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Melissa Harris-Perry: It's The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.
Ilhan Omar: What is the work of the Foreign Affairs Committee? It is not to cosign the stated foreign policy of whatever administration is in power. It's about oversight.
Melissa Harris-Perry: That's democratic representative, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. She's speaking here on the house floor ahead of a vote that ousted her from her seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Now, this happened about a week after truth-adverse New York Congressman George Santos finally stepped down from his committee assignments. Beneath the political intrigue of these high profile committee shakeups was a pretty basic question.
Ilhan Omar: What is the work of the Foreign Affairs Committee?
Melissa Harris-Perry: Not just the Foreign Affairs Committee, what's the work of all congressional committees?
Maya Kornberg: Congress is a big institution and it has a thousand different things that it needs to do. It needs to delegate, and it does this through committees.
Melissa Harris-Perry: This is Maya Kornberg, research fellow on the elections and government program at the Brennan Center for Justice. She's author of a new book, Inside Congressional Committees: Function and Dysfunction in the Legislative Process.
Maya Kornberg: Committees are really a way in which Congress apportions responsibility for dealing with certain issues, and they are also a way of decentralizing power within the chamber. More legislators can be involved in the process through committees. Traditionally, committees are really where, as Woodrow Wilson said, the real work of Congress gets done, they are where bills are written and amended, they're where Congress hears from witnesses and members of the public and really does the work of putting together legislation.
Melissa Harris-Perry: That sounds really productive, but your title suggests that perhaps there's not just function, but also dysfunction in this process?
Maya Kornberg: Yes. Over the last few decades, committees have really lost power as institutions within Congress. The party leadership has really usurped control within the chamber and committees are frequently circumvented. Bills are pushed down really, really quickly with very little time for hearings and sometimes not even that much time for members to read the pieces of legislation and pushed quickly to a vote. This is increasingly what...