The Power of Committees over Bills.--A committee may exercise the
utmost freedom with respect to the bills referred to it. The greater
number of bills receive no consideration whatever from the committees;
these may never be reported if the committees see fit to ignore them.
Other bills are amended by the committees, or new bills are substituted
for them. Such is the power intrusted to Congressional committees.
However, if a majority of the house wishes, it may take up for
discussion a bill which one of its committees has decided not to report
back.


Many of the important committees have separate rooms where their
meetings are held. Here the members may confer in secret, or they
may hold public hearings; i.e., persons are invited to give
testimony or to make arguments. Frequently the majority members of
a committee hold separate meetings, determine their policy, and
then adhere to it regardless of the wishes of the minority members.
The latter may present a separate report called the _minority
report_ of the committee.


Consideration of Bills.--(4) In the next step, the bill is brought
before the house for consideration. How is it determined which bills
shall be thus favored? In some measure this depends upon the importance
and the merits of the bill; but it depends more upon the skill and
influence of the member (generally the chairman of the committee
reporting the bill) who is particularly interested in seeing it enacted
into law. In the House of Representatives this important matter is most
often decided by the Committee on Rules, which is composed of ten
members, six being of the party that has a majority in the House. In