Bureaucracy

1. Bureaucracy By Jaimini Patel, Leigh Ann McDaniel, Mary Latimer, and Ben Poss

2. Methods that Congress use to oversee the bureaucracy • Congress’ ability to eliminate uncooperative agencies • Controls over money

3. Congress’ ability to eliminate uncooperative agencies • Congress has the power to create agencies and eliminate them. • No agency can exist without Congress’ approval • This is very extreme, since Congress relies on agencies to implement their laws.

4. Controls over money • Congress has to authorize spending • Spending authorization can either be permanent, yearly, a fixed period, or program • Congress has more control over agencies when they have to authorize it yearly

5. Control of appropriations bills • No money can be spent by the bureaucracy without an appropriations bill. • The agencies submit requests for spending plans which eventually become appropriations bills for them in the yearly budget. • Congress could oversee the bureaucracy by editing their spending requests. • http://appropriations.house.gov/

6. Ineffective Oversight • Congressional Investigations • Legislative Veto

7. Congressional Investigations • Investigations may be conducted by either select or standing committees, or both • During the 9/11 investigation of Department of Homeland Security, they had to report to 86 different committees and subcommittees. • This may become excessive and rarely do any good.

10. Legislative Veto • Legislative Veto was a requirement that an executive decision stay in Congress for a certain amount of time. • Congress could veto the decision by passing a resolution of disapproval. • This manner of congressional oversight is ineffective because it was declared unconstitutional in the Supreme court case INS v. Chadha.

11. Works Cited • http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/1549/ • Youtube.com • Hippocampus.com