[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 102 (Monday, July 19, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1585-E1587]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

[[Page E1585]]



                OVERSIGHT: A KEY CONGRESSIONAL FUNCTION

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. DAVID DREIER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, July 19, 1999

  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, many of us are committed to improving and 
emphasizing programmatic oversight, we jointly asked the Congressional 
Research Service to conduct bipartisan oversight training for Members 
and congressional staff. Two sessions have already been held and the 
third will be held on July 26. So far they have been a great success, 
and I would like to express my appreciation to the Congressional 
Research Service, particularly Mort Rosenberg and Walter Oleszek, for 
their extraordinary efforts to make this such a great success.
  At our first oversight workshop, Lee Hamilton, former Democratic 
Chairman of the International Relations Committee and the Iran-Contra 
Committee, shared his thoughts and insights with the attendees. He 
stated in part:

       Oversight is designed to throw light on the activities of 
     government. It can protect the country from the imperial 
     presidency and from bureaucratic arrogance. It can expose and 
     prevent misconduct, and maintain a degree of constituency 
     influence in an administration. The responsibility of 
     oversight is to look into every nook and cranny of government 
     affairs. Overlook is designed to look at everything the 
     government does, expose it, and put the light of publicity to 
     it. It reviews, monitors, and supervises the execution and 
     implementation of public policy, to assure that ``the laws 
     are faithfully executed.''

  I wholeheartedly agree with our distinguished former colleague. As 
chairman of the Committee that is charged with the responsibility of 
safeguarding the privileges and prerogatives of this esteemed 
institution, I believe Congress should vigorously conduct oversight in 
order to fulfill the legacy of our Founding Fathers--which is 
ultimately to preserve and protect our fragile democracy.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe all members can benefit from the thoughtful 
comments of Lee Hamilton, which are included as follows:

                Oversight: A Key Congressional Function


                              Introduction

       I very much appreciate the kind remarks by my friend and 
     former colleague David Dreier. As David mentioned, we devoted 
     considerable attention to ways of improving congressional 
     oversight during our work on the Joint Committee on the 
     Organization of Congress in 1993-94. We held a number of 
     hearings and made several recommendations for structural 
     reforms, some of which have since been implemented.
       Oversight of how effectively the Executive Branch is 
     carrying out congressional mandates is an enormously 
     important function of Congress. It is at the very core of 
     good government. Congress must do more than write the laws; 
     it must make sure that the administration is carrying out 
     those laws the way Congress intended. The purpose of 
     oversight is to determine what happens after a law is passed. 
     As Woodrow Wilson put it (and I find myself quoting Woodrow 
     Wilson more and more these days): ``Quite as important as 
     lawmaking is vigilant oversight of administration.'' As more 
     power is delegated to the executive and as more laws are 
     passed, the need for oversight grows.
       That is why I have been particularly concerned about the 
     weakening of congressional oversight in recent years. 
     Congress has given too much focus to personal investigations 
     and possible scandals that will interest the media, rather 
     than programmatic review and a comprehensive assessment of 
     which federal programs work and which don't. For those of us 
     who care deeply about the institution of Congress, this has 
     been a disturbing trend. Thus I strongly support the efforts 
     of Speaker Hastert to have the House return to its more 
     traditional oversight functions. Congress needs to get back 
     to the basics on oversight. The Speaker's recent comments on 
     that have been right on the mark.
       Under Dan Mulhollan's direction, Walter Oleszek and Mort 
     Rosenberg of CRS have assembled several excellent panels for 
     this series of oversight workshops. You will be hearing from 
     some people with real expertise in this area. In the few 
     minutes I have with you today I want to discuss briefly the 
     importance of good oversight and some of the lessons I 
     learned from my time in Congress about what makes oversight 
     successful.


