Trump Isn ’t Only “Constitutional Crisis” Afflicting Congressional Oversight

Earlier this week,Vox ’s Sean Illing asked 10 law professors whether President Trump ’s sweeping refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators has plunged the nation into “a constitutional crisis.”  I recommend the article, and I also observe that I’m 100% on Congress’s side regarding the legitimacy of its information queries. Indeed, I’m with my colleague Gene Healy, who has rightfullyTweeted that, “#ExecutivePrivilege is something judges just made up out of penumbras and emanations of Article II.”For this post, however, I argue that congressional oversight,per se, is in its own state of “constitutional crisis” wholly independent from Trump. Specifically, I will make two claims. First, I explain why congressional oversight always has been sub-optimal. Then, I explain why contemporary oversight is acutely awful.Even decades ago, when Members of Congress were policy savants relative to now, congressional oversight was known as the body ’s “neglected duty.” In a famous 1984article, Professors Mathew McCubbins and Thomas Schwartz lent a conceptual framework to explain this inadequacy. Their core insight was to identify two types of congressional behavior regarding oversight. The first was the “police patrol,” which describes ongoing monitoring of the law’s execution. The second type was “fire alarm” oversight, by which the professors meant that lawmakers snap to attention only when hot-button issues become sufficiently politicized.Q...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs