The Senate Committee on Budget (ca. 1997-2001).

This is a complete list of U.S. congressional committees (standing committees and select or special committees) that are currently operating in the United States Senate.

Standing committees[link]

As of 2011^[update], there are 61 standing committees and subcommittees.

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Special, select, and other committees of the U.S. Senate[link]

There are four non-standing, select, or special committees, which are treated similarly to standing committees.^[1]

Committee classes[link]

Senate committees are divided, according to relative importance, into three categories: Class A, Class B, and Class C. Individual Senators are in general 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.^[2]

Standing committees[link]

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. They are 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 Labor and Human Resources.^{[citation needed]}

There are four Class B standing committees: Budget; Rules and Administration; Small Business; and Veterans' Affairs. There are currently no Class C standing committees.^{[citation needed]}

Other, select and special committees[link]

Other (i.e., Indian Affairs), select and special committees are ranked as Class B or Class C committees. They are created for clearly specified purposes. There are currently two Class B committees: the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Special Committee on Aging, and two Class C committees: the Committee on Indian Affairs and the Select Committee on Ethics.^{[citation needed]}

Joint committees[link]

Joint Committees are used for purposes of legislative and administrative coordination. At present there are four: the Joint Economic Committee (Class B), the Joint Committee on the Library (Class C), the Joint Committee on Printing (Class C), and the Joint Committee on Taxation (Class C).^{[citation needed]}

Jurisdiction[link]

Standing committees in the Senate have their jurisdiction set by three primary sources: Senate Rules, ad hoc Senate Resolutions, and Senate Resolutions related to committee funding. To see an overview of the jurisdictions of standing committees in the Senate, see Standing Rules of the United States Senate, Rule XXV.

References[link]

External links[link]

• "Biographical Directory of the United States Congress". Congress.gov. http://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp.  (see also Biographical Directory of the United States Congress)
• "Committee Assignments / Standing Committees". GPO Access. p. 6-8. http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=senate_calendar&docid=sc003. Retrieved November 2, 2011. 

Megyn Marie Kelly (born November 18, 1970), formerly known as Megyn Kendall,^[1] is an American journalist and news anchor employed by the Fox News Channel. Kelly currently hosts America Live from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM EST live from the network’s New York City headquarters. She occasionally also co-hosts on America's Newsroom along with Bill Hemmer during the Fox Channel Network's Morning Line-Up at 10:00 AM EST. Since 2007, the two have hosted Fox News Channel's New Year's Eve special every year.

Personal life and education[link]

Kelly was nine years of age when her parents moved to Delmar, New York from Syracuse, New York. At Bethlehem Central High School, she played on the basketball and field hockey teams, as well as captaining the cheerleading squad. Kelly's father, who was on the staff of the University at Albany, died when she was 15.^[2] After high school, she pursued an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Syracuse University and later pursued a J.D. from Albany Law School; she served as an associate editor of the Albany Law Review while enrolled at Albany Law School.^[3][4][5] Kelly's first marriage to Daniel Kendall, an anesthesiologist, ended in divorce in 2006.^[6][7] In 2008 she married Douglas Brunt, the President and CEO of Authentium, at Oheka Castle in Huntington, New York.^[8] They have two children: Edward Yates Brunt (September 25, 2009) and Yardley Evans Brunt (April 15, 2011).^[9][10]

Career in law[link]

Following her graduation from Albany Law School in 1995^[11], Kelly practiced law for nine years at Jones Day^[12] She first worked as an associate in the Chicago office of Bickel & Brewer LLP during which the time when she co-wrote an article for the American Bar Association's Litigation journal entitled "The Conflicting Roles of Lawyer as Director."^[13]

Career in journalism[link]

Kelly moved to Washington, D.C. where she was hired by the ABC News affiliate WJLA-TV as a General Assignment Reporter.^[14] While at WJLA-TV she covered significant national and local events including major national events such as the 2004 Presidential Election and the D.C. Sniper cases.^[15] She then applied for a job at Fox Entertainment Group in 2004.^[15] Prior to her anchor role on the Fox News Network she served as a General Assignment Reporter located in Washington D.C where she provided live coverage of the confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Chief Justice John Roberts; she reported on the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and the death of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.^[15]

Kelly contributed legal segments for Special Report with Brit Hume and hosted her own legal segment, "Kelly's Court," during Weekend Live; she frequently appears on The O'Reilly Factor and occasionally fills in for Greta Van Susteren on On the Record. Most of her reporting focused on legal and political matters. At this time she occasionally contributed as an anchor but she was often stationed as a substitute anchor, mostly on the weekends.^[16] On February 1, 2010, Kelly hosted her own show, America Live, replacing Fox News’ previous show The Live Desk co-hosted by Martha MacCallum and Trace Gallagher. In turn, MacCallum took Kelly's position on America’s Newsroom. She has been a regular guest-panelist on Fox News' late-night satire program Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld. Kelly's "America Live" program has been up 20% in total viewers (averaging 1,293,000) and up 4% in the 25–54 demographic (averaging 268,000).^[17] On November 23 Megyn Kelly made the following statement about a Police officer who had used pepper spray on protestors at UC Davis: "It's a food product, essentially", this episode was satirized on Funny or Die, and also went on to generate an Internet Meme.^[18][19][20]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Bio on FoxNews.com
• Megyn Kelly at the Internet Movie Database
• Megyn Kelly on Twitter

