House Committee Funding: Description of Process and Analysis of Disbursements
Released: 2018-11-08T00:00:00

Introduction

Funding for House committees (except for the Committee on Appropriations) follows a two-step process of authorization and appropriation. Operating budgets for all standing and select committees of the House (except for the Committee on Appropriations) are authorized pursuant to a chamber funding resolution, and funding is provided by annual appropriations in the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill and other appropriations acts.

On March 17, 2017, the House adopted H.Res. 173 , providing for the expenses of certain committees of the House of Representatives in the 115 th Congress, by voice vote. The resolution authorized a total of $266.3 million for committee expenses, $132.7 million for the first session and $133.6 million for the second session.

The use of committee funds is subject to chamber rules, law, and regulations promulgated by the Committee on House Administration, the Commission on Congressional Mailing Standards, and the Ethics Committee, among other House entities. These regulations may be found in a wide variety of sources, including statute, House rules, committee resolutions, the Committee Handbook, the Franking Manual, the House Ethics Manual, "Dear Colleague" letters, and formal and informal guidance. Committee funds may be used only to support the conduct of official committee business. They may not be used for personal or campaign purposes, or comingled with funds appropriated to any other source of official funds, such as the Member Representational Allowance (MRA). Information on individual committee spending is published quarterly in the Statements of Disbursement of the House .

This report is organized into three sections. The first provides an overview of the committee funding process in the House and analyzes funding levels since 1996. The second reviews House floor and committee action on committee funding in the 115 th Congress. The final section provides illustrations of the rules and regulations that structure the use of committee funds, and analyzes actual committee funding spending patterns during six previous years.

House Committee Funding: Process

Contemporary funding for House committees (except for the Committee on Appropriations) follows a two-step process of authorization and appropriation. Operating budgets for all standing and select committees of the House continued or created at the beginning of a new Congress (except for the Committee on Appropriations) are authorized biennially pursuant to an omnibus committee funding resolution, and appropriations are included in the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill.

Authorization

Pursuant to House Rule X, clause 6, the Committee on House Administration reports an omnibus resolution to authorize the expenses of each standing and select committee of the House, except the Committee on Appropriations, for each two-year Congress.

For a two-year Congress, the omnibus committee funding resolution typically specifies a dollar amount limit for each committee that shall be available for its expenses (divided between the first and second sessions), in addition to a reserve fund for unanticipated expenses. This resolution does not appropriate funds; the actual appropriation for House committee expenses is provided in the annual Legislative Branch Appropriations bill. In effect, the dollar amounts specified in the omnibus committee funding resolution limit how much of the amount appropriated for committee expenses will be available for any particular committee.

In preparation for the omnibus resolution, House committees (except the Appropriations Committee) are required by regulations of the Committee on House Administration to submit an operating budget request for the two years of a Congress. The chair of each committee usually introduces a House resolution with his or her committee's proposed authorization. Typically, these actions take place during late February, with committees approving their proposed budgets at a committee organizing meeting.

The individual resolutions are referred to the Committee on House Administration, which may hold hearings on each committee's request. The chair and the ranking minority Member from each committee are typically the only witnesses who testify at these hearings, giving them an opportunity to explain and defend their budgets.

After completion of the hearings, the chair of the Committee on House Administration introduces the omnibus funding resolution for that two-year Congress, which, after its referral to the Committee on House Administration, serves as the legislative vehicle for committee markup. The resolution is typically reported out of committee without amendment. The omnibus resolution is usually considered by the House during March of the first session of a Congress, and agreed to with little debate.

Prior to this consideration, during the first three months of each new Congress, House Rule X, clause 7, authorizes interim funding for House committees based on their authorizations from the preceding Congress. Specifically, under Rule X, clause 7, between January 3 and March 31 of an odd-numbered year, a committee is authorized to spend in a single month 9% of the committee's last annual authorization.

Appropriations

Funding for all House committees is included in the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill. Line-item appropriations are not made for individual committees, except the Committee on Appropriations. Instead, funding is provided as a single total amount for all committees (except the Committee on Appropriations), under the heading "Committee Employees" and the subheading "Standing Committees, Special and Select," within the House account "Salaries and Expenses."

Since authorizations for committee funds are made on a biennial, calendar-year basis and appropriations are made annually on a fiscal-year basis, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the authorization and the appropriations in any given year. For any individual biennial funding resolution, funds may be drawn from money appropriated in three different fiscal years ; for the 115 th Congress, the overlapping timelines of fiscal years, calendar years, and committee expense authorization periods are visualized in Figure 1 .

Finally, although appropriations are made annually for House committee funding, the language typically states that the funding shall remain available until the end of the second calendar year of the current Congress. For example, in both FY2015 and FY2016, committee funds were appropriated to remain available until December 31, 2016.

Majority/Minority Funding

Clause 6(d) of House Rule X requires that "the minority party [be] treated fairly in the appointment" of committee staff employed pursuant to such expense resolutions. In recent years, the House majority leadership has encouraged its committee leaders to provide the minority with one-third of the committee staff and resources authorized in the biennial funding resolutions. Statements made by the chair and ranking Member of the Committee on House Administration at the beginning of its committee funding review in recent Congresses indicate a general consensus that all House committees should provide at least one-third minority staffing.

Authorization Trends

Figure 2 shows the aggregate committee funding authorization level from 1996 to 2018, in both nominal and real dollars. Since 1996, aggregate committee funding has increased by slightly more than 68%, from $79.4 million in 1996 to $133.6 million in 2018, for an average annual increase of 3.1%. In constant dollars, however, aggregate funding has increased only 8.0% between 1996 and 2017, for an annual average real increase of less than four-tenths of 1%.

