Bush's Fumbles Spur New Talk of Oversight on Hill
"Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said 'it's a fair comment' that the GOP-controlled Congress has done insufficient oversight and 'ought to be' doing more.
'Republican Congresses tend to overinvestigate Democratic administrations and underinvestigate their own,' said Davis, who added that he has tried to pick up some of the slack with his committee. 'I get concerned we lose our separation of powers when one party controls both branches.'
Democrats on the committee said the panel issued 1,052 subpoenas to probe alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party between 1997 and 2002, at a cost of more than $35 million. By contrast, the committee under Davis has issued three subpoenas to the Bush administration, two to the Energy Department over nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, and one last week to the Defense Department over Katrina documents.
Some experts on Congress say that the legislative branch has shed much of its oversight authority because of a combination of aggressive actions by the Bush administration, acquiescence by congressional leaders, and political demands that keep lawmakers out of Washington more than before.
"I do not think you can argue today that Congress is a coequal branch of government; it is not," said Lee H. Hamilton, president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, told reporters this month: "It has basically lost the war-making power. The real debates on budget occur not in Congress but in the Office of Management and Budget. . . . When you come into session Tuesday afternoon and leave Thursday afternoon, you simply do not have time for oversight or deliberation.""
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