#4 Governmental agencies operate at the dictate of the Executive Branch – Myth.
Information for this topic was gleaned from American Politics: ©Marc A. Triebwasser

This is the final blog on the types of oversight available to Congress. So far we have covered oversight through Committees and Congressional Offices. Next week we will discuss the reasons for lack of oversight. To finish this section on oversight we start with Casework as another way that oversight can occur. Representatives and Senators have specified staff members who handle their constituent services. Even though they are not personally involved they are kept informed of many of these problems by their staff members. It is through this process that the most vivid impressions as to the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of specific programs occur. Through casework the Representatives are provided important sources of direct, specific information which proves very useful in congressional oversight activities.

Other forms of Oversight

Congressional oversight has been improved in the last 45 years by the passage of some major reforms and legislative techniques. These have included the Freedom of Information Act, the “Government in Sunshine”, Sunset Legislation, Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB) and some authorization bills actually provides provision for a Congressional veto.

The first two above are referred to as Sunshine Laws as they are intended to shine the light on many aspects of governmental operations to the general population (aka taxpayers). These acts also provide increased amounts of information to Congress. Sunset Legislation places time limitations on new agencies and programs, they actually put an end date on the agency or program in question so that the agency/program does not outlive the need it was to meet. In order for it to continue a new bill must be authorized justifying its continued existence.

A variation of sunset legislation is the procedure of annual authorization where the governmental agency must be approved on a year-to-year basis. This does increase the potential for effective congressional oversight, but it also places great difficulty in the ability of such an agency to engage in long range planning. Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB) is a method through which administrators must carefully justify their entire agencies’ budgets on a yearly basis. So they continually have to prove their cost effectiveness.

Authorization bills are usually rather broad pieces of legislation that is vague on specifics (such as the Affordable Care Act). The specific agencies assigned to manage the new program then fill in the details which can result in pages and pages of rules and regulations that even Congress doesn’t understand. That is how the IRS code has massively grown. The only way Congress is able to make changes to these details is through the passage of new legislative acts which can be a cumbersome and lengthy process. As a result Congress now writes into some authorization bills provisions for veto power – Congressional Veto.

This simply means that Congress automatically has the power within a specific time period to veto some of these rules and demand that the agency fill in the details in a different way. This eliminates the need for passing a new law. Unfortunately, this procedure is rarely used even though it offers an excellent opportunity for greater legislative control over the procedures by which the Bureaucracy operates.

Next week: Why these fixes have not worked.

Dinner Table Discussion Question: What pitfalls do you see in the above methods of oversight and what could be done to improve the process?