Is oversight something lawmakers talk about, or something they do?

Terry Gerton You’ve got a new study out looking at congressional oversight and we are approaching an election season. So tell me if Democrats take control of the House after the election, lots of people are going to measure oversight by the number of hearings they hold. What’s the difference between an investigative Congress and an effective oversight Congress?

Tim Stretton Well, first, I will say they’re not mutually exclusive. You shouldn’t measure the effectiveness of a Congress based on the number of hearings they hold, because I’m sure we’ve all seen very bad hearings Congress conducts, you know, and some of these hearings are framed as oversight hearings, but they couldn’t be anything, you know, described as such as that. They’re just not oversight hearings. They’re political, it’s political theater. I always like to say, oversight is one of Congress’s most important constitutional duties. You know, many people think the primary role of Congress is to pass laws. But before you even write a law, you need to figure out what gaps exist, what laws are currently on the books that need reform, that’s all oversight. So, oversight is inherent to the legislative process, so therefore, I truly believe oversight is the most important role that members of Congress have, and it’s regardless of party affiliation. You know, we’ve seen more recently, members of congress really hesitant to conduct oversight when it’s the administration is of the same party of them, and that really is a big misservice or disservice. You know, it’s much easier to, similarly when you go to the dentist, you know, one of my colleagues used to likes to say, it’s easier to fill a cavity before you ultimately need a root canal. And the same thing couldn’t be, you know truer when it comes to government operations. It is much easier to do routine oversight of programs, you know the implementation of laws. And identify small problems before they escalate into big scandals that we only learn about when we see the front page of a newspaper or in big block layers on the bottom of, you know, television news. So it really is important to conduct oversight. That’s why constituents put members or elected members in the first place is to represent them and make sure the government is operating effectively on behalf of everyone.

Terry Gerton What is the difference then between effective oversight and as you’ve described it, oversight theater?

Tim Stretton Oversight, you should always be trying to, once you have identified a problem, try to come up with an answer as to why this happened and what reforms are needed to prevent it from happening again. You know, I think we’ve seen congressional hearings, there’s a big problem, there was a hearing a couple of days later and people are just shouting back and forth on what they think happened or who’s to blame for it. That’s not oversight, that’s political theater. Oversight is asking questions. Is this operating as it’s supposed to? Or, what caused this to be a problem? And how do we fix it? You know, and then using evidence to support your conclusions. I always like to say, a congressional investigation or an inquiry is not a science fair project. You know? In school, we were always told, come up with a hypothesis and then find the evidence that proves it. Congressional oversight is completely, it’s the other way around. We use facts to drive us to the conclusion, you should never have a hypothesis in there. Because if you have a hypotheses, you’re only gonna search for those results that, or the pieces of evidence that support your biased hypothesis. And that doesn’t serve anyone except maybe political motivations.

Terry Gerton Tim Stretton is the director of the Congressional Oversight Initiative at the Project on Government Oversights. Well, Congress has created a substantial infrastructure to support its oversight functions. It has GAOs, it’s given inspectors general to all of the different federal agencies. What responsibilities belong to those institutions and what responsibilities can only be carried out by elected officials?

Tim Stretton Yeah. Well, first, thanks for mentioning GAO and inspectors general. They are truly some of the most important tools Congress has to conduct oversight. The legislative branch is one third, is a third of the federal government, but yet if you look at in terms of staff, it is not even comparable. I think we’re around anywhere from 16,000 to 20,000 congressional staff versus 2 million civilians in the federal executive branch, it’s not even comparable. So it’s a very difficult for Congress themselves to do this inquiries and oversight. So we have these tools, GAO, which is a legislative branch entity and inspectors general, which are housed in the executive branch but report directly to both branches. However, we’ve seen in recent years real attacks on these institutions, which I think is truly unprecedented. I mean, last year we saw a mass firing of IGs, very apolitical, you know, folks that have experience in doing oversight that are nonpartisan. And even, I think this past year with GAO, we’ve, you know, we have seen members of Congress attack GAO. Again, an agency within the legislative branch because they’ve produced findings that unfortunately were critical of, you know, executive branch actions. And I think that’s a real disservice. So I would first say Congress should stand up for their oversight tools because they’re only as good as their reliability. If IGs and GAO’s, you know, aren’t able to function properly, that just hurts Congress’ ability to do its number one job. I will also just say to answer the second part of that question is Congress can look at whatever they want. But GAO and IGs really have that expertise to do deep audits, get in the weeds, into deep agency actions. So they have definitely that special specialization expertise, but Congress can still do whatever they want. So it really is, I like to view Congress, GAO, and IG’s as a real partnership and we’re members of Congress, their staffs should have regular meetings with GAO and IG to figure out what are they working on and how, you know, so when they’re coming up with their legislative and investigative plans, they’re not duplicating efforts, but rather, you know, really like tag teaming issues and making sure their limited resources are being spread out as far as possible.