                    I. Importance of Good Oversight

                  A. Nature of Congressional Oversight

       I believe in tough, continuing oversight. Oversight has 
     many purposes: to evaluate program administration and 
     performance; to make sure programs conform to congressional 
     intent; to ferret out (in the oft-heard phrase) ``waste, 
     fraud, and abuse''; to see whether programs may have outlived 
     their usefulness; to compel an explanation or justification 
     of policy; and to ensure that programs and agencies are 
     administered in a cost-effective, efficient manner.
       Oversight is designed to throw light on the activities of 
     government. It can protect the country from the imperial 
     presidency and from bureaucratic arrogance. It can expose and 
     prevent misconduct, and maintain a degree of constituency in 
     an administration. The responsibility of oversight is to look 
     into every nook and cranny of governmental affairs. Oversight 
     is designed to look at everything the government does, expose 
     it, and put the light of publicity to it. It reviews, 
     monitors, and supervises the execution and implementation of 
     public policy, to assure that ``the laws are faithfully 
     executed''.
       Congress can use several tools to make federal agencies 
     accountable, including periodic reauthorization, personal 
     visits by members of staff, review by the General Accounting 
     Office or inspectors general, subpoenas, and reports from the 
     Executive Branch to Congress. Several types of committees--
     authorization, appropriations, governmental affairs, and 
     special ad hoc committees--can all play important roles in 
     oversight.
       Congress needs a large number of oversight methods to hold 
     agencies accountable because the various methods have their 
     own strengths and weaknesses. Oversight hearings, for 
     example, cannot be called every day, so committees may turn 
     to reports or on-site visits to agencies.
       In many ways Congress underestimates and undervalues its 
     power in oversight. Agencies start to get a little nervous 
     whenever someone from Congress starts poking around, and that 
     is probably to the good overall. Federal bureaucracies do not 
     stay on their toes unless they expect review and oversight 
     from Congress.

                        B. History of Oversight

       Oversight has been a key function of Congress since its 
     very beginning. It is an implied power, not an enumerated 
     power in the Constitution. It is based on the constitutional 
     powers given to Congress to pass laws that create agencies 
     and programs, to provide funding for these agencies and 
     programs, and to investigate the Executive Branch. The first 
     congressional oversight investigation took place in 1792, an 
     inquiry into the conduct of the government in the wars 
     against the Indians, and they have been taking place ever 
     since.
       Congress overhauled its oversight responsibilities in 1946 
     with the passage of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 
     1946. It reinforced the need for ``continuous watchfulness'' 
     by Congress of the Executive Branch, and placed most of that 
     responsibility in the standing committees rather than in 
     specially created investigatory committees. The extent of 
     congressional oversight has fluctuated in recent decades, 
     with some Congresses taking it much more seriously than 
     others. In the 96th Congress, for example, Speaker Tip 
     O'Neill gave it very high priority and called the 96th the 
     ``oversight Congress''. More recently, Speaker Gingrich 
     shifted the emphasis of oversight, seeing it not just as a 
     way to oversee but to shrink the size and reach of the 
     federal government. He also used it to aggressively 
     investigate the White House. Speaker Hastert, as I noted 
     earlier, is encouraging the committees to move away from 
     oversight as political micro management to oversight as 
     congressional review of agency performance and effectiveness.

                   C. Importance of Policy Oversight

       The oversight responsibilities of Congress are critical to 
     good policy. Most important policy issues are complex, and 
     Congress is seldom able to specify fully all the details of a 
     governmental program in the original legislation. The Clean 
     Water Act, for instance, sets the goals and general 
     procedures for improving the quality of the nation's water 
     resources, but the specific rules and regulations for 
     achieving these aims are left to Executive Branch officials. 
     For several reasons, Congress needs to carefully monitor how 
     its broad intentions are translated into actual programs:
       First, tough monitoring by Congress can encourage cost-
     effective implementation of a legislative program. Every year 
     the President sends Congress specific funding requests for 
     thousands of federal programs. These requests can often be 
     cut back, as Members seek to identify the minimum funding 
     levels needs for a program to be effectively implemented. 
     Such oversight efforts are an important means for reducing 
     governmental waste and making government work better.
       Second, Congress must assure that the program, as 
     implemented, reflects the intent of Congress. In complex 
     issue areas such as environmental policy or health care, 
     agency officials may simply misinterpret a piece of

[[Page E1586]]

     legislation or they may use the discretion they have been 
     given in the law to shift policy toward their views, the 
     President's views, or the views of special interest groups.
       Third, Congress must continue to monitor programs to 
     determine whether unintended consequences or changing 
     circumstances have altered the need for the program. Programs 
     need consistent and regular review and assessment over time. 
     Members of Congress are helped in that task by their close 
     connection to their constituents, which gives them special 
     opportunities to observe on a day-by-day basis the strengths 
     and weaknesses of federal programs as they are being carried 
     out.

