Seems like every two years there is a new session and certain rules are adopted. Things like committee staffing and funding. Seems like when the majority changes, rule changes are likely to be more apparent.
Looking for factual info on that process and also the kinds of things the Democrats were critical of when they were in the minority the last few sessions.
The House of Representatives adopts new rules for each Congress (i.e., two-year sitting of the Congress, between the biennial elections of House members.
See House Rules and Manual index from the GPO website.
There has only been one United States Senate, as it is a continuing body which remains in existence as 1/3 of its membership turns over every two years (since Senators serve six-year terms). Its rules remain in existence from Congress to Congress but are amended regularly. The GPO publishes a Senate Manual matching the House Rules and Manual and including current rules and historical documents and rulings setting precedents during the second session of each Congress.
Traditionally, the majority party in each house names the chairman of each committee, and the committee’s membership is split between the parties, with a one-man majority on any committee with an odd number of members going to the majority party. I.e., say 52 Republicans and 48 Democrats, a six-member committee has a Republican chair and two other Republicans and three Democrats, a seven-member committee has a Republican chair and three other members from each party.
But do what most of us would think of as “rules” – i.e., the rules of parliamentary procedure on the debate floor, and rules governing whether and how a bill makes it out of committee – change from session to session?
Both chambers have a near-encyclopedic set of standing rules regarding the sort of procedure you’re talking about. Each Congress in the House, the Representatives have to re-adopt these rules when they first convene, which they do with at most some minor tinkering. As **Polycarp **notes, the Senate sits as a continuous body and so does not need to re-adopted its rules.
What changes after each election isn’t so much the rules of either body, as the organization. Each Congress, one of the first orders of business of both the House and the Senate is to pass organizing resolutions that lay out which Senators and Reps will sit on what committees. Usually, what happens is that the two parties work out beforehand how many seat each party will be allotted on each committee, and then the party leadership decides who specifically will get what slots. They will also decide issue such as how much money each side will have to hire committee staff, etc.
While this sort of inside baseball rarely makes it out into the press, there was a dust up after the 2000 election when the Senate was 50-50. The Republicans wanted a 1 seat majority on all comittees (because of the VP’s tiebreaker), the Democrats wanted an even split and co-chairmanships. They eventually worked out a compromise, but it took weeks.
That’s exactly what I was thinking of, although I seem to recall other dust ups when the minority thought they were being treated poorly.