House Committee Funding: 115th Congress

The Committee on House Administration held a hearing on committee expense requests on February 15 and 16, 2017. Chairs and ranking Members from each standing and select committee (except the Committee on Appropriations) testified on their budget requests. Representative Gregg Harper, chair of the panel, indicated that the committee had "worked to strike the right balance" in providing funds for committees while remaining conscious of costs.

During the hearing, the chairman and the ranking minority Member, Representative Robert Brady, reiterated the long-standing expectation that committee resources would reflect a distribution of two-thirds of the committee staff to the majority, and one-third to the minority, and a similar distribution of nonstaff resources. In their testimony, most committee chairs and ranking minority Members explicitly acknowledged mutually satisfactory arrangements had been reached regarding the distribution of committee staff and other resources.

On March 7, 2017, H.Res. 173 , providing for the expenses of certain committees of the House of Representatives in the 115 th Congress, was introduced and referred to the Committee on House Administration. On March 8, 2017, the Committee on House Administration marked up H.Res. 173 , which was reported to the House by voice vote.

In the second session of the 115 th Congress, on March 7 and June 26, 2018, the Committee on House Administration considered committee resolutions 115-9 and 115-19, respectively. These resolutions allocated funds from the reserve fund for unanticipated expenses, established by H.Res. 173 . In both instances, the committee agreed to the resolution by voice vote and without amendment.

House Floor Action

On March 17, 2017, the House agreed to H.Res. 173 by voice vote. The resolution authorized a total of $266.3 million for committee expenses, $132.7 million for the first session and $133.6 million for the second session.

Appropriations

Appropriations for House standing and select committees are typically included annually in the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill. The following amounts were appropriated for the expenses of House standing committees (except for the Committee on Appropriations) in recent appropriations bills:

In FY2019, $127.9 million was appropriated in H.R. 5895 , the Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2019, to remain available until December 31, 2020. In FY2018, $127.1 million was appropriated in H.R. 1625 , the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018, to remain available until December 31, 2018. In FY2017, $127.1 million was appropriated in H.R. 244 , the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017, to remain available until December 31, 2018. In FY2016, $123.9 million was appropriated in H.R. 2029 , the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, to remain available until December 31, 2016.

House Committee Funds: Usage

Regulations21

In accordance with the regulations contained in the Committee Handbook, "Committee funds are provided to pay ordinary and necessary expenses incurred by committee Members and employees in the United States." Ordinary and necessary expenses are defined as "reasonable expenditures in support of official committee business that are consistent with all applicable Federal laws, Rules of the House of Representatives, and regulations of the Committee on House Administration." All expenditures of a committee are subject to review by its committee chair. Funding "may not be used to defray any personal, political or campaign-related expenses, or expenses related to a Member's personal office."

Committees may employ permanent staff, consultants, detailees, fellows, interns, temporary and shared employees, and volunteers. The terms and conditions of employment for committee staff are determined by the committee chair. Total staff ceilings for each committee are set by the Speaker. Employees of a House committee are covered by the Congressional Accountability Act.

Domestic travel including transportation, lodging, and meals (excluding alcohol) is reimbursable from committee funds. Travel expenses may not be for personal or political campaign events and may not exceed 60 consecutive days. Foreign travel is coordinated through the State Department Travel Office and is subject to House Rule X, clause 8(b)(3), whereby each Member and employee on foreign travel must submit an itemized report of expenses to the committee chair.

Committee Funding in Practice

To better understand how committees have used their authorized funds, the following sections provide an analysis of annual committee expenditures during several different legislative years. Specifically, committee expenditures are analyzed to determine (1) the percentage of each committee's annual authorization that is expended, and (2) major categories of committee spending.

Data

Data on yearly committee expenditures were compiled using the quarterly Statement of Disbursements of the House , which reports all individual House expenditures disbursed during the previous quarter.

Because late-arriving bills for committee expenses may be paid for up to two years following the end of a fiscal year for which funds are appropriated, obligations incurred by a committee during a particular legislative year are often paid over the course of multiple calendar years. For example, H.R. 244 , the Consolidated Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2017, provided that appropriations for House committees remain available until December 31, 2018. This would suggest that financial obligations made by committees in 2017 may be paid with remaining FY2017 appropriations through the quarter ending December 31, 2020. Consequently, the total expenditures of a committee in any given legislative year are calculated using quarterly Statement of Disbursements reports from both the year in which the committee operated, as well as subsequent years.

The following analysis calculates total disbursements made for legislative years 2010 through 2015, years for which House Statements of Disbursements are available electronically, and the bulk of late-arriving bills as described above have been received. In addition, data on disbursements from a sample of earlier legislative years—1997, 1998, 2003, and 2004—are analyzed in order to detect any longer-term trends in how committee funds have been used.

Expenditures as a Percentage of Authorization

As shown in Figure 3 , the majority of committees between 2010 and 2015 used almost all of the funds authorized to them. Specifically,

approximately 55% of committees spent 95% or more of their authorization; approximately 77% of committees spent 90% or more of their authorization; and approximately 98% of committees spent 80% or more of their authorization.

Spending by Budget Category

House spending is categorized by the standard budget object classes used for the federal government. These include

personnel compensation; personnel benefits; travel; rent, communications, and utilities; printing and reproduction; other services; supplies and materials; transportation of things; and equipment.

The disbursement volumes also contain a category for franked mail.

Table 1 shows percentages for each object class. The largest category of spending, accounting for approximately 91% of total committee spending during the years analyzed, was for "Personnel compensation." Beyond these staff expenses, committees spent an aggregate of 3.4% of their expenditures on "Equipment," just over 2% on "Supplies and Materials," and less than 1% on travel. The use of most committee funds on personnel is consistently true both across time and across individual committees.