                        D. Decline in Oversight

       In recent years, the traditional oversight activities of 
     Congress have generally declined, for a variety of reasons:
       The shorter congressional workweek means that committees do 
     not meet as often as they used to, reducing time for 
     oversight.
       The power of the authorizing committees--which is where 
     most of the oversight was done--has declined over the years.
       Monitoring the myriad of federal programs is tedious, takes 
     time and preparation, and is often quite technical. It is 
     typically unglamorous work, and most Members see little 
     political benefit from engaging in it. Members do not rank 
     oversight at the top of their responsibilities. For most 
     Members, constituent service is number one, legislation is 
     number two, and oversight is number three.
       The media do not pay much attention to traditional 
     oversight work. They usually like to focus on scandals. 
     Congress has permitted the desire for media coverage to drive 
     the hearing and oversight process.
       There is simply less interest in government reform.
       And constituents rarely contact their Members asking them 
     to engage in systematic program review.
       But another factor has been that the oversight priorities 
     of Congress have shifted away from the careful review of 
     programs to highly adversarial attempts at discrediting 
     individual public officials--looking at great length at, for 
     example, Hillary Clinton's commodity transactions or charges 
     of money-laundering and drug trafficking at an Arkansas 
     airport when Bill Clinton was Governor. Congress has 
     certainly investigated federal officials throughout 
     congressional history--from its earliest investigation of the 
     Indian wars to the Teapot Dome scandal of 1923 to Watergate 
     and the Iran-contra hearings (which I co-chaired). The 
     authority of Congress to conduct investigations can be a 
     crucial check on executive powers.
       But recently there has been too much personalization and 
     not enough policy in congressional oversight. Certainly for 
     many years a lot of congressional oversight has been done for 
     partisan purposes, and that doesn't necessarily make it bad. 
     But spending too much time on personal investigations weakens 
     the oversight function of Congress. It consumes Executive 
     Branch time and resources and, more importantly, diverts 
     congressional time and resources from the more constructive 
     work of policy oversight. That's why Speaker Hastert 's 
     attempt to redirect congressional oversight is a good sign, 
     and I am hopeful that it will be successful.


                      II. Nature of Good Oversight

       You will hear from a host of experts during these oversight 
     workshops explaining in considerable detail the role and 
     nature of congressional oversight. So let me briefly give you 
     a few observations to help set the stage for your 
     discussions--some specific examples of what I thought worked 
     well when I was in Congress plus a few general lessons I 
     learned about how oversight should be handled.

