Congressional Oversight

1. The Bureaucracy… Congressional Oversight

2. Forms of Congressional Supervision • Congress creates agencies • Influences agency behavior by statutes it enacts • Congress authorizes funds for programs • Congressional appropriations provides funds for the agency to spend on its programs • Funds can’t be spent unless also appropriated • Appropriations = money formally set aside for specific use

3. The Appropriations Committee & Legislative Committees • Appropriations Committee may be the most powerful of all the congressional committees • Most expenditure recommendations are approved by House • Tends to recommend n amount lower than the agency requested • Has power to influence an agency’s policies by “marking up” an agency’s budget • But becoming less powerful • Trust funds operate outside the regular government budget and are not controlled by the appropriations committees (Social Security being the largest) • Annual authorizations allow the legislative committees greater oversight • Budget deficits have necessitated cuts

4. The Appropriations Committee & Legislative Committees • Informal congressional controls over agencies • Individual members of Congress can seek privileges for constituents • Congressional committees may seek committee clearance, the right to pass on certain agency decisions

5. The Legislative Veto • Definition: a requirement that an executive decision must lie before Congress for a specified period before it takes effect • Usually 30-90 days • Declared unconstitutional by Supreme Court in Chadha (1983) • Congress can’t take action that has force of law w/o executive consent • Debate about the legislative veto continues…

6. Congressional Investigations • Power inferred from the congressional power to legislate • Means for checking agency discretion and also for authorizing agency actions independent of presidential preferences

7. Five major complaints about the bureaucracy • Red tape – complex and sometimes conflicting rules • Conflict– agencies work at cross-purposes • Duplication– two or more agencies seem to do the same thing • Imperialism– tendency of agencies to grow, irrespective of programs’ benefits and costs • Waste – spending more than is necessary to buy some product or service *Each complaint has logical origins in the constitutional order and policy-making process *Some exaggerations and unusual circumstances generate difficulties

8. Reforming the Bureaucracy • Numerous attempts to make the bureaucracy work better for less money • Eleven reform attempts in the 1900s • Prior reforms stressed increasing centralized control on behalf of efficiency, accountability, and consistency • National Performance Review (NPR) in 1993 designed to reinvent government calling for a new kind of organizational culture • Less centralized management • More employee initiatives • Fewer detailed rules, more customer satisfaction

9. Bureaucratic reform is always difficult to accomplish • Most rules and red tape are due to struggles between president and Congress or to agencies’ efforts to avoid alienating influential voters • Periods of divided government worsen matters, especially in implementing policy • Presidents of one party seek to increase political control (executive micromanagement) • Congresses of another party respond by increasing investigations and rules (legislative micromanagement)

10. Sunshine Laws All states also have similar laws! • Government in the Sunshine Act (1976) • Required for 1st time all multithreaded federal agencies hold their meetings regularly in public session • Freedom of Information Act (1966) • Required federal govt agencies, with some exceptions, to disclose to individuals at their request any information about them contained in govt files. • Many curbs on the public’s access to information since 9/11 • Thousands of documents removed from internet sites, libraries, etc, in the name of national security.