Democrats likely to step up oversight efforts

The echo of the gavel from Room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building, the venue for Energy and Commerce Committee hearings, has reverberated as far away as Hong Kong. In early January, the head of America's toy-industry group traveled 8,000 miles from Washington to explain to Chinese manufacturers that a string of congressional hearings into recalls of such popular toys as Thomas the Tank Engine had pushed U.S. companies to set up a new safety regime.

When toy after toy was recalled last year, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., and his subcommittee lieutenants responded by hauling in industry representatives and government regulators to explain the safety problems. The hearings culminated in legislation -- still making its way through Congress -- aimed at tightening controls on toys.

"We have all suffered terribly from the events of the past six months, and it is in our mutual interest to join together to support a meaningful effort to restore and burnish the reputation of our industry," Carter Keithley, the president of the Toy Industry Association, told Chinese manufacturers at their Toys and Games Fair on January 9. "Our objective is to help our Congress adopt a practical law that improves toy safety but avoids unwarranted governmental involvement in the system."

As Democrats enter their second year in control of Congress's investigative and subpoena powers, industry groups are frequently taking such a cautiously cooperative stance in responding to the onslaught from watchdog committee chairmen. But executive branch officials have been more combative.

Back in Washington, for example, the Bush administration's chief regulator of toys offered a less positive assessment of the oversight drive. "Now, I don't want anyone to get me wrong in this: I'm all for appropriate congressional oversight of the executive branch," Nancy Nord, chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, told reporters at the National Press Club on January 7. "But an agency and an issue that has rarely been politicized -- consumer product safety -- found itself at the center of partisan politics last year. Even the presidential candidates were stepping all over each other to get part of the action."

To be sure, the new committee chairmen on Capitol Hill banged their gavels in 2007. And banged them. And banged them again. And it isn't just ousted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his decapitated Justice Department feeling the echo. A wide array of executive branch chiefs and corporate leaders -- from the State Department to the CIA to the Federal Communications Commission, and from Blackwater contractors in Iraq to credit card issuers in Delaware, to neighborhood grocery chains and toy stores -- are dealing with, or bracing for, the effects of congressional Democrats' aggressive oversight.

"2007 was a remarkable year for both congressional oversight and for congressional investigations," said Raymond Shepherd, a former Republican staff director of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. "The pace has been literally frenetic with, for example, Chairman Henry Waxman's Oversight Committee having four hearings in one week back in February. It's an impossible pace. If you look at the sheer numbers of hearings, the breadth and depth of those hearings has been remarkable."

Waxman, D-Calif., at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and other chairmen are promising to keep up the pace in 2008. They'll continue ongoing investigations -- and launch new ones -- into the Bush administration's anti-terrorism efforts and management of the Iraq war, and into regulatory matters affecting a host of industries. Furthermore, with a year of investigations already under their belts, the chairmen will be pushing a variety of legislative measures to restrict executive branch powers, revamp regulatory agencies, and address corporate misbehavior.

Although congressional leaders plan to tackle such big-ticket issues as economic stimulus and global warming, the expectations are low for lawmakers getting much significant legislation enacted in this decidedly political year. In many cases, differences between the parties and among interest groups make final passage problematic. And the hotly contested presidential election -- not to mention members' need to defend their own seats on the campaign trail -- shortens the window for wheeling and dealing. But Democrats will still be looking to burnish their record and score political points to boost their electoral prospects. So their oversight efforts could thus assume an even higher profile than in 2007.

"If anything, you'll see generally an increase in oversight hearings," said former Rep. Gerry Sikorski, D-Minn., an investigations specialist at the lobbying firm Holland & Knight. "It's an even-numbered year. Congress is going to be flushed out. The legislation all has to be reintroduced or forgotten, and so too the ongoing investigations will be flushed out. There's an incentive to get it done before the new Congress comes in."

The Change Theme

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., the chairman of Energy and Commerce's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, said that the Democratic Congress's oversight efforts feed into the populist sentiment for "change" that has resonated in the early presidential primaries. Voters want more transparency and accountability in the government, and more attention to consumer needs rather than corporate concerns, Stupak said. "They want someone who they feel will represent them and their views," he argued. "The economy is the No. 1 issue, not Iraq. What is the federal government doing to help them and help this economy?"

In the aftermath of several major food recalls over the last two years, Stupak said, his subcommittee has challenged importers and producers to tighten their safety procedures. He is pushing investigations into the Food and Drug Administration's approval of two drugs, Avandia and Ketek. He is also promoting legislation to prevent gasoline price-gouging and a measure to block companies from manipulating the energy market a la Enron. "You have this administration turning a blind eye to corporate America," Stupak contended.

Across other committees, chairmen are trying to paint a picture of an administration and a system of corporate governance in need of change. Stupak and Dingell's focus on corporate practices and the regulators who oversee them runs parallel to efforts by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, where Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and ranking member Norm Coleman, R-Minn., have probed exorbitant credit card fees, Medicaid fraud, disclosure of executive compensation, and energy market speculation. The House Financial Services Committee, headed by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and other panels have homed in on the subprime lending industry.