                A. Specific Examples from Committee Work

       Much of my oversight work in Congress was done on the 
     Foreign Affairs/International Relations Committee. We had the 
     responsibility of overseeing all foreign policy activities 
     and agencies. Let me give you a sense of some of the main 
     methods I used that I found particularly helpful.
       Regular hearings: Congressional hearings are one of the 
     most important methods of oversight. Yet, hearings can be 
     unproductive when Members simply read prepared questions and 
     aren't ready to ask the tough follow-up questions. So I gave 
     particular attention to regular hearings on United States 
     policy. I found them particularly helpful in forcing 
     Executive Branch officials to articulate policy and explain 
     the rationale behind it--something they do not like to do. 
     One good example would be the extensive oversight I had 
     relating to U.S. programs of assistance to the former Soviet 
     States--the Freedom Support Act--as well as Eastern Europe--
     the SEED Act.
       Closed briefings: Regular, indeed weekly closed briefings 
     were essential to educating ourselves on complex issues. I 
     instituted a monthly series of ``hot-spot'' classified 
     briefings for Members done by the CIA on particularly 
     volatile areas including Bosnia, the situation in Rusia, 
     North Korea, and other issues that most Members do not 
     routinely pay attention to.
       Letters for the Record: One technique I developed, which I 
     found to be a good way to exercise oversight, was to press 
     the Administration for written explanations and 
     clarifications of various aspects of U.S. foreign policy, 
     which I would then insert into the Congressional Record. I 
     did this, for example, to help pin the administration down on 
     its position on arms sales to Taiwan, on the Nuclear Agreed 
     Framework with North Korea, on the train-and-equip program 
     for Bosnia, and on U.S. policy vis-a-vis Turkey. Sometimes I 
     had to go back to them several times to get a meaningful 
     response. Since educating and informing the public is at the 
     heart of oversight, I found the publication of letters to be 
     very important. I was impressed by the interest these letters 
     generated.
       Staff travel: I required staff to make a periodic trips 
     with focused objectives to the areas of the world they 
     covered. For example, Committee staff made repeated trips 
     over a several year period to Bosnia, to look into specific 
     aspects of the Dayton peace process including how U.S. 
     assistance was being spent, and the role of U.S. peacekeeping 
     troops in the region. This travel, in combination with the 
     travel of staff from other committees, served to demonstrate 
     to the Administration and local officials in Bosnia that 
     Congress was paying close attention to how resources were 
     being spent. I also required staff to write extensive reports 
     on the main findings and accomplishments of their travel.
       Informal contacts: I made sure staff had informal and 
     frequent contacts with Executive Branch officials. If you get 
     to know people before a problem on crisis, you are in much 
     better shape when there is one. Staff has close contact with 
     officials at the State Department, DOD, and the NSC on all 
     aspects on the Middle East crisis, in Bosnia, as well as U.S. 
     relations with Russia and the NIS. My staff and I were able 
     to work closely with U.S. officials on such issues as the 
     Middle East, Russia, Yugoslavia, China, and North Korea in 
     part because of longstanding personal contacts with lay 
     people.
       Reports to Congress: Although Congress has in many ways 
     gone overboard in the reports that it requires of the 
     Administration, sometimes this is a very useful tool. For 
     example, I had the State Department make reports on the 
     economies of major recipients of foreign aid. We need to know 
     what effect our assistance is having in key countries.
       GAO investigations: GAO has enormous resources, and 
     probably does more detailed oversight work than congressional 
     committees can. I found GAO particularly helpful on foreign 
     assistance programs, the Lavi fighter the Israelis wanted to 
     build with U.S. help but which did not make sense, and on 
     specific overseas projects which ran into trouble.


            B. General Observations on Successful Oversight

       Let me now turn to a few general thoughts and observations 
     about what makes oversight successful:
       First, oversight works best when it is done in as 
     bipartisan a way as possible. Certainly there will be times 
     when the committee chairman and the ranking minority member 
     will disagree, but they should be able to sit down at the 
     beginning of a new Congress and agree on the bulk of the 
     Committee's oversight agenda.
       Second, policy oversight is aided when there is a 
     constructive relationship between Congress and the 
     implementing agency. Much oversight by its very nature is 
     adversarial, and that is particularly appropriate when an 
     agency has engaged in egregious behavior. But excessive 
     antagonism between the branches can be counterproductive and 
     do little to improve program performance. Oversight should 
     put aside petty political motives, and it should act 
     constructively not destructively. Oversight should be 
     conducted seeking good ideas.
       Third, oversight should be done in a regular, systematic 
     way. Congress lacks a continuous, systematic oversight 
     process, at it oversees in an episodic, erratic manner. On 
     the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress we 
     recommended, for example, that each committee do a systematic 
     review of all of the significant laws, agencies, and programs 
     under its jurisdiction at least every 10 years. My sense is 
     that there are activities of government that have gone on for 
     a long time without full-scale review.
       Fourth, oversight must be comprehensive. There are vast 
     number of activities of the federal government that never get 
     into the newspaper headlines, yet it is still the task of 
     Congress to look into them. When I was on the Foreign Affairs 
     Committee, for example, we even held oversight hearings on 
     everything from Yemen and to the future of NATO. Oversight 
     that is driven by whether we can get cameras into the hearing 
     room is not enough to get the job done. I am impressed by how 
     decisions about oversight are made on the basis on how much 
     media attention can be attracted. The relationship between 
     the decline of oversight by Congress and the decline of 
     investigative journalism bears further examination. Being 
     comprehensive in oversight also means casting the net widely 
     to look at the variety of federal agencies involved in a 
     particular area, not just the main one (for example, not just 
     looking at foreign policy actions of the State Department, 
     but also of Commerce, Defense, Agriculture, CIA, etc). As I 
     said earlier, it is the responsibility of oversight to look 
     into every nook and cranny of government.
       Fifth, the oversight agenda of Congress should be 
     coordinate to eliminate duplication. The administration often 
     complains, with some justification, about the burden of 
     redundant oversight and duplicative testimony. Different 
     committees shouldn't cover the same ground over and over, 
     while other important areas and programs fall through the 
     cracks. Committees currently do prepare their oversight 
     plans, but I sense no one is in charge of coordination.

