Hearings – Committee or subcommittee meetings to receive testimony on proposed legislation during investigations or for oversight purposes. Relatively few bills are important enough to justify formal hearings. Witnesses often include experts, government officials, spokespersons for interested groups, officials of the General Accounting Office, and members of Congress.
Hold-Harmless Clause – In legislation providing a new formula for allocating federal funds, a clause to ensure that recipients of those funds do not receive less in a future year than they did in the current year if the new formula would result in a reduction for them.
House – Always capitalized when referring to the House of Representatives, but usually not when referring either to the House or the Senate, as in “each house” or “the two houses of Congress.”
House of Representatives – The house of Congress in which states are represented roughly in proportion to their populations, but every state is guaranteed at least one representative. Although the House and Senate have equal legislative power, the Constitution gives the House the sole authority to originate revenue measures. The House also claims the right to originate appropriation measures, a claim the Senate disputes in theory but concedes in practice. The House has the sole power to impeach, and it elects the president when no candidate has received a majority of the electoral votes. It is sometimes referred to as the “lower body.”