Elizabeth Warren (born June 22, 1949) is an American bankruptcy law expert, policy advocate, Harvard Law School professor, and Democratic Party candidate in the 2012 United States Senate election in Massachusetts. She has written several academic and popular books concerning the American economy and personal finance. She contributed to the oversight of the 2008 U.S. bailout program, and also led the conception and establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Warren attended The George Washington University and the University of Houston. She received a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law–Newark in 1976. Warren taught law at several universities and was listed by the Association of American Law Schools as a minority law professor throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the wake of the U.S. financial crisis, Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program in 2008. She later served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under U.S. President Barack Obama.

Early life and education[link]

Elizabeth Herring^[1] was born June 22, 1949,^[2] in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to working class parents Pauline (née Reed) and Donald Jones Herring.^[3][4][5] She was the Herrings' fourth child, with three older brothers.^[6] When Warren was twelve, her father, a janitor, had a heart attack, which led to a pay cut, medical bills, and eventually the loss of their car. Her mother answered phones at Sears and Warren worked as a waitress.^[6][7]

At Northwest Classen High School she was named "Oklahoma's top high-school debater". She received a debate-team scholarship to George Washington University at the age of 16. Initially aspiring to be a teacher, she left GWU after two years to marry her high-school boyfriend Jim Warren.^[6][8] She moved to Houston to be with her husband, who was a NASA engineer. There she enrolled in the University of Houston where she graduated in 1970 with a degree in speech pathology and audiology.^[9] She taught children with disabilities for a year in a public school. However, she had not taken the required education courses to get a teaching certificate (she previously taught under an "emergency certificate"). After taking several graduate education courses, she decided she no longer wanted to pursue education as a career. She and her husband moved to New Jersey and since she was pregnant with their first child, she decided to stay at home for a few years.^[10][11][12]

After making a decision to study law, Warren enrolled at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark,^[10] where she served as an editor of the Rutgers Law Review, and was a summer associate at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft's.^[13] Shortly before her graduation in 1976, she became pregnant with her second child and she worked from home, writing wills and doing real estate closings.^[8][10]

She and Jim had two children before divorcing in 1978: Amelia Warren Tyagi, with whom Elizabeth would later coauthor two books and several articles, and a son, Alexander Warren. Today they have three grandchildren.^[14] In 1980, Warren married Bruce Mann, also a Harvard law professor. She cites Methodist founder John Wesley as an inspiration.^[15]

Academic career[link]

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s she taught law at several universities throughout the country, while researching bankruptcy and middle-class personal finance.^[10] In 1978 Congress had passed a law that made it easier for companies and individuals to declare bankruptcy and Warren decided "to set out to prove they were all a bunch of cheaters... I was going to expose these people who were taking advantage of the rest of us". However, she instead found that the vast majority of those in bankruptcy courts were from hardworking middle-class families: people who had lost their jobs or had family breakups or illnesses that had wiped out their savings. "It changed my vision," she said.^[6]

According to her CV, she taught at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark (1977–78), the University of Houston Law Center (1978–83), the University of Michigan (visiting, 1985), and the University of Texas School of Law (1981–87). She also worked as a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin (1983–87). She joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1987, where she became the William A Schnader Professor of Commercial Law in 1990. She joined Harvard Law School in 1992 as the Robert Braucher Visiting Professor of Commercial Law, and began a permanent position as the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law in 1995.^[16]

In 1995 Warren was asked to advise the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. She helped to draft the commission's report and then spent several years opposing legislation meant to severely restrict the right of consumers to file for bankruptcy. Warren and others opposing the legislation were not successful and in 2005 the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was passed by Congress.^[17]

Warren appeared in the documentary film Maxed Out in 2006, has appeared several times on Dr. Phil to talk about money and families, has been a guest on The Daily Show,^[18] is interviewed frequently on cable news networks,^[19] appears in Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, has appeared on the Charlie Rose talk show,^[20] and has appeared on the Real Time With Bill Maher talk show.^[21] She has also appeared on the PBS show NOW.^[22]

Warren in 2010 at a Women in Finance symposium held at the U.S. Treasury.

From November 2006 to November 2010, Warren was a member of the FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion, which advises the FDIC "on important initiatives focused on expanding access to banking services by underserved populations".^[23] She is a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference, an independent organization which advises the U.S. Congress on bankruptcy law.^[24] She is a former Vice-President of the American Law Institute and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2005 to 2008, Warren and her law students wrote a blog called Warren Reports, part of Josh Marshall's TPMCafe.

Popular works[link]

In addition to writing more than 100 scholarly articles and six academic books, Warren has written several best-selling books, including All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan, coauthored with her daughter, Amelia Tyagi.

