The Committee System: A brief history

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. 

That Screwed-up Agency (TSA)

Thursday night, 1 AM. After getting home from a Friendsgiving, I finally began packing for my flight home that was in about 7 hours. As I sluggishly attempted to choose which product was precious enough to be poured into my single 3.4 oz. travel container, I thought about the TSA. I had long been hearing claims that the TSA is mostly a waste of resources and a form of "security theater," whose main goal was to make people feel safe more than it actually prevents security threats. For example, according to the first article, when Homeland Security officials evaluated the agency by attempting to smuggle weapons and bombs 70 different times, they apparently succeeded 67 of those times.  

We all have our peeves with the TSA -- personally, it’s the “random extra security screenings” or the time they threw away the expensive 3.8 oz. moisturizer I’d accidentally packed. So articles like these once gave me hope that maybe they’d eventually loosen these restrictions, trim their inefficiencies, and focus resources on methods that work better. Our recent discussions in Public Choice regarding the Niskanen model of bureaucracies pretty much dashed that hope. The head of the Department of Homeland Security would maximize their utility by maximizing their budget, which results in an inefficient and inflated budget, operating where the marginal cost of their output is greater than the marginal benefit. In fact, if we consider that, much like with the police, the demand for outputs such as border security, the coast guard, and airport security is comparatively relatively inelastic, the potential inefficiencies could be even greater. Essentially, I think we’ll be taking our shoes off for the foreseeable future.  

Hate Changing your Clocks Twice a Year? Blame the Committee System

Ever wonder why we have this antiquated system of changing the clocks twice a year.  Daylights Saving Time was originally instituted during WWI by Germany to conserve fuel and was adopted in the U.S. two years later in 1918.  While changing time may have been useful then, the benefits are meager now and numerous studies have shown many negative consequences of it including increased car accidents, increased suicide rates and decreased worker productivity.

So the question remains, why do we continue following this disastrous tradition; why doesn't Congress do something about it?  Well many representatives have.  The Sunshine Protection Act (SPA) is a bill that if passed would make Daylight Saving Time permanent in the U.S.  The SPA has been introduced to both the House and Senate with bipartisan support in each new session of Congress since 2018.  However, the SPA has died in each houses commerce committee each time.  So why do the commerce committees not support this bill?  If I were to speculate I would say it's because the representatives on the commerce committees are preference outliers and come from states with large industries that benefit from the current system.  These representatives want to maximize their votes by not upsetting these industries and constituents of their states so they let the SPA die in committee every time they can.  Therefore unless there are significant changes in the composition of each houses commerce committee, I think it's safe to say the current system is here to stay.