Understanding Congress podcast

What Do Congressional Committees Do? (with Maya Kornberg)

0:00
22:20
15 Sekunden vorwärts
15 Sekunden vorwärts

The topic of this episode is, “What do congressional committees do?”

My guest is Dr. Maya Kornberg. She is a political scientist in the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center. Dr. Kornberg leads the center’s work related to information and disinformation in politics, Congress, and money in politics. Maya also is the author of Inside Congressional Committees: Function and Dysfunction in the Legislative Process (Columbia University Press, 2023.) All of that makes her the perfect person to answer the question, “What do congressional committees do?”

Kevin Kosar:

Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It’s a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I’m your host, Kevin Kosar, and I’m a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Kornberg, welcome to the podcast.

Maya Kornberg:

Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Kevin Kosar:

Since its earliest days—more than two centuries ago—each chamber of Congress has had committees and used them for lawmaking, oversight, etc. Why committees?

Maya Kornberg:

As you noted, committees have been essential institutions in Congress since its inception. One of the reasons for this is that Congress is a big organization with an enormous number of issues to handle. So committees act as sub-organizations that can help Congress perform specific duties. Congress delegates work through its committees, so they also serve as indicators of how Congress is apportioning responsibility and resources. And in terms of power within the chambers, committees help to decentralize power, and encourage and give space to more legislators from both parties to be active participants in the policymaking process.

Kevin Kosar:

You note in the book that committees have four core functions: deliberation, education, theater, and personal connection. What do you mean by these terms?

Maya Kornberg:

These are the core functions that legislative scholars have identified as key roles of committees in legislatures, generally.

First and foremost, scholars identify committees as a deliberative forum within Congress. Woodrow Wilson once wrote that “The House both deliberates and legislates in small sections. It delegates its legislative and deliberative functions to stand in committees.” And what does deliberation mean? As you and your co-authors touch on in Congress Overwhelmed, deliberation is really about weighing the different aspects of a question and reasoning through the different causes and consequences. This is a crucial part of any policy formulation, and something that committees handle in Congress.

Traditionally, committees are where research is brought in and technical learning takes place, and that’s what I mean by education. Congress is a body in which many lawmakers have to legislate on specialized topics that they don’t have any training in. Committees give them the space to learn—they are a place where lawmakers gather information and educate themselves about specific policy areas.

Committees are also one of the major bipartisan institutions in an increasingly partisan Congress, so they form a space for members of Congress to...

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