House Launches Historic Committee to Determine Why Committees Don't Work, Immediately Forms Three Subcommittees

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In what congressional leadership is calling "a bold and overdue reckoning with the structural failures of American legislative governance," the House of Representatives voted 287–134 on Tuesday to establish the House Select Subcommittee on Committee Inefficiency, a permanent body tasked with investigating why the previous seven bipartisan committees produced no actionable legislation, two strongly worded memos, and a 2019 holiday party that several members described as "tense."

The committee has already scheduled 14 preliminary hearings, hired three separate consulting firms — Bellwether Strategic Solutions, the Meridian Group, and a company called Just Ask Gary LLC — and submitted a formal request to the House Appropriations Committee for an emergency budget extension. It has not yet defined what it does.

"We are, frankly, at a pivotal moment," said Committee Chair Rep. Donald Purvis (R-OH) at a press conference held in a room that required a separate committee's approval to book. "The American people deserve answers about why their government keeps forming committees that go nowhere. And those answers require resources, time, a proper mandate review process, and honestly, probably a few more hearings."

The Committee to End All Committees (Pending Mandate Approval)

The Select Subcommittee on Committee Inefficiency — formally abbreviated as the SSCI, which members acknowledge creates "some confusion" with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — was itself born from a committee. Specifically, the 2023 Joint Task Force on Legislative Productivity, which met eleven times, produced a 47-page interim report concluding that "further structural review may be warranted," and was quietly dissolved when its chair retired to lobby for a pharmaceutical company.

That task force had itself emerged from the 2021 House Working Group on Bipartisan Cooperation, which held four hearings before its members stopped speaking to each other following a dispute over whether the working group's logo should include an eagle.

Rep. Purvis is adamant that this time is categorically different.

"The previous committees lacked focus," he told The Proceedings Today. "They were reactive. Unfunded. Structurally incoherent. We've addressed all of that by forming three focused subcommittees: one on procedural delay, one on budget misallocation, and one on the formation of unnecessary subcommittees." He paused. "That last one was my idea."

Bipartisanship, Defined Loosely

The committee's co-chair, Rep. Sandra Okafor (D-CA), was equally enthusiastic, describing the SSCI as "a genuinely bipartisan effort to hold the institution accountable to itself, for itself, through itself."

When asked whether the committee's bipartisan credentials might be undermined by the fact that 134 members voted against its creation, Rep. Okafor said that number reflected "a lack of understanding of the process," and that she expected those members to "come around once the first set of hearings clarifies the committee's preliminary scope."

The first set of hearings is scheduled to clarify the committee's preliminary scope. The second set of hearings will review the findings of the first. The third set has been described in internal documents as "responsive," meaning its purpose will be determined by whatever happens in hearings one and two.

Just Ask Gary LLC has been retained specifically to advise on hearings four through seven.

Expert Testimony, Delivered Expertly

The committee has already begun soliciting witnesses. Among those confirmed to testify in the opening round of hearings: a professor of legislative studies from Georgetown who has testified before six previous committees on the same subject, a former Senate parliamentarian who described his own testimony as "largely recycled," and a representative from the Brookings Institution who submitted written remarks that were, sources confirm, "extremely long."

Dr. Patricia Helm, a political scientist at American University and author of Why Nothing Gets Done: A 600-Page Analysis, told The Proceedings Today she was "cautiously optimistic" about the new committee, though she noted she had used that phrase in testimony before the 2017 House Efficiency Caucus, the 2019 Joint Subcommittee on Procedural Reform, and a 2021 Zoom call that she believes may have been a committee but could also have been a webinar.

"The structural incentives that produce committee dysfunction are deeply embedded in the institutional architecture of Congress," Dr. Helm said. "Solving them would require exactly the kind of sustained, focused, bipartisan effort that committees are historically unable to produce. So I think this is very promising."

The Mandate Question

Perhaps the most pressing issue facing the SSCI — and the one that has consumed the bulk of its first two weeks — is the question of its own mandate. A draft mandate circulated in early sessions proposed that the committee "investigate, assess, and report on the structural, procedural, and cultural factors contributing to the inefficacy of prior bipartisan legislative committees, with particular attention to resource allocation, scope definition, and inter-caucus communication failures."

This draft was tabled after Rep. Jim Cafferty (R-TX) raised a point of order questioning whether the mandate's use of the word "inefficacy" was "a little on the nose." A revised version replaced "inefficacy" with "suboptimal outcome generation." That version was also tabled, pending review by a working group established to assess the language of the mandate.

The working group has not yet met. It is waiting on a room.

At press time, the SSCI voted 9–4 to table its own mandate pending further review, with two members abstaining on the grounds that they were unsure whether they were on this committee or a different one with a similar name. The committee's next scheduled meeting will address whether to reschedule the meeting at which the mandate will be discussed, or whether to first hold a preliminary session to determine the appropriate format for that discussion.

"Progress," said Rep. Purvis, straightening his lapel pin, which features a small eagle. "Real, measurable progress."

The Proceedings Today requested a comment from the committee's communications director. We were informed that comment requests must be submitted in writing to a subcommittee, which will determine whether the request falls within the committee's current scope. We have not heard back.