Bloodless Coup

The 9/11 Commission and Congressional Reform

Now I'm not going to hold my breath for this to happen. Congress tends to have little interest in reforming itself since that will inevitably entail certain members losing prized positions. An unusually strong push for changes in the structure of the House in the early 1990's ended with little more than the dissolution of a handful of relatively minor standing committees (like the District of Columbia Committee), and the restructuring that took place when the Republicans won control of the body for the first time in decades was largely cosmetic (Government Operations became Goverment "Reform"). But one of the good things about the 9/11 Commission is that its recommendations take seriously some serious structural impediments that currently impair the ability of Congress to conduct effective oversight of intelligence and security agencies (and for that matter all government agencies).

I'm not suggesting that Congress will start prioritizing its oversight role in the near future. It's increasingly been doing all it can to avoid doing that for years, and now that that would mean a Republican Congress investigating Republican-run agencies it has pretty muched stopped completely. This is a huge problem if we want our system of checks and balances to work as designed. But let's say we live in a perfect democratic world and Congress actually wanted to perform government oversight, put checks on executive branch excesses and efficiently fund government programs (that's a big leap from reality at the moment ... but go with me on this).

The current committee structure makes comprehensive oversight difficult. Many agencies fall under the jurisdiction of many committees. This means investigations could get caught up in intra-congressional jurisdictional squabbles. Perhaps even more importantly is the way Congress is currently organized to fund government programs. The authorizing committees are, more or less, charged with setting policy and conducting oversight, but the appropriations committess actually fund specific programs that are (supposedly) approved by the authorizing committees. This has been a huge impediment to conducting efficient government for years, but since the appropriations committees control government and have a huge number of members, protectors of this status quo have had the power to block efforts to merge the spending committees with the authorizing committees. The 9/11 report urges that these twisted, inefficient structural designs be reformed, at least when it comes to the oversight and funding of intelligence operations. I doubt their recommendations are adopted. Congress will likely face little retribution from the voters over this issue since 1) only a tiny fraction of congressional races are competitive now that gerrymandering has run rampant and 2) "I promise to abolish the Appropriations Committee" is not likely to be a winning slogan for any House or Senate candidate. But it's important that this kind of thing gets considered, and that the public becomes more aware of this problem in our system of government. The structure of decision making has a powerful influence on the policies that a government produces, and as currently designed, this is one of the reasons why it would be very difficult for members of Congress to effectively engage in oversight of government activities (if they wanted to).