United States congressional committee in the context of United States congressional subcommittee

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a public policy research institute of the United States Congress. Operating within the Library of Congress, it works primarily and directly for members of Congress and their committees and staff on a confidential, nonpartisan basis. CRS is sometimes known as Congress's think tank due to its broad mandate of providing research and analysis on all matters relevant to national policymaking.

CRS has roughly 600 employees, who have a wide variety of expertise and disciplines, including lawyers, economists, historians, political scientists, reference librarians, and scientists. In the 2023 fiscal year, it was appropriated a budget of roughly $133.6 million by Congress.

The structure of the United States Congress with a separate House and Senate (respectively the lower and upper houses of the bicameral legislature) is complex with numerous committees handling a disparate array of topics presided over by elected officers. Some committees manage other committees. Congresspersons have various privileges to help the presidents serve the national interest and are paid a salary and have pensions. Congress formed a Library of Congress to help assist investigations and developed a Government Accountability Office to help it analyze complex and varied federal expenditures.

The conservative coalition, founded in 1937, was an unofficial alliance of members of the United States Congress which brought together the conservative wings of the Republican and Democratic parties to oppose President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. In addition to Roosevelt, the conservative coalition dominated Congress for four presidencies, blocking legislation proposed by Roosevelt and his successors. By 1937, the conservatives were the largest faction in the Republican Party which had opposed the New Deal in some form since 1933. Despite Roosevelt being a Democrat himself, his party did not universally support the New Deal agenda in Congress. Democrats who opposed Roosevelt's policies tended to hold conservative views, and allied with conservative Republicans. These Democrats were mostly located in the South. According to James T. Patterson: "By and large the congressional conservatives agreed in opposing the spread of federal power and bureaucracy, in denouncing deficit spending, in criticizing industrial labor unions, and in excoriating most welfare programs. They sought to 'conserve' an America which they believed to have existed before 1933."

The coalition dominated Congress from 1939 to 1963, when former Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency and broke its influence. Johnson took advantage of weakened conservative opposition, and Congress passed many progressive economic and social reforms in his presidency. The conservative coalition, which controlled key congressional committees and made up a majority of both houses of Congress during the Presidency of John F. Kennedy, had prevented the implementation of progressive reforms since the late 1930s. It remained a declining political force until it disappeared in the mid-1990s when few conservative Democrats remained in Congress.

A United States congressional hearing is the principal formal method by which United States congressional committees collect and analyze information in the early stages of legislative policymaking. Whether confirmation hearings (a procedure unique to the United States Senate), legislative, oversight, investigative, or a combination of these, all hearings share common elements of preparation and conduct. Hearings usually include oral testimony from witnesses and questioning of the witnesses by members of Congress. George B. Galloway termed congressional hearings a goldmine of information for all the public problems of the United States. A leading authority on U.S. government publications has referred to the published hearings as "the most important publications originating within Congress." The Senate Library in a similar vein noted "Hearings are among the most important publications originating in Congress."

Hearings were not published generally until the latter part of the 19th century, except some early hearings (generally of special investigative committees) were published in the series that are part of the Serial Set. Published hearings did not become available for purchase from the United States Government Printing Office until 1924 and were not distributed to depository libraries until 1938. Unlike the documents and reports that are compiled in the Serial Set "hearings do not constitute a real series" although in the modern era a trend toward uniformity of numbering has resulted in all Senate hearings and prints for each Congressional Session (commencing with the 98th Congress in 1983) being assigned a unique numerical designation (in the style of what one scholar dubbed a "combination code") published on the cover and title page (e.g. S. HRG. 110-113; S. PRT. 110-13). A growing number of House Committees are assigning numerical or alphabetical designations for their publications (e.g. 110-35, 110-AA).

The voting rights of citizens in the District of Columbia differ from the rights of citizens in the 50 U.S. states. The United States Constitution grants each state voting representation in both houses of the United States Congress. It defines the federal district as being outside of any state and does not grant it any voting representation in Congress. The Constitution grants Congress exclusive jurisdiction over the District in "all cases whatsoever".

In the House of Representatives, the District is represented by a delegate, who because of the constitutional provisions is not allowed to vote on the House floor but under House rules can vote on procedural matters and in congressional committees. D.C. residents have no representation in the Senate. The Twenty-third Amendment, adopted in 1961, effectively entitles the District to three electoral votes in the election of the president and vice president.

The Truman Committee, formally known as the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, was a United States Congressional investigative body, headed by Senator Harry S. Truman. The bipartisan special committee was formed in March 1941 to find and correct problems in US war production with waste, inefficiency, and war profiteering. The Truman Committee proved to be one of the most successful investigative efforts ever mounted by the U.S. government: an initial budget of $15,000 was expanded over three years to $360,000 to save an estimated $10–15 billion in military spending and thousands of lives of U.S. servicemen. For comparison, the entire cost of the simultaneous Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bombs, was $2 billion. Chairing the committee helped Truman make a name for himself beyond his political machine origins and was a major factor in the decision to nominate him as vice president, which would propel him to the presidency after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Truman stepped down from leadership of the committee in August 1944 to concentrate on running for vice president in that year's presidential election. From 1941 until its official end, in 1948, the committee held 432 public hearings, listened to 1,798 witnesses and published almost 2,000 pages of reports. Every committee report was unanimous, with bipartisan support.

There are two main types of congressional committees in the United States House of Representatives, standing committees and select committees. Committee chairs are selected by whichever party is in the majority, and the minority party selects ranking members to lead them. The committees and party conferences may have rules determining term limits for leadership and membership, though waivers can be issued. While the Democrats and Republicans differ on the exact processes by which committee leadership and assignments are chosen, most standing committees are selected by the respective party steering committees and ratified by the party conferences. The Ethics, House Administration, Rules and all select committees are chosen by the party leaders (Speaker in the majority and Minority Leader in the minority). Most committees are additionally subdivided into subcommittees, each with its own leadership selected according to the full committee's rules. The only standing committee with no subcommittees is the Budget Committee.

The modern House committees were brought into existence through the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. This bill reduced the number of House committees, as well as restructured the committees' jurisdictions.

The resident commissioner of Puerto Rico (Spanish: Comisionado Residente de Puerto Rico) is a non-voting member of the United States House of Representatives elected by the voters of the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico every four years, the only member of the House of Representatives who serves a four-year term. Because the commissioner represents the entire territory of Puerto Rico irrespective of its population, and is not subject to congressional apportionment like those House members representing the 50 states, Puerto Rico's at-large congressional district is the largest congressional district by population in all of the United States.

Commissioners function in every respect as a member of Congress, including sponsoring legislation and serving on congressional committees, where they can vote on legislation, but they cannot vote on the final disposition of legislation on the House floor. They receive a salary of $174,000 per year and are identified as Member of Congress.