Congress nerds: After reading articles from Politico and the American Prospect on the need for congressional committee reform, I have one question:

Why does the House Standing Committee on Energy and Commerce seem to have the same purview as the Standing Committee on Natural Resources: namely, regulating the Department of Energy?

In fact, the Committee on Energy and Commerce has jurisdiction over five Cabinet-level departments and seven independent agencies. It passes legislation regarding telecommunications, consumer protection, food and drug safety, public health, air quality and environmental health, the supply and delivery of energy, and interstate and foreign commerce. This means that Energy and Commerce has the most overbroad, but the least penetrative, of all the standing committees in the House.

If anything, it should be renamed to just the Committee on Commerce, with jurisdiction over telecommunications, consumer protection, and interstate and foreign commerce. The other jurisdictions should be resorted – air quality and the supply and delivery of energy should be sent to the Committee on Natural Resources; food and drug safety, public health and environmental health to a new Standing Committee on Health and Human Services with jurisdiction over the HHS Department.

The Standing Committee on Education and Labor should be split up to correspond more effectively to the DoE and DoL, respectively. Another new Standing Committee on Housing and Urban Development should be established for similar purposes over HUD.

Then you’ll have just as many House Standing Committees which correspond to federal departments as possible, with less overlap between committees.

If we want to strengthen the power of Congress, we need a Congress which is just as expansive and proactive as the executive branch and its agencies. I’m convinced that such an expansion is what’s missing from #HR1.