, these rights are sometimes foregone by senators in the interest of conducting business more quickly.

One rule that separates the Senate from the House is the use of cloture to end a filibuster. Senators can prolong voting on bills by debating at length or using other delaying tactics, but a cloture vote by 60 out of the 100 senators can end the debate and force a vote on the bill.

The Senate Committee on Rules and Administration is responsible for upholding the rules of the Senate floor, the administration of Senate buildings, the credentials and qualifications of senators, and the development and implementation of strategic plans to improve the operations of the Senate. The committee has jurisdiction over any matters relating to the rules and procedures of the Senate rules and regulations. Unlike its counterpart in the House, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee does not need to develop a rules package for each new Congress.

Selection of House and Senate Leadership

Leadership in the House is decided by internal party elections. These elections typically take place behind closed doors via secret ballot in November following the general election. Leadership elections also determine the chairs of the Democratic Caucus and the Republican Conference and the chairs of the two parties’ campaign committees. The parties also elect their nominees for Speaker of the House. The Speaker is elected by a simple majority in a vote put to the entire House of Representatives.

The Speaker is the most powerful member of leadership, followed by the majority leader, minority leader, majority and minority whips, and finally the assistant speaker

In the Senate, leadership consists of the president pro tempore, the majority and minority leaders, conference chairs, policy committee chairs, conference secretaries, and campaign committee chairs. These positions are elected or appointed by their separate parties.

The vice president of the United States serves as the president of the Senate, but the president pro tempore presides over the Senate in the absence of the vice president. The president pro tempore is traditionally, but not always, the most senior member of the majority party in the Senate who is elected to the role by the chamber. Responsibilities of the president pro tempore include appointing the director of the Congressional Budget Office with the Speaker of the House, making appointments to various national commissions and advisory boards, and receiving reports from certain government agencies.

The Democratic leader in the Senate serves as chair of the party conference, but the Senate Republicans divide those duties, electing one person to serve as conference chair and another to serve as leader.

Selection of Committees in the House and Senate

Both parties in both chambers use steering committees, also known as committees on committees, to determine leadership and membership of committees. The Republican Steering Committee and the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee are selected during meetings in November and December after an election. The steering committees then make recommendations to the Republican Conference and Democratic Caucus respectively on committee chairs, ranking minority members, and general committee assignments.

In the House, once the steering committees make recommendations to their parties, the relevant party caucus approves the recommendations of the selection committee. Then the House approves the recommendations of the caucuses, which are brought before the House as privileged resolutions.

Traditionally, though not exclusively, committee chairs have been selected by seniority, so that the longest-serving Members of the committee from the majority and minority parties become the chair and ranking member, respectively, of the committee. Members of the House are typically limited to service on two committees and four subcommittees, with exceptions for particular committees.

In the Senate, the committee assignment process is guided by Senate rules as well as party rules and practices. The Senate governs committee operations through its Standing Rules XXIV-XXVIII.

Senators are formally elected to standing committees by the entire membership of the Senate, but in practice, each party conference is largely responsible for determining which of its members will sit on each committee. Just as they do in the house, steering committees from both parties make recommendations on committee leadership and assignments. In both party conferences, the floor leader has the authority to make some committee assignments, which can provide the leader with a method of promoting party discipline through the granting or withholding of desired assignments. The number of seats a party holds in the Senate determines its share of seats on each committee.

Senate rules divide committees into three categories based on their importance: Class A, Class B, and Class C. Each senator may serve on no more than two Class A committees and one Class B committee, unless granted special permission. There are no limits to service on Class C committees.

In both chambers, the Republican party has term limits on committee leadership roles.

Links to Other Resources

• Congressional Research Service – ​ Commonly Used Motions and Requests in the House of Representatives
• Congressional Research Service – ​ House and Senate Rules of Procedure: A Comparison
• Congressional Research Service – House Standing Committee Chairs and Ranking Minority Members: Rules Governing Selection Procedures
• CNN – What to know about upcoming House leadership elections
• GovInfo – Congressional Calendars
• Office of the Historian of the United States House of Representatives – House Committees
• Roll Call – ​ House adopts rules package for 118th Congress
• United States Congress – ​Glossary of Legislative Terms
• United States House of Representatives – ​ A Guide to the Rules, Precedents, and Procedures of the House
• United States House of Representatives – ​ The Legislative Process
• Unites States Senate – Rules and Procedure
• United States Senate – ​When a New Congress Begins

Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more: https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/about-us/news-and-blogs/cambridge-university-press-publishing-update-following-technical-disruption

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings .

Login Alert

• > Journals
• > American Political Science Review
• > Volume 55 Issue 2
• > Committee Assignments in the House of Representatives*

Article contents

Committee assignments in the house of representatives *.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Any attempt to understand the legislative process, or to reckon how well it fulfills its purported functions, calls for a careful consideration of the relationships among congressmen. The beginning weeks of the first session of every congress are dominated by the internal politics of one phase of those relationships, the assignment of members to committees. Since congressmen devote most of their energies—constituents' errands apart—to the committees on which they serve, the political stakes in securing a suitable assignment are high. Competition for the more coveted posts is intense in both houses; compromises and adjustments are necessary. Members contest with each other over particularly desirable assignments; less frequently, one member challenges the entire body, as when Senator Wayne Morse fought for his committee assignments in 1953.

