"Daddy! Daddy! I read on Daily Kos that Congresswoman Wilson is going to have an Oversight Hearing about the NSA spying! Daddy, I've never seen an Oversight Hearing! Can I see one, Daddy, can I please, please, please?
Hmmm. Well, sweetie, that sounds terrific. But I'm afraid what you heard wasn't exactly all true. See, honey, there are no such things as Oversight Hearings anymore. That's just a myth that Republicans tell other people so they'll keep believing in them.
Aw, don't be sad, honeypie. It doesn't mean there won't ever be any more Oversight Hearings. It just means that there haven't been any for a long time.
Here - come on up on Daddy's lap and I'll tell you all about the great mythical creature called Congressional Oversight, and how it disappeared from the earth.
See, once upon a time - before you were born - Congress actually performed an oversight function. Here, look - you can read about it
right here on the Congressional website:
Congressional oversight is one of the most important responsibilities of the United States Congress [snip] [I]t provides the legislative branch with an opportunity to inspect, examine, review and check the executive branch and its agencies.
Pretty neat, huh, sweetie? I'll bet you didn't know that. But there it is, in black and white, right on the official U.S. House of Representatives website. Let's see what else it says about Oversight! Hmmmm . . .
Why Does Congress Need to Do Oversight?
* Ensure executive compliance with legislative intent. [snip]
* Prevent executive encroachment on legislative prerogatives and powers.
* Investigate alleged instances of poor administration, arbitrary and capricious behavior, abuse, waste, dishonesty, and fraud. [snip]
* Ensure that executive policies reflect the public interest.
* Protect individual rights and liberties.
"Wow, Dad, how cool is that!? You mean, Congress is actually supposed to look out for all those things? Like my individual rights and liberties? And executive encroachment on legislative prerogatives and powers? And executive compliance with legislative intent? That's so cool!"
Yes, Virginia, Congress is supposed to do all of those things. And someday, if you're really good, Congress will do all of those things. But no one has actually seen Congress do those things for a long, long time, so don't be too disappointed if you wake up tomorrow morning and you didn't get your individual rights and liberties.
See, sunshine, right now, mostly what Congress does is hold hearings full of industry executives and self-serving lobbyists and bureaucrats who are only there to reinforce the Republican majority's policies, most of which favor Big Business and the very rich. Why, I'll bet if you were to scan through a list of the witnesses called by, say, the House Energy and Commerce Committee during the last Congress, you'd see the names of lots and lots of lobbyists, bureaucrats and executives, but not so many names of regular people speaking up for, well, regular people. It's really too bad.
But it wasn't always this way - no, no, no, no, no, no! There was a time, before you were born, when Hearings were held! When real people's views and interests were heard! When Congress really engaged in oversight!
In 1987 and 1988 the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee held investigative hearings on plant closings and job training issues, in addition to holding two oversight hearings on the Mine Health and Safety Administration examining agency bias in favor of coal companies; two on OSHA; and one on underenforcement of the National Labor Relations Act. It also held hearings on polygraphs and employee privacy, workplace safety, increasing the minimum wage, parental leave proposals, day care, construction worker organizing rights, assisting displaced workers, and the "Guaranteed Job Opportunity Act." With its House counterpart, it held investigative hearings on a major mine disaster and underfunded pensions. The House Education and Labor Committee, meanwhile, held oversight hearings on job training; scrutinized Reagan administration performance at OSHA, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Mine Safety and Health Administration; and looked at Reagan administration enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act and black lung benefits programs. In investigative hearings, it looked at abuse of migrant worker rights and the effect of deregulation on workers; and in legislative hearings it considered proposals to increase the minimum wage, strengthen employees' collective bargaining rights, soften the blow to displaced workers, and make pensions portable.
* sigh *
But since that time, Virginia, Oversight Hearings in Congress have disappeared from the earth - like the unicorn. No one has actually seen one (although you still can hear tales of them in the halls of the Capitol). Nowadays, what you might see is merely the ghost of an Oversight Hearing - sort of a phantom of a once-powerful, feared and respected presence in Washington. Oversight Hearings have been gone so long that even way back in 1998, Robert Weissman wrote
The Subcommittee on Workforce Protections has used its authority to hold hearings attacking virtually every aspect of the functioning of OSHA. With 12 witnesses at two OSHA hearings, the subcommittee heard from the head of OSHA, a single labor representative, and ten industry witnesses.
And, sadly, it's only gotten worse since then. It's not surprising, really. You see, Virginia, nowadays Congress wants us to make believe that the only scary thing that's out there is -
TERRORISTS! BOO!
No, those Congressmen and Congresswomen don't want you to go worrying your pretty little head about warrantless domestic spying, bankruptcy laws, the selling off of our national parks and forests, corruption, unbridled executive power, election irregularities, breaches of national security, torture, secret prisons, mine safety, or New Orleans disappearing. No one's going to make any waves about any of that, sweetie-pie. You can trust Republican Representative Ray LaHood when he says,
"We're not about to go out and look beneath a bunch of rocks to try to cause heartburn."
That's right - we don't want anybody having to look under nasty, stinking rockses, isn't that right, sunshine?
Now, sweetie, I know it seemed like there were still Oversight Hearings when President Clinton was in office. But those were just pretend hearings, see? You see, when President Clinton was in office, the silly Republicans in Congress just loved to watch him run around like a crazy person, for no reason! Those sillies! Why, just think,
Republicans in the House [during the Clinton administration] took more than 140 hours of testimony to investigate whether the Clinton White House misused its holiday card database but less than five hours of testimony regarding how the Bush administration treated Iraqi detainees.
[snip]
Republicans investigated whether the Clinton administration sold burial plots in Arlington National Cemetery for campaign contributions. They examined whether the White House doctored videotapes of coffees attended by President Clinton. They spent two years investigating who hired Craig Livingstone, the former director of the White House security office. And they looked at whether President Clinton designated coal-rich land in Utah as a national monument because political donors with Indonesian coal interests might benefit from reductions in U.S. coal production.
Silly, silly, silly Republicans!
[D]uring the Clinton administration [snip] [the] government reform panel alone, for example, issued 1,052 subpoenas related to investigations of the Clinton administration and the Democratic National Committee from 1997 to 2002, and only 11 subpoenas related to allegations of Republican abuse.
The panel received more than 2 million pages of documents and heard from 44 Clinton administration officials, including two White House chiefs of staff, according to statistics culled by Democratic staff on the Government Reform Committee.
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has found that from October 1996 to March 1998 [a period of 18 months] -- well before the impeachment hearings -- the Clinton White House staff had spent more than 55,000 hours responding to more than 300 congressional requests, and had produced hundreds of video and audio tapes, along with hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, to congressional investigators.
''When Clinton was in office, there wasn't an issue too small to hold a hearing on and embarrass the Democrats," said Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the Government Reform Committee. ''Now, there isn't a scandal big enough to ignore."
Ahhhh -
So, Virginia, you just lay your pretty little head on that pillow and go to sleep, and dream of Oversight Hearings - Hearings filled with substance, and significance, and accountability, and truth-telling. Dream of your representatives looking out for your interests, standing guard against the dark forces who want to come and take from you the things you care about, the things that matter. Dream of them standing up to executive branch bullying and stonewalling and lying, and dream of them not resting until you and the freedoms that our country's founders fought and died for more than 200 years ago, are safe and not threatened from within.
Sleep well, my little one. I pray that some day, your dreams will come true.