Meanwhile, both chambers' Armed Services and foreign affairs committees have pilloried the Bush administration for its handling of the Iraq war, and the Intelligence, Homeland Security, and Judiciary panels have challenged the administration's competence and adherence to the law in running the Justice and Homeland Security departments, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies. "My personal hope is that the president and other members of his administration will be prosecuted after they leave office," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. He believes that the administration has broken the law in pursuit of its anti-terrorism mission.

Targeting all of those areas -- and then some -- is oversight czar Waxman, whose committee has investigated a wide range of federal agencies and private-sector groups over the past year.

Witnesses before his committee have included Valerie Plame, the former CIA agent whose outing led to the prosecution of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff for obstruction of justice; Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, whose company is under investigation after its security personnel killed Iraqi civilians while on duty; and then-State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard, who resigned after testifying before Waxman.

"We approached our oversight responsibilities this past year, and we're going to continue in the future, on three overarching themes," Waxman said in an interview. "The first was to look at waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars; the second is to make sure the government is working for the people; and the third is to hold the government accountable."

Waxman is sure to attract huge national publicity next month when his committee hears from Roger Clemens and other Major League Baseball players who have been accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs. The chairman concedes that the topic falls outside his general themes, but he says it is worth pursuing because of the public health example that the players set for young athletes.

GOP lawmakers participate in the oversight efforts only on a case-by-case basis. At the leadership level, Republicans dismiss the Democrats' oversight as partisan politicking. On the Iraq war, the central issue of 2007, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., led their party's fight by arguing that Democrats' drive to impose congressional will on the mission could undermine military commanders. President Bush has joined the counteroffensive.

"Congress is not getting its work done," the president said in October, flanked by House Republican leaders at the White House. "The House of Representatives has wasted valuable time on a constant stream of investigations, and the Senate has wasted valuable time on an endless series of failed votes to pull our troops out of Iraq."

At the committee level, some oversight efforts have been bipartisan. One example is the attempt by the Appropriations and Transportation committees to block the Transportation Department from allowing more Mexican trucks onto U.S. roads. Waxman and his committee's ranking member, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., have cooperated on a number of investigations, including the baseball steroids issue and the Transportation Security Administration's ability to detect explosive devices during airport screening.

Committee Republicans have balked at other investigations, however. Davis slammed Waxman's review of the Bush administration's Council on Environmental Quality, which Democrats argue has let political considerations trump science. "An investigation that began as a bipartisan inquiry into the role of the Council on Environmental Quality in climate-change policy has veered into a partisan diatribe against the Bush administration," Davis complained in December.

Former staffer Shepherd said that a good measure of an investigation is whether both parties sign onto inquiry letters, and he noted that many letters were signed only by committee chairmen in 2007. "Whether it's oversight of the administration or investigating an industry or corporation, the easiest attack on the legitimacy of the endeavor is that it's a partisan attack, rather than a bipartisan investigation," Shepherd said. "Without that bipartisanship, it calls into question the investigation."

Some Republicans have launched their own inquiries. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a longtime oversight champion, is investigating televangelists' tax law compliance, and Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, is pushing a probe into allegations that U.S. employees of a contractor in Iraq were raped. Still, it is the Democratic chairmen who have the most oversight staff, the biggest investigation budgets, and the subpoena power. And it is their interests that could most likely lead to legislation clamping down on the administration or on industry.

The Fruits Of Oversight

Democratic oversight efforts have strongly influenced legislation making its way to the House and Senate floors this year. Because of probes by the Judiciary and Intelligence panels, for instance, pending legislation to overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act includes numerous provisions to broaden congressional review of the government's activities.

With Congress facing a February deadline to pass the legislation, Republicans are emphasizing the need for executive branch discretion to pursue anti-terrorism investigations. "We need to be careful that in redrafting FISA, we do not actually impede our intelligence collection in the name of congressional oversight," Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., a member of the Judiciary Committee, said on the Senate floor in December.

Waxman's investigations may lead to legislation requiring more competition and stepped-up oversight for federal government contracts, which have boomed from about $200 billion annually to more than $400 billion during the Bush administration. "We need to make sure the rampant increase in contracting we're doing in government services is done in as rational a manner as possible," Waxman said. "We're seeing an explosion of contracts where we're paying a lot of money and not getting what we bargained for."

Some of Waxman's contract reforms were included in the Defense authorization bill that Bush pocket vetoed for other reasons during Congress's holiday break; other proposals are included in pending legislation that the House passed earlier in 2007. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, pushed a similar bill through the Senate in December. Waxman said he will continue to review contracting activities this year. His committee has been investigating Halliburton since before he took over as chairman.

The Bush administration opposes congressional restrictions on executive branch contracting, as do the contractors. "The net thrust will be to add new regulations and hurdles to government acquisition," said Larry Allen, executive vice president of the Coalition for Government Procurement, a contractor trade group. Waxman did not pay enough attention to contractors' concerns last year, Allen said, although the chairman has agreed to speak to the trade group later this year. Allen predicts that contract oversight legislation has a 50-50 chance of passing in 2008.

