Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946

By the end of World War II, Congress was struggling to keep pace with an executive branch that had grown enormously during the New Deal and the war. Members had few staff, committees overlapped, and lawmakers depended on agencies for information. A Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, led by Senator Robert La Follette Jr. and Representative Mike Monroney, recommended reforms, and President Harry Truman signed the Legislative Reorganization Act on August 2, 1946.

The act cut the number of standing committees from 48 to 19 in the House and from 33 to 15 in the Senate, defined their jurisdictions, and directed them to exercise continuous watchfulness over agencies in their areas, the first statutory mandate for congressional oversight. It authorized permanent professional staff for each committee, expanded the Legislative Reference Service, the forerunner of the Congressional Research Service, raised members' pay, and created a pension system. Title III, the Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act, required paid lobbyists to register and report, though weak drafting limited its effect until it was replaced in 1995.

Not all parts worked: a provision for a legislative budget setting overall spending limits was soon abandoned, and subcommittees multiplied in later decades. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 added further reforms, including recorded votes in the Committee of the Whole and the renaming of the research service, and Congress has periodically convened new modernization committees, most recently the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress from 2019 to 2023. Scholars regard the 1946 act as the foundation of the modern committee system.