Title: Congress of the United States | Scholastic
Headings: Congress of the United States
Congress of the United States
Content: Congressional committees  are organized along substantive policy lines. Generally, they correspond  to the major departments of the executive branch. Thus both the House  and the Senate have created committees concerned with agriculture, defense,  housing, commerce, science and technology, education, government operations,  international relations, judiciary affairs, and service veterans. The  work of each committee is further subdivided so that it can be considered  by subcommittees. " Congress in committee is Congress at work,"  Woodrow Wilson once wrote. Today one might more accurately say that Congress  is mainly at work in its subcommittees. Especially in the House, major  bills are often considered by a number of subcommittees of different committees. The most powerful  committees of Congress are those concerned specifically with government  finance. Both houses have budget committees whose job it is to set expenditure  targets for each fiscal year and to establish the authorized level of  the national debt. In addition, both houses have appropriations committees  that consider the budget requests of executive agencies in detail and  recommend budget legislation to their respective houses for approval.