Committee System Reorganization Amendments

(Measure passed Senate, amended, roll call #36 (89-1))

Committee System Reorganization Amendments - =Title I: Senate Committees: Jurisdictions and Sizes= - Establishes and defines, pursuant to the Standing Rules of the Senate, the jurisdictions of the Senate committees on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; Appropriations; Armed Services; Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; the Budget; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Energy and Natural Resources; Environment and Public Works; Finance; Foreign Relations; Governmental Affairs; Human Resources; the Judiciary; Rules and Administration; and Veterans' Affairs in lieu of the present standing Senate committees. Establishes a Select Committee on Ethics, with a bipartisan membership of six members serving staggered terms. Reduces the size of the Select Committee on Small Business to nine members, effective at the beginning of the 96th Congress. Maintains the existence of the Special Committee on Aging, reducing its membership to nine members at the beginning of the 96th Congress. Establishes a Temporary Select Committee on Indian Affairs for the duration of the 95th Congress. Continues until December 3l, l977, a nine-member Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs.

=Title II: Committee Assignments, Chairmanships= - Establishes, effective at the beginning of the 96th Congress, a limit of two major committee chairmanships per Member, full committee or subcommittee, and one chairmanship per Member for other committees or subcommittees thereof. Permits Senators to serve on the Temporary Select Committee on Indian Affairs without regard to such restrictions.

Requires that the appropriate Senate committees report legislation not later than July l, l977, terminating specified joint congressional committees. Prohibits referral of proposed legislation to congressional joint committees and receipt of reports of proposed legislation from such committees.

=Title III: Multiple Referral of Proposed Legislation= - Requires the presiding officer of the Senate to decide which committee has jurisdiction with respect to any proposed legislation except that such decision shall be subject to appeal. States that upon motion by the Majority and Minority Leaders or their designates, proposed legislation may be referred to two or more committees jointly or sequentially.

=Title IV: Scheduling of Committee Meetings= - Requires the Committee on Rules and Administration of the Senate to maintain a computerized schedule of all meetings of the committees and subcommittees of the Senate and all meetings of the joint committees of the Congress and their subcommittees to be available on-line to terminals in the offices of all Senators, committees of the Senate, and permanent joint committees of the Congress to be updated continually. Prohibits the meeting of a Senate committee or subcommittee, without special leave, after the first two hours after a meeting of the Senate has commenced and in no case after two o'clock P.M. unless the Majority and Minority Leaders have given their consent.

=Title V: Continuing Review of the Committee System= - Requires the Committee on Rules and Administration, in consultation with the Majority and Minority Leaders, to review on a continuing basis the committee system of the Senate and to report the results of such review to the Senate during each Congress.

=Title VI: Amendments not within a Committee's Jurisdiction= - Makes out of order any proposed committee amendment which contains any significant matter not within the jurisdiction of the committee proposing such amendment. Requires that the committee report which accompanies each reported bill or joint resolution contain an evaluation of its regulatory impact.

=Title VII: Committee Staffs= - Provides for the transfer of committee staffs from the committees existing before the effective date of this resolution to those committees created by this resolution. Stipulates that the staffs of committees should reflect the relative sizes of majority and minority members. Allows the retention of employees displaced by the Senate committee reorganization until their assignments are adjusted.

=Title VIII: Miscellaneous= - States that all proposed legislation and nominations referred to the standing committees of the Senate before the effective date of this resolution shall be rereferred on such effective date to the appropriate standing committee.