Neither Jeeves nor Wikipedia were helpful. Though wiki had a cool history of the major committees.
Are seats on committees allocated proportionally? For example, if Republicans have 60 Senators, would they have 6 seats on a 10 member committee? Would they gain a seat if they “flipped” 10 Senate seats?
If so, what would happen if one party didn’t have a big enough caucus to place enough Senators on the committee?
Yes, it is proportional, with just a few exceptions of a couple key committees in the House that have special significance. For example, the Rules Committee, which dictates the manner in which bills are debated on the floor, is heavily stacked to the majority party to guarantee that a couple defections on an important vote do not undermine the party leadership’s position.
Excepting a couple committees like that, if R’s are 60% of a house of Congress, they get 60% of the committee seats. If they have 45% of the house’s seats after the next election, all of Congress is reorganized after each election, so then they’d have 45% of committee seats following the reorganization.
Since the number of non-Democratic or non-Republican members has been insignificant in recent generations, third party members typically associate themselves with a party for the purposes of committee assignments. They are treated basically the same as any rank and file member of the party they associate with for the purposes of assignments and seniority.
TY Ravenman! Has a party ever been moribund enough that my second question became an issue?
I can’t think of any elected senator who was without any committee assignments. I recall a couple House members who were stripped of their assignments as punishment, but no, I can’t think of anyone in recent history who was quite simply denied committee membership.
I meant the opposite problem: so FEW members they’d be on an absurd # committees, or a committee would be underrepresented.
Ah - like if there’s five members of the Bull Moose Party elected this year, that the five members would have to serve on every standing committee in Congress? This hasn’t been an issue for the reasons I mentioned, but each house has rules that indirectly limit the number of committees that one member can serve on.
After the 1990 WV State Senate elections, the Democrats were left with 33 Members, the GOP the grand old total of 1. The rules provided that the minority party was to be represented all all committees, but having one person on EVERY committee was an absolute impossibility.
IIRC, the worked out a deal where she had a proxy vote on every committee and they allowed aides to sit in the committees in her stead (without speaking roles). Doesn’t really matter, though. With a 33-1 advantage, you can pretty much do what you want.
I think there was one other significant exception to this rule; supposedly, after the 2000 election, the Democrats cut a deal in the Senate (which was split 50-50) where, if no Democratic Senators challenged the Florida electoral votes for Bush (the law requires that at least one Representative and one Senator challenge a state’s votes in order for the challenge to be considered), then the Democrats could have control of half of the Senate committees. Eventually, James Jeffords switched parties, giving the Democrats 51, and they took control of all of the committees.
That did not happen.
I don’t remember any deal, but the majority party usually has a 2 vote majority on each committee. For some reason, Lott agreed to a GOP majority of 1 on each committee. I remember at the time wondering why he would agree to such a thing.