As I've said before, Senate Committees are something that I support. Ideally, each Committee would deal with a specific subsection of the game, ranging from foreign policy to forum affairs. Each bill would be introduced into the appropriate Committee, where it must be debated and passed before being introduced into the Senate at-large. The members of the Committees would be elected by the Senate, and chaired by someone chosen from within that Committee. I also see Presidential appointments having to first clear the right Committee before they could be voted on by the rest of the Senate. Depending upon the number of Committees and how many bills they are allowed to debate, adopting Committees could also actually increase the number of bills being debated by the Senate at any one time.
Okay, I get that. My only concerns are will it slow down legislation. I ask because I would be worried that it might cause frustration and then hurt activity. Also, I am a little unclear as to how people get selected for a committee. In the US, each party gets so many spots for committee, but here it the says the Senate as a whole. Then how do we pick them? Is the dominant party the chair of each committee? How many committees does each Senator sit on? And what about the size? You would need unequal numbers to avoid ties. If it is 3, and we are 2 or 3 committees, we are talking a big number. If it is five, that's half the Senate, so the committee seems a little moot.
I am not saying I won't support it, but I would want to see specifics as to what we are talking about creating before we just blindly do it.
