ABSTRACT
The House and Senate Appropriations Committees are among the most important committees in the Congress, drawing power from their ability to grant or deny the administration funds to run government programs each year. The House and Senate Banking Committees played a significant role in the 1944 Bretton Woods conference. Their chairmen and ranking minority members served on the US delegation and helped design the Bretton Woods institutions. While the executive branch has normally had the job of managing day-to-day US participation in the multilateral banks, Congress has the main responsibility for deciding the terms for US involvement, the levels of US contributions, and the general standards for US policy in the international agencies. Gearing up in the last decade for what congressional partisans call a proper equilibrium of power in executive-legislative affairs, Congress has substantially expanded the complexities of its operations and the intensity of its scrutiny of individual programs.
