The committee system implemented in the United States was modeled after the British Parliament. However, when our country was founded there were very few members in Congress, and there wasn't a need for division of labor between the different legislative processes. Originally, Congress relied primarily on the House and Senate chambers, and the bill was primarily created in and by the full chamber of Congress. The bill was then referred to select or ad hoc committees to iron out details. Sometimes even the details of the bill were decided by the entire chamber of Congress, and the ad hoc committee only performed clerical tasks. Once the ad hoc committee completed its duties, it was dissolved.
This system of creating legislation had its problems. Although ad hoc committees were flexible and responsive to the preferences of the entire House and Senate, this made them duplicative, slow, and time-consuming. As the House and Senate grew the number of ad hoc committees needed to pass legislation increased (in the Third Congress alone 350 ad hoc committees were created), and it became increasingly difficult to pass legislation. The first standing committee was created in 1789, and from there the committee system developed into the modern one we have today. Although the founding members of Congress likely weren’t thinking about it at the time, they were really creating a more efficient system by slowly getting rid of ad hoc committees, as a bill could be created without the consent of the entire Congress, saving time and allowing committee members to express areas in which they were preference outliers.
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