1 / 9

Staff and Support Agencies

Staff and Support Agencies. Chapter 5: The Organization of Congress. Congressional Staff Role. Staff members do most of the important work on legislation Lawmakers rely on their staff for: Handling the growing workload of Congress Communicating with voters Helping with committee hearings

liberty-goodman
Download Presentation

Staff and Support Agencies

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Staff and Support Agencies Chapter 5: The Organization of Congress

  2. Congressional Staff Role • Staff members do most of the important work on legislation • Lawmakers rely on their staff for: • Handling the growing workload of Congress • Communicating with voters • Helping with committee hearings • Drafting new bills • Helping with reelection

  3. Congressional Staff Growth

  4. Personal Staff • Personal Staff members work directly for individual senators and representatives. • Both houses receive an allowance for staff. • Lawmakers can hire and fire staff members at will. • Administrative Assistants (AA): • The AA runs the lawmaker’s office, supervises the lawmaker’s schedule and gives advice on political matters. • Deals with important people from lawmaker’s district or state.

  5. Personal Staff • Legislative Assistants (LA): • Makes certain the lawmaker is well informed about the many bills with which she or he must deal. • Also assist with committee meetings & track the work that is taking place on the floor. • Caseworkers: • Staff members that handle the requests from people in the lawmaker’s state or district.

  6. Committee Staff • Every committee and subcommittee in Congress has staff members. • Committee staffers: • Draft bills -- study issues • Collect info --write memos • Plan hearings --write reports • Too much power?

  7. Support Agencies • The Library of Congress • Created in 1800 • One of the largest libraries in the world • Contains more than 100 million items • Including: books, journals, music, films, photos, & maps • Congressional Budget Office (CBO) • Established 1974 • Coordinates the budget-making work of Congress

  8. Library of Congress

  9. Support Agencies • General Accounting Office (GAO) • Established 1921 • Nation’s watchdog over spending of funds Congress appropriates. • Government Printing Office (GPO) • The largest multi-purpose printing plant in the world, prints for the entire federal government • Prints: Statistical Abstract of the United States every year since 1878. • Also, Congressional Record (daily)

More Related