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List of United States Senate committees

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ4283765 ↗
Source-derived summary

Many U.S. congressional committees (standing committees and select or special committees) operate in the United States Senate. Senators can be a member of more than one committee.

Standing committees

As of 2017, there are 88 subsidiary bodies of the US Senate: 16 standing committees with 67 subcommittees, four non-standing committees, and four joint committees.

Non-standing committees

There are five non-standing, select, or special committees, which are treated similarly to standing committees.

Committee classes

Senate committees are divided, according to relative importance, into three categories: Class A, Class B, and Class C. In general, individual Senators are limited to service on two Class A committees and one Class B committee. Assignment to Class C committees is made without reference to a member's service on any other panels.

Standing committees

Standing committees are permanent bodies with specific responsibilities spelled out in the Senate's rules. Twelve of the sixteen current standing committees are Class A panels: Agriculture; Appropriations; Armed Services; Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Energy and Natural Resources; Environment and Public Works; Finance; Foreign Relations; Governmental Affairs; Judiciary; and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

There are four Class B standing committees: Budget, Rules and Administration, Small Business, and Veterans' Affairs. There are currently no Class C standing committees.

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This entry incorporates text from “List of United States Senate committees” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.