Select or special committee (United States Congress)

A select committee is usually created by a resolution that outlines its duties and powers and the procedures for appointing members.

In a number of instances, the official journal and other congressional publications did not consistently refer to an individual committee by the same title.

[6] Chaired by Henry Clay,[3] the committee helped draft the Missouri Compromise, which attempted to resolve the question of whether slavery would be permitted in newly admitted states.

Representatives had concerns over giving the new department too much authority over revenue proposals, so the House felt it would be better equipped if it established a committee to handle the matter.

[13][14] The committee was chaired by Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts, co-author of the unsuccessful 2009 cap-and-trade legislation (Waxman-Markey) supported by Democrats.

[14] The committee held 80 hearings and briefings on issues such as climate change and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The committee spent more than $7.8 million on its investigation over two and a half years, issued its final report in December 2016, and shut down at the conclusion of the 114th Congress.

[18] Democrats and critics viewed the inquiry as intended to damage the presidential prospects of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,[17] and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy prompted controversy when he suggested that Republicans had succeeded with the Benghazi special committee in bringing down Clinton's poll numbers.

[21] The committee's "most significant, if inadvertent, discovery" was Clinton's use of a private email server as secretary of state, which prompted an FBI investigation.

[17] In a dissenting report, Democrats accused the committee and its chairman, Trey Gowdy, "of flagrant political bias while arguing the investigation wasted taxpayer money to try to damage Clinton".

[27] The United States House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government was established on January 10, 2023 to fulfill promises made during negotiations for election of the House Speaker by Kevin McCarthy to investigate the Biden Administration's alleged weaponization of the federal government.