The processes and patterns of committee assignments have been only generally discussed by political scientists and journalists. Perhaps the reason for this is too ready an acceptance of the supposition that these assignments are made primarily on the basis of seniority. Continuous service, it is true, insures a member of his place on a committee once he is assigned, but seniority may have very little to do with transfers to other committees, and it has virtually nothing to do with the assignment of freshman members. On what basis, then, are assignments made? Surely, not on the basis of simple random selection.

A recent student sees the committee assignment process as analogous to working out a “giant jig saw puzzle” in which the committees-on-committees observe certain limitations.

Access options

This study was made possible by the support of the Ford Foundation and Wayne State University. Neither of them, of course, is responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation.

1 Huitt , Ralph K. , “ The Morse Committee Assignment Controversy: A Study in Senate Norms ,” this Review ( 06 , 1957 ), pp. 313 – 329 Google Scholar

2 Goodwin , George Jr. , “ The Seniority System in Congress ,” this Review ( 06 , 1959 ), pp. 412 – 436 Google Scholar .

3 Data have been derived from unstructured interviews with members and staffs of the various committees, personal letters and similar papers, official documents of various types, and personal observations. I interviewed members of the committees-on-committees, deans of state delegations, and other members affected by the decisions. The survey covered the 80th through the 86th Congresses, with special attention to the 86th.

4 The Congressional Party: A Case Study ( New York , 1959 ), p. 195 Google Scholar .

5 In the 87th Congress a serious conflict arose over the Rules Committee ratio. There was newspaper talk of “purging” two ranking Democratic members, Colmer and Whitten, both from Mississippi, who had supported the Dixiecrat presidential candidacy of Mississippi's Governor Barnett in the 1960 campaign, and who regularly voted with Chairman Howard Smith in the coalition of southern Democrats and conservative Republicans that controlled theRules Committee. But Speaker Rayburn, in order to break the “stranglehold” the coalition would have over the impending legislation of the Kennedy Administration, advocated instead an increase in the Committee's size. The conflict was resolved in Rayburn's favor by a narrow margin with the entire House participating in the vote. The subsequent appointments, however, were made along the lines suggested in this article.

6 “ The Role of the Representative: Some Empirical Observations on the Theory of Edmund Burke ,” this Review, Vol. 53 ( 09 1959 ), pp. 742 – 756 Google Scholar .

7 Cf. Scher , Seymour , “ Congressional Committee Members as Independent Agency Overseers: A Case Study ,” this Review, Vol. 54 ( 12 1960 ), pp. 911 – 920 Google Scholar .

8 Truman, op. cit. , p. 279.

This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref .

• Google Scholar

View all Google Scholar citations for this article.

Save article to Kindle

To save this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle .

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

• Volume 55, Issue 2
• Nicholas A. Masters (a1)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1952245

Save article to Dropbox

To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox .

Save article to Google Drive

To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive .

Reply to: Submit a response

- No HTML tags allowed - Web page URLs will display as text only - Lines and paragraphs break automatically - Attachments, images or tables are not permitted

Your details

Your email address will be used in order to notify you when your comment has been reviewed by the moderator and in case the author(s) of the article or the moderator need to contact you directly.

You have entered the maximum number of contributors

Conflicting interests.

Please list any fees and grants from, employment by, consultancy for, shared ownership in or any close relationship with, at any time over the preceding 36 months, any organisation whose interests may be affected by the publication of the response. Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious or other) that a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work. This pertains to all the authors of the piece, their spouses or partners.

House Committees: Assignment Process

Today's Votes The House is in a district work period. The next votes expected in the House are scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 12.

Follow the House Press Gallery at @HouseDailyPress

News Events on the Hill

Most recent votes.

As compiled by the Clerk's Office.

Committee Hearings Schedule

No committee events were scheduled for today.

See all upcoming committee schedules

LEADER JEFFRIES ANNOUNCES COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS FOR CONGRESSWOMAN LaMONICA McIVER

WASHINGTON, DC – Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced today that the Steering and Policy Committee has recommended that Congresswoman LaMonica McIver be appointed to the House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Committee on Small Business.  “Today, I am honored to announce that the Steering and Policy Committee has recommended that Rep. LaMonica McIver be appointed to the Committee on Homeland Security and the Committee on Small Business. LaMonica is a proud daughter of Newark and an extraordinary public servant. After becoming the youngest woman ever elected to the Newark Municipal Council, where she rose to become the Council’s President, she has made history again as the first Black woman to represent New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District.  Rep. McIver will be a powerful advocate for the Garden State and carry on the incredible legacy of the late, great Rep. Donald Payne Jr. I look forward to partnering with her to lower costs, make our communities safer and deliver for hardworking American taxpayers.”

Markup of: Adoption of Committee Rules; Ratification of Subcommittee Assignments; H.R. 350; H.R. 159; H.R. 181; and H.R. 285

Markup Date : Wed, 01/21/2015 - 10:30 AM Location : 2141 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING Chairman Goodlatte Statements on H.R. 285  and  H.R. 181 Adoption of Committee Rules Ratification of Subcommittee Assignments Subcommittees Committee on the Judiciary (114th Congress)

• Find Your Representative
• 118th Congress, 2nd Session

Member Profile

• Phone Directory
• Vacant Offices
• Legislative Profiles
• Historical Profiles
• Biographical Directory
• Membership Demographics
• Member FAQs
• Member Profiles

LaMonica McIver

New Jersey (NJ) – 10th, Democrat

Hometown: Newark

Oath of Office: Sep. 23, 2024

Overview & Contact

Recent Votes