Energy and Commerce Committee: Lighting the Way of the Future

America beings her trek into the 21st Century with a very rocky start, for the prices of gasoline and crude oil are continually increasing, the stock market perpetually slowing down, a shortage of power supply for the entire state of California and several other states nation wide, plus the threat of a recession lurking around the corner; these are among the many obstacles that are blocking America’s road to success. Congress will attempt to emend these issues, plus numerous others, in order to keep American and her citizens on the fast track to victory and individual glory. In lieu of all of the energy and technological problems the 107th Congress will be forced to combat over the next eight months, this essay focuses on the House of Representatives’ Committee of Energy and Commerce.   And how the new leadership of this committee is attempting to tackle new issues of the day, while undergoing overhauls in order to make the passing of legislation easier. And in turn, how this will affect forth-coming politics and policymaking, as well as party leadership. This essay will attempt to prove with the right mixture of centralized and fragmented power Congress can become a welled oil machine for passing legislation, instead of the political grid lock of the past five to ten years.


  The Energy and Commerce Committee is the oldest committee in Congress. Created over 206 years ago; it has undergone numerous leadership style changes, and is as well, one of the only committees to be continually effected as a result of the increasing amount of technological advances which swipe our nation at lightening speeds.


The current chairman of the House’s Energy and Commerce Committee is Wilbert Joseph Tauzin, II—Billy for short. Chairman Tauzin is a Republican from Louisiana; whose has been a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee since 1981, when he was first elected into the House of Representatives.   Like all freshmen Congressmen, Billy came into Congress...