In response to the toy-recall scandal, the House in December passed a bill crafted by Democrats and Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee to revise toy-safety standards and revamp the Consumer Product Safety Commission. A similar bill is moving through the Senate. The toy industry, however, has already moved to voluntarily enhance its safety testing.

Likewise, Stupak noted that several grocery chains pledged not to stock meat treated with carbon monoxide after his committee questioned the practice, and that nuclear labs changed some of their procedures after his panel's inquiries. "The thing I like about oversight and investigations is that you don't necessarily have to do legislation to get the results you want," Stupak said. "In a way, you're helping to educate the corporations and government on the way they're affecting the consumers and the public. The corporations want to stay on the side of angels, and we help them see where the angels are currently located."

Several credit card companies dropped some of their questionable billing practices in 2007 when the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations challenged them at a hearing. One consumer advocate dubbed the change of heart a "hearing conversion."

"People are changing their systems in response to consultants saying, 'You don't want your name brand dragged up in front of Henry Waxman or John Dingell and Bart Stupak,' " Sikorski said. "Besides, your children will not like to see your face on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, getting dinged for having lead in your Crock-Pot."

Meanwhile, Democrats will still devote considerable oversight attention to the Iraq war this year -- in part because they have failed to pass legislation forcing a change in the administration's policy.

The $100 billion Iraq funding package that Congress approved last May included a provision crafted by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., requiring the Bush administration to issue three sets of reports on the Iraqi government's progress toward functioning without the presence of U.S. forces. Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, appeared at several congressional hearings in September to deliver the first report, and he is scheduled to give lawmakers another update in March.

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., a key moderate member of the Senate Armed Services and Appropriations committees, wants Congress to direct similar reviews this year. "This is a situation where we have to constantly measure it, so we don't miss anything that's happening that's positive or anything that's falling back," Nelson said on January 9. "I'm fearful that in some ways it is falling behind."

The Spotlight's Reflection

Continuing the long-running tug-of-war over power between the legislative and executive branches, the Democratic chairmen will try to pull a little more rope their way in 2008. One measure of success for lawmakers thus far has been the number of executive branch officials who have stepped down or been forced out of their jobs over the past year, including the attorney general and many of his deputies, a controversial Federal Election Commission member, the head of the voting-rights section of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, and the State Department inspector general. Another measure is executive acquiescence to congressional demands, such as when NASA finally turned over air-safety data last fall.

Congress must push back against Bush's interpretations of executive power to reassert legislative branch supremacy, Nadler contended. "The Congress is supposed to be the most important branch," he said. "No executive in an English-speaking country has claimed such tyrannical power since the Magna Carta 800 years ago."

So far, though, the White House has successfully stood up to most of the Democratic Congress's attempts to impose its will on the executive branch. Some liberal advocacy groups say they are disappointed about the effectiveness of the oversight to date.

"Let's say they got a really slow start," said Caroline Frederickson, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington office. She contended that congressional reviews of the National Security Agency and the Justice and Homeland Security departments have been inadequate. "Congress and the White House are often reluctant to get into a dispute over relative powers and jurisdiction," she said. "I think they could dispense with some of the caution. The basic bottom line is the White House has so overstepped the boundaries of what the role of the executive is that if Congress doesn't push back, they will be setting a precedent that will be lasting and that will be ultimately hard to undo."

One high-profile oversight showdown looms large: Contempt charges are pending in the House against White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former Counsel Harriet Miers after they refused to give sworn testimony to the Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., about the U.S. attorney firings scandal that cost Gonzales his job.

Even if the House votes for contempt, the administration would brush off any push for prosecution. "Congressional Democrats have ensured that they will be remembered for pointless investigations instead of much-needed legislation," White House press secretary Dana Perino said on December 12, when the Senate Judiciary Committee also approved contempt proceedings.

Similarly, Republican lawmakers question the value of the onslaught of congressional hearings -- and the legislation that has resulted. The GOP has sought to paint Democrats as intent on increasing taxes, regulation, and government control. When Dingell, for example, proposed a set of user fees to fund a tougher food-safety system, Republicans issued a familiar criticism. "I think that we've reminded voters that the majority really does believe in bigger government, more taxes, and more control here in Washington," Boehner said at a December 19 year-end news conference. "And we've stood up to them every step of the way, as they've tried to build a bigger government and have higher taxes here in Washington."

Nord, the Consumer Product Safety Commission chairwoman, offered an unsolicited warning to the committee chairmen in her Press Club speech. "While using the CPSC as a political tool may yield some short-term gains -- both for the politicians who use us this way, as well as, actually, for the bottom line of the agency -- I think in the long run this is not a good trend and will ultimately disserve the American people," she said.

Even such critics sometimes benefit from the spotlight. As Nord hinted in her aside, the CPSC got a $17 million budget boost in the annual appropriations bill that Congress approved after the oversight hearings that highlighted her agency's challenges.