[elihu]

My impression is that we have committees for introducing legislation because congress can only debate so much legislation in the time they have. If any representative could introduce and vote on any legislation, most of it wouldn't go anywhere because the support wouldn't be there. However, congress could have many bills in-progress at any time and no bill would be blocking any other for bureaucratic reasons, or because some committee was stacked with people who hate that bill.

Perhaps committees are an outdated idea, that when you get down to it they're only a roadblock to getting stuff done and an impediment to democracy. (We can still have committees for hearings, and things like that. That's fine.)