It is subsumed in many hearings, meetings, or informal settings that may not be labeled as "oversight. Thus, questions about whether Congress does enough oversight are difficult to answer because of methodological limitations time and resources, for instance in measuring its frequency comprehensively and systematically. Moreover, how "oversight is defined affects what oversight one finds. Worth raising is a related matter: What constitutes effective or quality oversight?
The traditional method of exercising congressional oversight is through committee hearings and investigations into executive branch operations. For more than years, Congress has conducted investigations of varying types and with varying results. Along the way, there have been abuses and excesses—for example, the Army-McCarthy hearings about communists in government—and successes and accomplishments. For instance, the World War II Truman Committee's after Senator and later President Harry S Truman investigation of the war mobilization effort, including waste and fraud in defense procurement, was viewed by many as a large success.
Although people may disagree on what constitutes "quality" oversight, there are a number of components that appear to foster effective oversight. They include 1 a committee chair who is committed to doing oversight on a sustained basis; 2 the involvement of committee members in an activity that might take weeks or months of time and resources; 3 bipartisanship: more is likely to be achieved when both parties work together rather than against each other; 4 an experienced professional staff with investigatory skills; 5 preparation and documentation in advance of public hearings; 6 coordination with other relevant committees of jurisdiction; and 7 follow-through to ensure that any recommendations of the committee are acted upon.
Helpful, too, is a cooperative Administration. Absent cooperation, committees may need to use compulsory processes subpoena and contempt to obtain pertinent reports and documents and the testimony of key witnesses. Oversight is an implicit constitutional obligation of the Congress. According to Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. In short, oversight plays a key role in our system of checks and balances.
There is a large number of overlapping purposes associated with oversight. This array can be divided into three basic types: programmatic, political, and institutional. P rogrammati c purposes include such objectives as making sure agencies and programs are working in a cost-effective and efficient manner; ensuring executive compliance with legislative intent; evaluating program performance; improving the economy of governmental performance; investigating waste, fraud, and abuse in governmental programs; reviewing the agency rulemaking process; acquiring information useful in future policymaking; or determining whether agencies or programs are fulfilling their statutory mission.
There are also political purposes associated with oversight, such as generating favorable publicity for lawmakers, winning the electoral support of constituents and outside groups, or rebutting criticisms of favorite programs or agencies.
After all, oversight occurs in an ever-present political context in which Congress's relationship with administrative entities can range from cooperation to conflict. There are, moreover, inherent constitutional and political tensions between Congress and the President even during periods of unified government one party in charge of the House, Senate, and White House. Partisan and inter-branch conflicts are not uncommon in the conduct of the legislative review function.
In addition, there are institutional oversight purposes that merit special mention, because they serve to protect congressional prerogatives and strengthen the American public's ability to evaluate and reevaluate executive activities and actions. Three institutional purposes include checking the power of the executive branch; investigating how a law is being administered; and informing Congress and the public.
One of the most dramatic developments of the modern era, as noted earlier, is the huge expansion of executive entities. Little surprise that some scholars refer to "the administrative state"—the plethora of federal departments, agencies, commissions, and boards.
Administrators do more than simply "faithfully execute" the laws according to congressional intent which may be vague. Federal agencies are filled with knowledgeable career and noncareer specialists who, among other things, write rules and regulations that have the force of law; enforce the rules via investigations and inquiries; formulate policy initiatives for Congress and the White House; interpret statutes in ways that may expand their discretionary authority or undermine legislative intent; and shape policy development by "selling" their ideas to lawmakers and committees via the hearings process, the issuance of agency reports, and in other ways.
The large role of the executive branch, whose activities affect nearly every citizen's life, underscores the critical role of oversight in protecting the policymaking prerogatives of Congress and holding administrative entities accountable for their actions and decisions.
Congressional oversight ideally involves the continuous review by the House and Senate, especially through their committee structures, of how effectively and efficiently the executive branch is carrying out legislative mandates.
The "continuous watchfulness" precept—an obligation statutorily assigned to the standing committees by the Legislative Reorganization Act of —implied that Congress would henceforth participate actively in administrative decisionmaking, in line with the observation that "administration of a statute is, properly speaking, an extension of the legislative process.
Oversight, in brief, is crucial to the lawmaking process. Only by investigating how a law is being administered can Congress discover deficiencies in the original statute and make necessary adjustments and refinements.
As a Senator stated, "We must do more than write laws and decide policies. It is also our responsibility to perform the oversight necessary to insure that the administration enforces those laws as Congress intended.
A central function of representative government, wrote two Senators, is "to allow a free people to drag realities out into the sunlight and demand a full accounting from those who are permitted to hold and exercise power. Woodrow Wilson, in his classic titled Congressional Government , declared that Congress's informing function "should be preferred even to its legislative [lawmaking] function.
Unless Congress have and use every means of acquainting itself with the acts and dispositions of the administrative agents of government, the country must be helpless to learn how it is being served; and unless Congress both scrutinize these things and sift them by every form of discussion, the country must remain in embarrassing, crippling ignorance of the very affairs which it is most important it should understand and direct.
To encourage, promote, and prod the legislative branch to do more oversight, the House and Senate have enacted an array of laws and rules that help to complement its many techniques see " Oversight Techniques " section below for monitoring executive branch performance.
Mention of a few laws and rules illustrates Congress's continuing interest in strengthening its own procedures for oversight, as well as obtaining oversight-related information from the executive branch. The Results Act aims to promote more cost-effective federal spending by requiring agencies to set strategic goals—for example, a statement of their basic missions and the resources required to achieve those objectives—and to prepare annual performance plans and annual performance reports, which are submitted to Congress and the President.
GPRA strengthens legislative oversight by enhancing committees' ability to hold agencies accountable for the implementation of their performance goals and actual outcomes; to evaluate the budget requests of various agencies, and to reduce or eliminate unnecessary overlap and duplication among federal agencies that implement similar policy areas.
If it were a pepperoni pizza, it would be inspected by the [Department of Agriculture]. We definitely have a great deal of duplication here. The Congressional Review Act enables Congress to review and disapprove agency rules and regulations. Since the law went into effect, only one rule has been rejected an ergonomics rule in March despite nearly 50, rules that have become effective. Analysts also acknowledge that the law contains a potential flaw: The President can veto the joint resolution of disapproval—"which is likely if the underlying rule is developed during his administration.
Still, the law is available to either chamber to express its views about agency rulemaking. Congress, to be sure, can repeal rules by passing statutes, including appropriations measures that include provisions "designed to prevent or restrict the development, implementation, or enforcement" of certain rules or types of rules.
The two chambers, especially the larger House, have a number of formal oversight rules. For example, the House has a rule requiring all standing committees to prepare at the start of each Congress an oversight plan that, among other things, ensures to the maximum extent feasible that "all significant laws, programs, or agencies within its jurisdiction are subject to review every 10 years" House Rule X, clause 2.
At the start of the th Congress , the House amended its rules "to require each standing committee to hold at least three hearings per year on waste, fraud, and abuse [in the programs and agencies] under each respective committee's jurisdiction.
The Senate, too, has a number of rules that address oversight. Committee reports accompanying each bill or joint resolution must contain an evaluation of their regulatory impact, including "a determination of the amount of additional paperwork that will result from the regulations to be promulgated pursuant to the bill or joint resolution" Senate Rule XXVI, clause The Senate assigned comprehensive oversight authority to certain standing committees see Rule XXV for specific policy areas, such as oceans policy or energy and resources development.
The Senate chair who authored the rule explained its purposes. Standing committees are directed and permitted to undertake investigations and make recommendations in broad policy areas—for example, nutrition, aging, environmental protection, or consumer affairs—even though they lack legislative jurisdiction over some aspects of the subject. Such oversight authority involves subjects that generally cut across the jurisdictions of several committees.
Presently, no single committee has a comprehensive overview of these policy areas. It assigns certain committees the right to undertake comprehensive review of broad policy issues. The House has a similar rule which it calls "special oversight. In carrying out its oversight responsibilities, Congress must be able to choose from a variety of techniques to hold agencies accountable, so that if one technique proves to be ineffective, committees and Members can employ others singly or in combination.
