Congressional Committees Project: Toolbox
From dKosopedia
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Main Congressional Committees Project Links |
I'd like for this section to become a useful and well organized collection of links for all committees. Perhaps it should be organized based on what type of information each section provides. This could also serve as a step by step guideline to building an excellent wiki page for a committee or subcommittee. In other words, by visiting the relevant links for each section, one would, by working to the end of this toolbox page, have built a well rounded, highly informed source of information for their committee. For now, here's a link to the links section of the main article.--Greenreflex 16:41, 4 December 2006 (PST)
Contents |
Building a Committee Wiki Page
Statutory Basis
Committees
The purpose and jurisdiction of specific committees is laid out in the laws that created them. In most cases (standing committees) the committees are defined by the House or Senate Rules (links are for 109th congress), which is a large document that is approved at the beginning of each Congressional Session. The Senate rules don't vary much, while the House Rules change more from year to year. Chapter 25 of the Senate rules defines committees; for the house look in Rule X.
Select and Joint committees' legal underpinnings can be tougher to research. Usually at least the name of the bill that created the committee can be found on the its website, and then you may want to search through some Primary Resources to find the text of the original bill, if necessary.
Subcommittees
Subcommittees are defined by the committee which they serve. Explanations of the jurisdictions of House and Senate subcommittees can usually be found on the webpages for the main committees. Please notice that the majority and minority parties each usually have their own separate for the main committee page. If you can't find information on one of them, try the other. Do a search for the name of the committee followed by either "majority" or "minority" if you're having trouble finding them.
Membership
explain membership, chair, ranking member, privileges of chair, and staff
Documents
explain transcripts, testimony, CRS reports, Reports (on bills, to congress giving recommendations), voting records, text of bills (explain "calendars" here)
Schedules
Links by Type and Source
| Thomas | GovTrack | GPO Access | Senate.gov | House.gov | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bill status | search | search | search | browse | |
| Bill text | search | links to Thomas | |||
| Committee membership | browse | browse | browse | ||
| Committee schedules | browse | ||||
| Committee reports | search | search | |||
| Voting records | links to House & Senate | browse | browse | browse | |
| RSS feeds | customized feeds | ||||
| Topic search | browse | browse | bills sorted by topic |
