One theme Democrats should be pushing as hard as possible is the need to restore congressional oversight.
The bush administration and the Congress under the republican leadership have been systematically reducing congressional oversight. A Washington Post article "Storms Show A System Out Of Balance" details some of the effects of reduced oversight:
Due to what Skinner called "very serious systemic weaknesses," nearly 12,600 Miami-Dade residents collected more than $31 million in payments after Hurricane Frances, although the storm hit about 100 miles to the north. The money paid for homes and cars that were not damaged, and even for funerals, when Miami-Dade reported no storm-related deaths.
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The article goes on to discuss responsibility for the reduced oversight:
Government scholars and watchdog groups say the decline of congressional oversight in recent years has thrown out of kilter the system of checks and balances the Founding Fathers created to keep no one branch of government from becoming too powerful. Whether the Pentagon or the Environmental Protection Agency, if a department does not think Congress is paying attention, it could be more apt to waste money or allow problems to go unaddressed.
"There's a tendency to blame this on the bureaucracy, but this is the leadership of the Congress and the administration," said Joel D. Aberbach, a political scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles who specializes in government accountability.
Congressional oversight is the cornerstone of federal budget control. It is the assurance that american's tax dollars are being spent as congress intended. There are legal consequences for the misappropriation of funds, fraud waste and abuse. Or , at least their used to be. Poor budget controls have been a staple of republican budgets since Reagan.
Re-establishing Congressional Oversight and therefore budget controls is a made for democrats issue. The need for oversight and budget controls is something that voters from both parties can agree on as necessary. The lack of congressional oversight under republican leadership makes it harder for republicans to claim they have the discipline to support their claims of being fiscally conservative. Finally, by taking ownership of this issue, Democrats would demonstrate that they are committed to spending taxpayer money wisely.