[[Page E1587]]

       Sixth, continuity and expertise are critical to successful 
     oversight. Excessive staff turnover and turnover of chairmen 
     harm the institutional continuity and expertise so essential 
     to the job of oversight. This is also why I generally favor 
     having standing committees do oversight rather than special, 
     ad hoc communities. Also, oversight should not be used or 
     directed by interest groups.
       Seventh, there is such a thing as too much oversight. Good 
     oversight draws the line between careful scrutiny and 
     intervention or micro-management. Congress should examine 
     broad public policies, but it should not mettle and it should 
     avoid a media show. It should certainly expose corrupt and 
     incompetent officials, but it should avoid attacking 
     competent, dedicated officials. Oversight requires reports to 
     be informed, but the reporting requirements should not be 
     excessive. In general, the quality of oversight is much more 
     important than the quantity.
       Eighth, good oversight involves documentation. The more you 
     can get things in writing, the better off you are.
       Ninth, follow-through is also important. It is one thing to 
     ask agencies to improve their performance, but it requires 
     the work of Members, committees, and staff aides to make sure 
     that the changes have taken place.
       Tenth, Member involvement in oversight is important. 
     Certainly much of the work needs to be done by staff. Yet I 
     found that Members often left too much of the responsibility 
     with staff. Having Members involved brings additional 
     leverage to any oversight inquiry.
       Eleventh, good oversight takes clear signals from the 
     leadership. Structural reforms and individual efforts by 
     Members can be helpful, but for oversight to really work it 
     takes a clear message from the congressional leadership that 
     oversight is a priority and that it will be done in a 
     bipartisan, systematic, coordinated way. The key role of the 
     House Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader in successful 
     oversight cannot be overstated.
       And finally, there needs to be greater public 
     accountability to congressional oversight. The general public 
     can be a very important driving force behind good oversight. 
     Congress needs to provide clear reports from each committee 
     outlining the main programs under its jurisdiction and 
     explaining how the committee reviewed them. As citizens 
     understand how important congressional oversight is to 
     achieving the kind of government they want--government that 
     works better and costs less--they will demand more emphasis 
     on the quality of oversight by Congress, and they will be 
     less tolerant of highly personalized investigations that 
     primarily serve to divert Members' attention from this 
     critical congressional function.


                               Conclusion

       My personal belief is that conducting oversight is every 
     bit as important as passing legislation. President Wilson 
     thought that ``the informing function of Congress should be 
     preferred even to its legislating function.'' Our founding 
     fathers very clearly recognized that ``eternal vigilance is 
     the price of liberty''.
       A strong record of congressional oversight of--``continuous 
     watchfulness''--will do a lot to restore public confidence in 
     the institution. It will show that Congress is taking its 
     responsibilities seriously and is able to work together.
       I'm not Pollyannaish about all of this. Certainly there 
     will be roadblocks and obstacles in the effort to strengthen 
     and improve oversight. The work is not particularly easy 
     under the best of circumstances, and we can't expect all of 
     the hard feelings and distrust about the direction of 
     oversight in recent years to dissipate overnight. But it is 
     my firm belief that this is an area in which Congress simply 
     must do better. And your willingness to participate in these 
     workshops gives me good reason to think that this is an area 
     in which Congress will do better.

     

                          ____________________