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Explain and analyse three ways in which committees play an important role in Congress (9)
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Explain and analyse three ways in which committees play an important role in Congress (9)The first way in which committees play an important role in congress is through the appointments process and
nominations in senate committees. The numerous senate committees consider, conduct hearing and ask
questions to the nominees, usually in a formal interview type style. For example, in 2010 Elena Kagan was
nominated for an Associate Supreme Court Justice. Of which her nomination was approved 13-6 on the senate
of Judicial committee. The 13 being made up of predominantly democrats with a few remaining moderate
republicans in the mix, while the other 6 are made up of the conservative republicans. The hearing lasted 17
hours, with 700 questions asked. The committee is important int terms of its role in congress in terms of
nominations because generally the senate as a whole votes as the specific committee did. The whole senate vote
turned out to be a 227-63 vote in favour of Elena Kagan's nomination. It is usual that the whole senate will
follow the advice of the Standing committee making their role as a nomination body extremely significant in
appointing a new Supreme Court Justice for instance.
The second way in which committees play an important role in Congress is through the oversight they provide
in the senate. These committees can investigate the different branches of government in their functioning &
actions. For example, the Senate intelligence committee investigated the Russian involvement in the 2016
election and as a result concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the 2016 Democratic
National Committee cyber attacks and subsequent leaks of stolen material damaging to Hillary Clinton's
presidential campaign. Moreover, senate committees can also investigate businesses, for example, in 2017 big
tech companies were in front of the senate judiciary in relation to the 2016 election cyber attacks and Russian
involvement. Committees are important in providing oversight in order to prevent any illegal or unconstitutional
actions, significant jobs in which the founding fathers were especially keen to be carried out, hence the standing
committees play a vital role in oversight to prevent a tyranny of the majority.
The third and final way in which committees can play an important role in congress is through legislation
suggestions and debates within House Standing Committees. The stage in which is the most important in the
House in terms of legislation is the committee stage. This is where most of the bills die due to the number of
debates etc. that goes on. A bill can either be heard or chosen to be pigeon-holed. This happened in 1993 with
Bill Clinton's healthcare reforms, where they failed to exit from the committee stage. The committee's are
therefore important to congress as they act as an initial check on legislation trying to be passed. This is essential
in order to prevent unpopular legislation from being passed. The fact that very few bills make it through the
committee stage shows the importance of the role the committee's play.
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