The Senate's standing committees play an essential part in the legislative process, as they select the small percentage of the bills introduced each Congress which, in their judgment, deserve the attention of the Senate as a whole, and as they recommend amendments to these bills based on their expert knowledge and experience. Most bills are routinely referred to the committee with appropriate jurisdiction as soon as they are introduced. But if a Senator plans to introduce a bill and believes that the committee to which it would be referred will be unsympathetic, Rule XIV permits the Senator to bypass the standing committee system altogether and have the bill placed directly on the Calendar of Business, with exactly the same formal status the bill would have if it had been the subject of extensive hearings and exhaustive mark-up meetings in committee.

By the same token, if a committee fails to act on a bill that was referred to it, the bill may die for lack of action, but not the proposal it embodies. The Senator sponsoring the bill may introduce a new bill with exactly the same provisions as the first, and have the second bill placed directly on the Calendar. In either event, the committee that has been circumvented may oppose bringing the bill from the Calendar to the floor by unanimous consent or by motion, but now the fate of the bill can be decided by the Senate as a whole, not only by one of its committees. Senators generally view this use of Rule XIV as a last resort, both because it undermines the committee system as a whole and because they do not wish to encourage a practice that can be used against their own committees.

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