ABSTRACT
US House committees neither enjoy the autonomy nor receive the deference they did thirty years ago, they are still quite powerful relative to the status of committees in most of the world’s legislative bodies. The legislative division of labor in the House follows the lines of standing committee jurisdictions, and committee assignments largely determine the focus of a member’s legislative and oversight efforts. One of the critical House reforms of the 1970s removed the committee assignment function for Democrats from the Democratic members of the Ways and Means Committee, where it had resided since 1911, and placed it in the party’s Steering and Policy Committee. The Science and Small Business Committees are less torn by conflicting interests than is Banking. North Carolina already had a senior Appropriations member—Bill Hefner, chairman of the Military Construction Subcommittee. The committee spent eight hours loading the bill down with amendments, only to defeat the measure at the end of the day.