Warren and Tyagi also wrote The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. Warren and Tyagi point out that a fully employed worker today earns less inflation-adjusted income than a fully employed worker did 30 years ago. To increase their income, families have sent a second parent into the workforce. Although families spend less today on clothing, appliances, and other consumption, the costs of core expenses such as mortgages, health care, transportation, and child care have increased dramatically. The result is that even with two-income earners, families are no longer able to save and have incurred greater and greater debt.

In an article in The New York Times, Jeff Madrick said of Warren's book:

The upshot is that two-income families often have even less income left over today than did an equivalent single-income family 30 years ago, even when they make almost twice as much. And they go deeper in debt. The authors find that it is not the free-spending young or the incapacitated elderly who are declaring bankruptcy so much as families with children... their main thesis is undeniable. Typical families often cannot afford the high-quality education, health care and neighborhoods required to be middle class today. More clearly than anyone else, I think, Ms. Warren and Ms. Tyagi have shown how little attention the nation and our government have paid to the way Americans really live.^[25]

In an article in Time magazine by Maryanna Murray Buechner, "Parent Trap" (subtitled "Want to go bust? Have a kid. Educate same. Why the middle class never had it so bad"), Buechner said of Warren's book:

For families looking for ways to cope, Warren and Tyagi mainly offer palliatives: Buy a cheaper house. Squirrel away a six-month cash cushion. Yeah, right. But they also know that there are no easy solutions. Readers who are already committed to a house and parenthood will find little to mitigate the deflating sense that they have nowhere to go but down.^[26]

In 2005, David Himmelstein and Warren published a study on bankruptcy and medical bills,^[27] which said that half of all families filing for bankruptcy did so in the aftermath of a serious medical problem. The finding was particularly noteworthy because 75 percent of families who fit that description had medical insurance.^[28] This study was widely cited in academic studies and policy debates, though some have challenged the study's methods and offered alternative interpretations of the data.^[29]

TARP oversight[link]

On November 14, 2008, Warren was appointed by United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to chair the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the implementation of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.^[30] The Panel releases monthly oversight reports that evaluate the government bailout and related programs.^[15] The Panel's monthly reports under Warren's leadership covered foreclosure mitigation, consumer and small business lending, commercial real estate, AIG, bank stress tests, the impact of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) on the financial markets, government guarantees, the automotive industry, and many other topics. The Panel has also released special reports on financial regulatory reform and farm loans. For each report, Warren released a video on the Congressional Oversight Panel's website explaining key findings.^[a]

In an interview at Newsweek, Warren commented, "To restore some basic sanity to the financial system, we need two central changes: fix broken consumer-credit markets and end guarantees for the big players that threaten our entire economic system."^[31]

On July 29, 2011, she left her role with the agency to return to academic life at Harvard Law School. Her departing address indicated how she first became involved:

Four years ago, I submitted an article to Democracy Journal that argued for a new government agency called the Financial Product Safety Commission. I threw myself into that piece because I felt strongly that a new consumer agency would make the credit markets work better for American families and strengthen the economic security of the middle class... I leave this agency, but not this fight... the issues we deal with – a middle class that has been squeezed and business models built on tricks and traps – are deeply personal to me, and they always will be.^[32]

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau[link]

Warren has long advocated for the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a watchdog agency designed to "make basic financial practices such as taking out a mortgage or loan more clear and transparent while ferreting out unfair lending practices," according to CNN. In an interview with the Huffington Post, Warren said "My first choice is a strong consumer agency. My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor".^[33] Through Warren's efforts, the bureau was established by the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law by Obama in July 2010. For the first year after the bill's signing, Warren worked on implementation of the bureau as a Special Assistant to the President in anticipation of the agency's formal opening. While liberal groups and consumer advocacy groups pushed for Obama to nominate Warren as the agency's permanent director, Warren was strongly opposed by financial institutions which had criticized Warren as overly aggressive in pursuing regulations, and by the Republican members of Congress. Furthermore, she did not have the strong support of the Obama administration, particularly Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. In July 2011, Obama instead announced the nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as the bureau's director, subject to Congressional approval.^[34] However, in December his nomination was blocked by a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate. Until a director is confirmed, the agency will not gain the full measure of its powers. It can supervise the compliance of banks with existing laws, but the Dodd-Frank financial legislation dictates that it cannot supervise other financial companies or write new rules. On 4 January 2012, President Obama named Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray the Bureau's Director in a recess appointment.^[35]

2012 US Senate run[link]

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On September 14, 2011, Warren declared that she intended to run for the Democratic nomination for the 2012 election in Massachusetts for the United States Senate seat currently held by incumbent Scott Brown.^[36][37] On September 21, a video of Warren explaining the rationale of her economic policy received attention on the Internet.^[38]

Cherokee self-identification controversy[link]

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Warren listed herself as a minority in the Association of American Law Schools directory of law professors, from 1986 to 1995.^[39] The Brown campaign, the Native American Rights Fund, and a group of more than 150 Cherokees organized by Cherokee genealogist and activist David Cornsilk^[40][41] have questioned her motives for the claim and its propriety.^{[42][43][44][45][46]} The group, “Cherokees Demand Truth from Elizabeth Warren”, plans a protest at the Massachusetts Democratic Convention on June 2, 2012.^[47]