Terry Gerton Tim, your paper lays out eight examples of what this kind of accountability would look like in action. They’re pretty familiar to, I think, a lot of people overseeing the executive branch, implementation of the law, defending Congress’s power of the purse. And I wanna pull this one for a minute because we’ve seen recent fights over the Empowerment Control Act. We’ve seen pocket rescissions from this administration. What does this tell you about Congress’ current willingness to defend its power of the purse?

Tim Stretton I will say I’ve been really troubled, you know, the last few months with some of GAO’s findings of OMB or the Office of Management Budget’s, violations of federal appropriations laws. You have the Empowerment Control Act when they haven’t allocated funds as Congress directed, right? It’s really, what the administration needs to realize is it is Congress that has the to direct spending, not the executive branch. And when they don’t follow Congress’s directive, it is against the law. One thing I hope to see, come January, and I hope just even see it before then, is really members of Congress sticking up for themselves in defending their constitutional authority and hold congressional hearings, ask OMB federal agencies, why they are not following appropriations laws and what their plans are to make sure that they are. Congress needs to defend themselves and stick up for their authorities or else like everything else, more and more power will be ceded to the executive branch and that really hinders the separation of powers, which frankly is the key or the cornerstone of our federal system and how it works so well.

Terry Gerton Well, let’s follow up on that because this is not the only one of your list of eight where Congress might not be fulfilling its full responsibilities when it identifies problems like this. What keeps Congress from following up or following through?

Tim Stretton Sadly, I do think some of it comes down to politics at the end of the day, right? You know, I think we’ve talked about sometimes members of Congress don’t want to conduct oversight when it’s of their own party. They don’t want to be seen as a thorn in their party’s side. And unfortunately, I mean, we’ve seen that time and time again, in recent years, across both parties, and I want to clear on that, members of Congress need to realize that they are in the legislative branch. The legislative branch is not a subdivision of the executive and that they are only as powerful when they stand up for themselves. I think besides power of the purse, I think stuff with recently in the past year with war powers and the Iran war, we’ve seen over the last several months, attempts to rein in the conflict in Iran with on the House and Senate. Fortunately, those have not been successful. So I hope Congress starts holding more hearings, public hearings. Obviously they can do classified hearings if needed, but really asking tough questions about legal justification for the war, intended outcomes, objectives, how do we bring this to a close, because ultimately Congress is going to have to make a decision if they keep funding these operations or not. And just one further point I would put on that is anytime Congress looks to do an oversight project initiative, often times it’s viewed as a very isolated incident, but they should look more broadly, right? This might not be the only time issues with the War Powers Act comes before Congress. We’ve just seen an issue now where Congress has tried to either approve or disprove further action and they can’t do it. So they should be looking at systematic reforms, not just to this one issue with Iran. But how can we strengthen or reform the war powers resolution moving forward? So we’re not in this predicament where after 60 days when Congress needs to weigh in and they ultimately don’t want it to continue, but due to legislative votes, they can’t, they need to really figure out how to systematically reform that. And again, that is all by conducting oversight, public hearings and building a factual record that can be turned into legislative reforms.

Terry Gerton Tim, regardless of which party is going to control Congress after the midterms, what would you think would demonstrate a real commitment, a return to a real commitment of effective oversight?

Tim Stretton I think. First, members of Congress owe it to their constituents to look at issues that are the most important directly to them. So I would argue, affordability, cost of groceries. I believe September’s consumer price index went up to 3.7%. So looking at how we can we bring down costs, make it more affordable for everyday Americans to live. Housing, health care is an issue that seems to always be there. So I think those are the real first things Congress should do. They owe it to their constituents after an election to really make sure that their voices are heard and members understand it. But in terms of additional oversight opportunities that arise, I think besides what we’ve already talked about, with war powers, power of the purse, constitutional issues, I think we’ve seen a real opening to look at artificial intelligence. That’s the new top issue in everyone’s mind right now, prediction markets. And then also conflicts of interest of government officials has also been in the news. And I actually think there’s a real opportunity for some bipartisan investigations there across multiple administrations, conflicts of interests with officials and their family members. So, I think those are some other issues that are really worth taking a look at, and I think Congress will.