ROADMAP FOR RENEWAL 
Strengthen Congress’s Capacity to Fulfill its Constitutional Role 
 
IV.  Build  Congressional  capacity  to  conduct  bipartisan,  professional 
oversight of the Executive Branch 
 
The Constitution provides Congress the power to conduct oversight and investigations of 
the President’s execution of the law, including abuses of executive power and the 
weakening of important norms and laws. That is because, in the words of the Supreme 
Court, the “power of inquiry–with process to enforce it–is an essential and appropriate 
auxiliary to the legislative function.” To craft effective legislative solutions, Congress first 
must understand the problems in our democracy. In recent years, however, Congress has 
too often abdicated its legitimate oversight role in order to engage in partisan 
street-fighting.  
 
In order to build capacity to engage in effective oversight of the executive branch, Congress 
should: 
 
● Create a Congressional Oversight Office with dedicated funding and staff to support 
oversight efforts; 
● Align authorizing and oversight committee jurisdiction with the structure of the 
federal government; 
● Leverage a broader range of expertise into the oversight process; and 
● Increase the capacity of members of the House Intelligence Committee to engage in 
oversight. 
 
The Problem 
 
Congressional oversight is decreasing​. According to research by ​Brooking’s Elaine 
Kamarck​,1 Congressional oversight hearings peaked in 1978 and have fallen continuously 
since then, with a brief uptick after Democrats won the House in 2006. While a House from 
the same party as the Executive is unlikely to generate significant oversight activity, the 
Republican-led committees of the 115​th​ Congress have investigated very few pressing issues 
related to the Trump Administration. As of July, ​Republicans had denied 52 subpoena 
requests by the Democrats​.2 
 

1

Karmack, Elaine, ​A Congressional Oversight Office: A Proposed Early Warning System for the United States 
Congress​, Brookings (June 3, 2016). Available at 
https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-congressional-oversight-office-a-proposed-early-warning-system-for-the-u
nited-states-congress/​.  
2
Ashley Killough, ​House Democrats eye possible investigations if they take back the house​, CNN (September 5, 
2018). Available at 
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/05/politics/house-democrats-congress-investigations/index.html​.  

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 Congressional oversight has not expanded to accommodate changes and growth in the 
federal government​. Part of the challenge is that since Congress last reorganized itself in 
1970 with the Legislative Reorganization Act, there has been substantial change in the 
federal government. The last substantial reorganization was in 1946 in tandem with the 
post-World War II reforms that restructured the national security apparatus, creating the 
Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. As ​Norm Ornstein and 
Thomas Mann​ have noted, after the largest reorganization of the federal government in 
modern history​—​the creation of the Department of Homeland Security​—​there was no effort 
to restructure Congress to more adequately oversee the new department.3  
 
As Congress and the federal government have changed, so too has the world around it. 
Technology has created an availability of massive amounts of information and expertise 
that Congress could leverage as part of its oversight role, but it has not reformed or updated 
the Congressional hearing process to allow it to effectively source insights from experts 
around the country. 
 
Review of the Intelligence Community (IC) provides a unique challenge to Congress and the 
IC itself​. The IC oversight system has broken down in recent years due to the IC 
withholding some information from Congress and politicization by Congress. The Snowden 
revelations made clear that significant intelligence information was being withheld from 
Congress without their knowledge. House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes cooperated 
with the White House to release and politicize intelligence against the wishes of the IC. 
 
Proposed Solutions 
 
Create a Congressional Oversight Office with dedicated funding and staff to 
support oversight efforts  
● Elaine Kamarck at the Brookings Institution has recommended a Congressional 
Oversight Office that would increase oversight capacity and institutionalize 
resources and expertise for oversight outside of partisan Congressional staff.  
 
Align authorizing and oversight committee jurisdiction with the structure of the 
federal government  
● Kevin Kosar from the R Street Institute and Lee Drutman from the New America 
Foundation have ​recommended a new Legislative Reorganization Act​, modeled on 
the ones of 1946 and 1970.4 This would align Congressional committees with federal 
government structures to ensure expertise. 
 
​Norman Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann, ​The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get 
It Back on Track​, Brookings (June 27, 2006). Available at 
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-broken-branch-how-congress-is-failing-america-and-how-to-get-it-back-o
n-track/​.  
4
Lee Drutman and Kevin R. Kosar, ​The Other Biggest Problem in Washington​, The New York Times (Sep. 11, 
2018). Available at ​https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/opinion/congress-senate-house-washington-.html​.  
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 Leverage a broader range of expertise into the oversight process  
● Georgetown’s Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation and University of New 
Hampshire’s Carsey Public Policy School have developed a digital field hearing 
toolkit to source ideas from experts in Congressional districts, especially ​land grant 
universities and local elected officials.5 
 
Increase the capacity of members of the House Intelligence Committee to engage 
in oversight 
● An ideologically diverse set of organizations has ​recommended several changes to 
intelligence oversight​ that would: modernize the House Permanent Select 
Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI); empower members of Congress to conduct 
intelligence oversight with additional training, staff, and clarification regarding 
what is and isn’t public information; and establish a broad-based review of 
congressional oversight structures.6 
● End leadership appointment to HPSCI and term limits of HPSCI members7, as 
recommended by the 9/11 Commission.8 
 

5

Austin Seaborn, ​Crowdsourcing Expertise to Increase Congressional Capacity​, Beeck Center (July 21, 2017). 
Available at: ​http://beeckcenter.georgetown.edu/crowdsourcing-expertise-increase-congressional-capacity/​.  
6
​Strengthening Congressional Oversight of the Intelligence Community,​ R. Street (Sep. 13, 2016). Available at: 
http://www.rstreet.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/intelligence-oversight.pdf​.   
7
Why are Reps. Clamoring to Join the House Intelligence Committee?, Lawfare (Nov. 5, 2018). Available at 
https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-are-reps-clamoring-join-house-intelligence-committee​. 
8
​Thomas H. Kean and Lee Hamilton. ​The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission 
on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, ​Washington, D.C.: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon 
the United States (2004). Print. 

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