Changing Membership Patterns in House Committees

Of the many excellent studies of Congress completed by political scientists in recent years, few, if any, suggest a departure from Woodrow Wilson's apt phrase, “Congressional government is Committee government.†Despite numerous efforts to analyze legislative action in terms of roll call votes, constituency characteristics, state delegations, and/or specialized interest blocs, the committee system remains the central focal point of congressional behavior and organization. Thus, if Wilson's nineteenth century insight is still valid, then it would seem that more intensive studies of the congressional committee system—in the manner employed by Huitt and Fenno, for example—would yield many new relevant facts concerning the complexities of the legislative process.As a case in point, the manner in which individual members of Congress are assigned to various committees has been well covered by Matthews, Clapp, and Masters. The situation in the Senate is such that each member carries at least two, and in many instances three standing committee assignments. In the House, the maximum standing committee work-load is two assignments, although most Representatives have only a single committee responsibility. However, in connection with this latter point, if one examines the standing committee assignments of all House members for the first session of every Congress from the 80th through the 89th, an interesting pattern emerges in which a gradual but steady increase in the number of double committee assignments is clearly evidenced during the past twenty years.