Could the House/Senate assign committee assignments without political parties?
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  Could the House/Senate assign committee assignments without political parties?
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Author Topic: Could the House/Senate assign committee assignments without political parties?  (Read 446 times)
Vega
Junior Chimp
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« on: October 26, 2018, 07:55:38 PM »

Basically, could committee assignments be decided in a non-partisan way without the involvement of political parties? So that an independent or third party Senator wouldn't have to caucus with either party?
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
Ernest
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« Reply #1 on: October 26, 2018, 09:42:05 PM »

Short answer:
Yes, but they won't.

Long answer:

The House and Senate can devise whatever rules a a majority of that house chooses to use. The Constitution doesn't require political parties, was written at a time when there were no national political parties, and was written by people who by and large considered parties destructive to good government.

However, once parties develop, they generally are used as the means of organizing the legislature and neither party stands to benefit from making things easy for independents to stand aloof from the fray, so while non-partisan allocation of committee assignments could happen, it won't.  At best, if there were a significant third party, they might be given a number of committee slots to allocate as they desire.
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NewYorkExpress
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« Reply #2 on: October 27, 2018, 07:39:06 PM »

If Gary Johnson got elected this year for example, we might actually have a test of that.

But I think he'd peel off Rand Paul and just form a Libertarian Caucus within the Senate...not that Johnson is getting elected in the first place.
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