Most of these techniques are utilized by the committees of Congress: standing, subcommittee, select, or special. In no particular order, they include such oversight methods as the10 discussed briefly below. A traditional method of congressional oversight is hearings and investigations into executive branch operations. And they want to know the scope and intensity of public support for government programs to assess the need for statutory changes. Although the terms "hearings" and "investigations" overlap "investigative hearings," for example and they may look alike in their formal setting and operation, a shorthand distinction is that hearings focus generally on the efficiency and effectiveness of federal agencies and programs.
Investigations, too, may address programmatic efficiency and effectiveness, but their primary focus—triggered by widespread public interest and debate—is often on allegations of wrongdoing, lack of agency preparedness or competence, fraud and abuse, conflicts of interest, and the like.
Famous examples include investigations so well-known that a few words are often enough to trigger the attentive public's recollection, such as the Watergate break-in, the Iran-Contra affair, or the Hurricane Katrina debacle of Congress can pass authorizing legislation that establishes, continues a reauthorization , or abolishes a de-authorization a federal agency or program.
It can enact "statutes authorizing the activities of the departments, prescribing their internal organization and regulating their procedures and work methods. As a House member observed during debate on a bill to require the annual reauthorization of the Federal Communications Commission FCC :.
Our subcommittee hearings disclosed that the FCC needs direction, need guidance, needs legislation, and needs leadership from us in helping to establish program priorities. Find out more about the South African government by going to www. Because the members of the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence JSCI deal with classified or top secret information, it is the only committee that has meetings that are usually closed to the public.
African National Congress on the provincial list for the province of North West. When exercising oversight, Parliament focuses on the following areas: implementation of laws application of budgets strict observance of laws of Parliament and the Constitution effective management of government departments. It does this by: ensuring that all executive organs of state at the national level of government are answerable to it, and maintaining oversight over the exercise of national government authority, and the implementation of legislation.
The NCOP's role is to exercise oversight over national aspects of provincial and local government. Inadequate technical expertise within committees and personal offices often makes it difficult for Members to investigate complex issues. A second problem is the absence of Congress-wide oversight standards and norms that lead to fragmentation and division among and within committees.
Partisan hearing topics often lead to unproductive sessions and estranged Members and staff. Five-minute limits on Member questions during hearings make it hard to obtain meaningful information, leading to frustration and disenchantment with oversight hearings. While the problems plaguing oversight efforts are significant, there is also a community of organizations committed to strengthening Congressional oversight.
These organizations have identified various measures that could be taken — some easier, some harder — that hold great promise for improving the state of oversight in Congress. These recommendations include increasing Legislative Branch appropriations, improving staff compensation, lifting staffing limits, expanding committee personnel, providing more training, and increasing staff expertise on technology and science issues, all of which would strengthen Congress as a whole as well as its ability to conduct oversight.
Additional bipartisan proposals, focused on Congressional procedures and practices, have been submitted to the Modernization Committee by four organizations committed to improving Congressional oversight: the Levin Center, the Lugar Center, POGO, and American Oversight.
Their proposals follow. Perhaps most important is their recommendation that Congress develop a process for issuing bipartisan legal opinions on oversight issues. It is no surprise that the OLC opinions have invariably favored the Executive Branch over the Legislative Branch, one stark example being an OLC opinion that White House aides are immune to Congressional subpoenas, the exact opposite conclusion of the courts that have ruled on the issue.
Neither the House nor Senate has an equivalent process or set of official legal opinions to provide guidance to Members of Congress, committees, federal agencies, or the courts on matters related to oversight.
If Congress were to establish such a process and use it to issue thoughtful, well-supported, and bipartisan legal opinions on oversight matters, Congress could help establish oversight norms both within and outside of the Legislative Branch, increase uniformity among Congressional committees, educate Members, staff, and agencies, and advance oversight effectiveness.
They would also strengthen the hand of Congress when forced to go to the courts. A second bipartisan proposal is more mundane. It has to do with administrative staff, such as committee and subcommittee clerks, who provide support for Congressional oversight investigations.
