For 210 years, the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the oldest legislative
standing committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, has served as the
principal guide for the House in matters relating to the promotion of commerce
and to the public’s health and marketplace interests.
In performing this historic function, the Committee has developed what is
arguably the broadest (non-tax-oriented) jurisdiction of any Congressional
committee. Today, it maintains principal responsibility for legislative
oversight relating to telecommunications, consumer protection, food and drug
safety, public health, air quality and environmental health, the supply and
delivery of energy, and interstate and foreign commerce in general. This
jurisdiction extends over five Cabinet-level departments and seven independent
agencies--from the Energy Department, Health and Human Services, the
Transportation Department to the Federal Trade Commission, Food and Drug
Administration, and Federal Communications Commission—and sundry
quasi-governmental organizations.
To manage the wide variety of issues it encounters, the Committee relies on
the front-line work of six subcommittees: the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade
and Consumer Protection, the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, the
Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials, the Subcommittee on Health,
the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, and the Subcommittee on
Telecommunications and the Internet.
These subcommittees provide the full Committee with enormous flexibility to
keep pace with American enterprise. Indeed, the history of the Committee on
Energy and Commerce reflects the history of Congress as it has worked over the
past 200 years to assure the prosperity of the nation’s dynamic economy and
its citizens.
The Committee was originally formed as the Committee on Commerce and
Manufactures on December 14, 1795. Prior to this, legislation was drafted in the
Committee of the Whole or in special ad hoc committees, appointed for specific
limited purposes. However the growing demands of the new nation required that
Congress establish a permanent committee to manage its Constitutional authority
to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States.”
From this time forward, as the nation grew and Congress dealt with new public
policy concerns and created new committees, the Energy and Commerce Committee
has maintained its dominant and central position as Congress’s monitor of our
nation’s commercial progress—a focus reflected in its changing jurisdiction,
both in name and practice.
In 1819, the Committee’s name was changed to the Committee on Commerce,
reflecting the creation of a separate Manufacturers Committee and also the
increasing scope of and complexity of American commercial activity, which was
expanding the Committee’s jurisdiction from navigational aids and the nascent
Federal health service to foreign trade and tarrifs. Thomas J. Bliley, who
chaired the Committee from 1995 to 2000, chose to use this traditional name,
which underscores the Committee’s role for Congress on this front.
In 1891, in emphasis of the Committee’s evolving activities, the name was
again changed to the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce—a title it
maintained until 1981, when, under incoming Chairman John D. Dingell, the
Committee first assumed what is now its present name to emphasize its lead role
in guiding our nation’s energy policy, which is essential for assuring
commercial prosperity.
In practice, the wide-ranging work of the Committee on Energy and Commerce
today builds upon a long record of achievement, which has tracked the dynamic
growth of the nation from the early days of the Republic. The Committee’s
initial achievements overseeing the Federal health service for sick and disabled
seaman developed, eventually, into its oversight now of the Public Health
Service and National Institutes of Health. Its historic jurisdiction over
health, safety, and commerce generally also can be traced in the evolution of
and continued oversight through such landmark legislation as the Food, Drug and
Cosmetic Act and the Clean Air Act, as well as the Federal Trade Commission Act,
and the U.S. Code’s Motor Vehicle Safety provisions. Today, when the public
reads about the auto safety goals of the TREAD Act or about national energy
policy, it can trace these measures back to the seminal legislation produced by
the Committee over the years.
From a broader perspective, the Committee’s place in Congress can be can
observed in how it has kept pace overseeing the changing avenues of commerce in
the nation -- and the world – over the past two centuries. The Committee’s
role in assuring a vibrant economy has evolved with changing times –
underscored recently by its groundbreaking work on legislation that provides for
innovation in and expanded access to high speed Internet services. From the
chiefly maritime-oriented nature of interstate and foreign trade of the early
years of the Republic to the railroads and then air of the 19th and 20th
Centuries to the telecommunications and digital avenues developing so quickly
and essentially for continued prosperity in the 21rst Century, the Committee
continues to look forward, determined to assure the prosperity of our great
nation.
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