Committee Power And Value In The U.S. Senate: Implications For Policy

Abstract

Using a net transfer dominance criterion we investigate the relative value of various Senate committee memberships over the 80th–91st and 95th–100th Congresses. Three aspects of the rankings stand out. First, there are fundamental changes over time. Second, committees are easily distinguished in the early time period but hard to rank in the later Congresses. Finally, more and more members now give up committee seats without compensation. We propose several orthodox explanations for these phenomena, but none are satisfactory. There are two less orthodox arguments that are consistent with the evidence presented. “Weak”: the orthodox theory of committee power holds in the Senate, but the distribution of committee positions has become more equitable, so that members are largely content with their portfolios of committee memberships. “Strong”: committees in the Senate are largely irrelevant, at least compared to their counterparts in the House. At a minimum, it appears that committees in the Senate do not provide the kind of congested, excludable benefits to members that House members receive.