These are the unsung staff who send out the subpoenas, log in the documents, type up reports, compile hearing records, and archive investigative materials. Currently, on some House committees and subcommittees, the majority and minority staffs each hire their own administrative personnel, meaning there are often two clerks, hired on a partisan basis, to handle similar administrative duties.
In contrast, in the Senate, committee and subcommittee chairs and ranking minority members jointly hire their administrative personnel and typically split their compensation on a basis. The Senate approach has strengthened its committees by saving them money through hiring fewer clerks and encouraging a bipartisan, even-handed administration of oversight activities. Senate administrative personnel know they are paid by both parties and know they are supposed to answer to both sides in an even-handed way.
House administrative personnel, when hired on a partisan basis, know they answer to only one party. It is no surprise when partisanship follows where bipartisanship ought to prevail. The bipartisan recommendation from the four organizations is to require the majority and minority on each House committee and subcommittee to jointly hire and split on a basis the compensation paid to their administrative staff, including clerks, who support oversight investigations and hearings.
The resulting savings in compensation costs could then finance other improvements. The third bipartisan recommendation focuses on investigative hearings. It recommends formally amending House rules to encourage a committee or subcommittee chair and ranking member, at the beginning of each witness panel, to question the panel for a longer period than the five minutes typical in most House hearings. This relatively easy procedural change has the potential to deliver better outcomes for both committee members and observers of House hearings.
During the House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearings, for example, both the majority and minority parties were given a minute block of time at the beginning of each session.
The result was a more coherent and meaningful exchange between the committee and its witnesses, on both sides of the aisle. In addition, House rules direct each standing committee to require its subcommittees to conduct oversight or to establish an oversight subcommittee for this purpose. House rules also call for each committee to submit an oversight agenda, listing its prospective oversight topics for the ensuing Congress, to the House Committee on Government Reform, which compiles and prints the agendas.
The House Government Reform Committee and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which have oversight jurisdiction over virtually the entire federal government, are authorized to review and study the operation of government activities to determine their economy and efficiency and to submit recommendations based on GAO reports.
In addition, House rules require that the findings and recommendations from the Government Reform Committee be considered by authorizing panels, if presented to them in a timely fashion. Oversight occurs through a wide variety of congressional activities and avenues. Some of the most publicized are the comparatively rare investigations by select committees into major scandals or into executive branch operations gone awry. The precedent for this kind of oversight goes back two centuries: in , a special House committee investigated the defeat of an Army force by confederated Indian tribes.
The room is located on the second floor, on the west side of the building, adjacent to the Senate chamber. The view is looking toward the front of the building. Advice and consent is a power of the Senate to be consulted on and approve treaties signed by the president. In the United States, advice and consent is a power of the United States Senate to be consulted on and approve treaties signed and appointments made by the President of the United States to public positions, including Cabinet secretaries, federal judges, and ambassadors.
The founding fathers of the United States included the language as part of a delicate compromise concerning the balance of power in the federal government.
Many delegates preferred to develop a strong executive control vested in the president, while others, worried about authoritarian control, preferred to strengthen the Congress. Requiring the president to gain the advice and consent of the Senate achieved both goals without hindering the business of government. Under the Twenty-fifth Amendment, appointments to the Office of Vice President are confirmed by a majority vote in both Houses of Congress, instead of just the Senate.
Several framers of the U. Constitution believed that the required role of the Senate is to advise the president after the nomination. Roger Sherman believed that advice before nomination could still be helpful. Likewise, President George Washington took the position that pre-nomination advice was allowable but not mandatory.
Typically, a congressional hearing is held to question the appointee. For a treaty, a two-thirds vote of the Senate is required anyway; thus, a filibuster could only delay passage. Impeachment is an expressed power that allows for formal charges against a civil officer of government for crimes committed in office.
Impeachment in the United States is an expressed power of the legislature that allows for formal charges against a civil government officer for crimes committed in office.
The actual trial on those charges, and subsequent removal of an official on conviction on those charges, is separate from the act of impeachment itself. Impeachment is analogous to indictmentin regular court proceedings. Trial by the other house is analogous to the trial before judge and jury in regular courts.
Typically, the lower house of the legislature will impeach the official and the upper house will conduct the trial.
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