The First Session of the Eightieth Congress

The Eightieth Congress convened under unusual circumstances. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 having just become law, the House and Senate were subjected to the most complete reorganization of recent times. This was due to two things. First, both parties in each house had to assign de novo every one of their members to the newly established committees. Normally, all members reëlected to Congress are returned to their same committee assignments. Thus the committees on committees are not concerned with giving them committee appointments; some transfers from one committee to a more important one are granted upon request to reëlected members, and promotions are allowed by moving up reëlected members to fill any vacancies on their committees created by defeats or resignations from Congress. This time, the number of committee assignments was curtailed under the law along with a sharp reduction in the number of standing committees. In the House, standing committees were reduced from 48 to 19; in the Senate, from 33 to 15. The shake-up called for a reëxamination of all candidates for every committee berth. Secondly, party control of the two houses had shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans, and in the face of a Democratic Administration. President Truman acknowledged this latter situation in his State of the Union message when he said: “… The Congress and the President, during the next two years, must work together. It is not unusual in our history that the majority of the Congress represents a party in opposition to the President's party. I am the twentieth President of the United States who, at some time during his term of office, has found his own party to be in the minority in one or both Houses of the Congress. … On some domestic issues,” he continued, “we may, and probably shall, disagree. That in itself is not to be feared.”