{"id":6125,"date":"2005-12-19T13:33:21","date_gmt":"2005-12-19T18:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6125"},"modified":"2005-12-19T13:33:21","modified_gmt":"2005-12-19T18:33:21","slug":"an-inkling-of-interest-in-administrative-oversight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/an-inkling-of-interest-in-administrative-oversight\/","title":{"rendered":"An inkling of interest in administrative oversight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Way back in May 2004, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) admitted<\/a> what had become painfully obvious.<\/p>\n

“We Republicans have never quite reached the level of competent oversight that the Democrats developed over their 40 years that they controlled Congress,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the Senate Finance Committee chairman and one of the few Republicans to pepper the administration regularly with inquiries. “We tried to emphasize legislating, and we’ve delegated so much authority to the executive branch of government, and we ought to devote more time to oversight than we do.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some of us have been tearing what’s left of our hair out over this, wondering how GOP lawmakers can even respect themselves given the fact that they refuse to issue subpoenas and\/or hold hearings that might embarrass the Bush administration, no matter how serious a controversy becomes. Fortunately, that may be about to change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After a series of embarrassing disclosures, Congress is reconsidering its relatively lenient oversight of the Bush administration.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers have been caught by surprise by several recent reports, including the existence of secret U.S. prisons abroad, the CIA’s detention overseas of innocent foreign nationals, and, last week, the discovery that the military has been engaged in domestic spying. After five years in which the GOP-controlled House and Senate undertook few investigations into the administration’s activities, the legislative branch has begun to complain about being in the dark.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just as a matter of institutional pride, it’s amazing that it took this long. Historically, Congress has had at least some institutional pride<\/i>. Even when one party controls both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, lawmakers have taken separation of powers seriously enough to at least pretend they’re a co-equal branch of government. Congress has always exerted administrative oversight with at least some due diligence — right up until 2001.<\/p>\n

It’s not as if Republicans don’t know how. As Dems on the House Government Reform Committee noted<\/a>, the committee issued 1,052<\/b> subpoenas to the Clinton administration and the DNC between 1997 and 2002, while issuing three<\/b> subpoenas to the Bush administration and the RNC between 2001 and 2005.
\n
\n“Republican Congresses tend to overinvestigate Democratic administrations and underinvestigate their own,” said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.). “I get concerned we lose our separation of powers when one party controls both branches.”<\/p>\n

His concern is a recent discovery. A year and a half ago, Davis said<\/a> when one party controls Congress and the White House, “You get less oversight. That’s the way it goes.”<\/p>\n

In this sense, I guess we should call this progress. Of course, I’ll be impressed after<\/i> Congress starts actually holding hearings instead of talking about it, but in the meantime, I’ll take some solace in the fact that there’s a recognition of an oversight problem.<\/p>\n

After all, admitting you have a problem is always the first step.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Way back in May 2004, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) admitted what had become painfully obvious. “We Republicans have never quite reached the level of competent oversight that the Democrats developed over their 40 years that they controlled Congress,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the Senate Finance Committee chairman and one of the few Republicans to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}