Title: What are the most powerful committees in the House & Senate and what do they do? - Quora
Headings: What are the most powerful committees in the House & Senate and what do they do?
What are the most powerful committees in the House & Senate and what do they do?
Content: These Committees write Congressional spending bills each year, so they have a lot of carrots and sticks with which to work over their colleagues. ( Though note that they don't hold as many cards as they used to, given the bans on earmarks that have been adopted in recent years). Appropriators can even assert influence over areas outside their jurisdiction through spending changes: threatening funding to a certain agency program is an easy way to do that. Tax policy changes, and the thousands of permutations therein, are handled by the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. Both of these are prestigious committee assignments, and afford their Members a lot of influence. The downside to tax legislating, though, is that it's not done hugely frequently - while Congress almost always has a package of "extenders," or temporary tax provisions that they're renewing, major changes don't happen too often. But when they do, these Members are in the catbird seat. Health care policy changes are a bit distributed. In the Senate, the Finance Committee oversees Medicare and Medicaid, while the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee oversees public health issues (such as FDA topics).