By Jaimini Patel, Leigh Ann McDaniel,
Mary Latimer, and Ben Poss
Methods that Congress use to
oversee the bureaucracy
• Congress’ ability to eliminate
uncooperative agencies
• Controls over money
Congress’ ability to eliminate
uncooperative agencies
• Congress has the power to create agencies
and eliminate them.
• No agency can exist without Congress’
approval
• This is very extreme, since Congress relies on
agencies to implement their laws.
Controls over money
• Congress has to authorize spending
• Spending authorization can either be
permanent, yearly, a fixed period, or program
• Congress has more control over agencies
when they have to authorize it yearly
Control of appropriations bills
• No money can be spent by the bureaucracy
without an appropriations bill.
• The agencies submit requests for spending
plans which eventually become appropriations
bills for them in the yearly budget.
• Congress could oversee the bureaucracy by
editing their spending requests.
• http://appropriations.house.gov/
Ineffective Oversight
• Congressional Investigations
• Legislative Veto
Congressional Investigations
• Investigations may be conducted by either
select or standing committees, or both
• During the 9/11 investigation of Department
of Homeland Security, they had to report to 86
different committees and subcommittees.
• This may become excessive and rarely do any
good.
Legislative Veto
• Legislative Veto was a requirement that an
executive decision stay in Congress for a
certain amount of time.
• Congress could veto the decision by passing a
resolution of disapproval.
• This manner of congressional oversight is
ineffective because it was declared
unconstitutional in the Supreme court case
INS v. Chadha.
Works Cited
• http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/
1549/
• Youtube.com
• Hippocampus.com