Usually, we might opt to give this whole sad sausage party a miss, but select committees are powerful.
So is the Council of Ministers, which brings together senior national politicians, guided by committees of powerful officials, who then make EU law together.
Companies need stronger non-executive directors, paid enough to devote proper attention to the job; genuinely independent audit and remuneration committees; more powerful internal auditors; and a separation of the jobs of chairman and chief executive.
Provincial-level police chiefs, it appears, are being dissuaded from simultaneously serving on regional Political Legal Committees - powerful organisations governing the courts, the police and prosecutors.
The competition committee is powerful, but while its proposals and recommendations to the owners are influential, they are not binding.
Joan Walley MP, who chairs the House of Commons environmental audit committee, a powerful cross-party group that acts as parliament's green watchdog, sent this letter to the Guardian on Friday.
And Chen Cungen, the head of the municipal party committee's powerful organization department, was replaced in late March by Xu Songnan, who held the same job in the Ningxia region.
Wieman told the committee that "powerful, vested interests" on college campuses discourage the adoption of new ways to teach science and train future science teachers, saying that most universities place a higher priority on research productivity than on student learning.
Because they sit on powerful committees, they have more power to shower interest groups with taxpayers' money.
The biggest exception is the House Appropriations Committee, one of the most powerful committees on the Hill and the committee with the fourth largest proportion of female staff.
He also chaired the commerce committee and, latterly, the powerful appropriations committee.
