Oversight in the Internet Era

Should an electoral tidal wave engulf Republicans in this year's Congressional elections, Scot Faulkner's 2008 book Naked Emperors: The Failure of the Republican Revolution likely will become required reading for activists as they stage the expected turnaround attempt that occurs every 4 to 8 years. But the points made by my friend Scot Faulkner about the failure of Congressional and Executive Branch oversight are totally applicable to both parties, signaling the potential for deep disappointment in failing to overcome many challenges unless the changes he recommends take root.

America's House of Representatives, Senate and the Executive Branch have been held up around the world as beacons of freedom, democracy and good governance. But Faulkner's insider's account paints a less-than-flattering picture, of sausage being made, mostly unsuccessfully, amid zipper-problems and ego trips.

Faulkner, a "Reaganite" has since been working for both party candidates in local campaigns, and offers a wealth of information and perspective on the near-absence of oversight, the perfunctory hearings with canned questions and even more canned and sometimes made-for-CSPAN answers. The book perceptively captures the dismay many feel about the listless oversight in the Congress during the leadership of both parties, and many in the Executive Branch most keen for business-as-usual. So how can huge challenges like ensuring affordable access to health care, reforming social security, overcoming the recession, the sub-prime lending crisis etc. be managed with those weak 18th century instruments for 21st century problems. That is the crux of the fascinating overview provided by Faulkner, who was the first Chief Administrative Officer of the US House of Representatives, until his self-described hounding out. The book's diagnosis is that the probability of major change/reform is miniscule. Towards the end, Faulkner offers suggestions for reform, including electronic means of oversight.

Recent experience with oversight of US contributions to multilaterals can be the backdrop of Faulkner's systemic discussion. Massive corruption in projects running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, provision of substandard medical products to patients, and other documented theft were featured in thousands of newspapers around the world.

Those highlight the stalled state of institutional reform and oversight on structures to combat corruption. The annual $1 billion US contribution to the World Bank Group, for instance, involves the US Treasury but there have been a series of managerial changes at Assistant Secretary and Under Secretary level during the past 8 years with no one apparently having had any interest in multilateral institution reform since then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. In the Congress, oversight is by the Appropriations Foreign Operations Sub-Committees that is chaired by Senator Patrick Leahy. Because he also chairs the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy logically would be the person to exercise oversight and schedule a hearing, but no hearing on such matters appears to have been held since a session in 1998, when a General Accountability Office report was commissioned by Senator Leahy, Senator Mitch McConnell, now the Republican Leader, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the current Speaker of the US House of Representatives. But thereafter, none of them appears to have followed-up.

When he was the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Lugar held several hearings until 2005 in which some estimates were presented that corruption may amount to as large a figure as $100 billion. Later, amid Senate approval and widespread media praise, Senator Evan Bayh, a much acclaimed potential Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate and key Banking Sub-Committee Chair, publicly sought a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study on the World Bank -- "independent assessment to gauge the impact of corruption on international development assistance" -- and the Senate voted 81-12 for the version that included it.

But when the final Appropriations bill was passed and signed into law, it did not include the study since it had been eliminated, and a Director at the GAO, which is the investigative arm of the US Congress, confirmed to me in writing that the study had indeed not been part of the final bill and hence would not be conducted.

Thus, the current klieg-lights and CSPAN culture may be, at best, only one component of comprehensive oversight, and may hardly be representative of the Internet era. In view of those limitations and constraints on old-fashioned oversight, the Blog has begun to help secure a voice in oversight. Such initiatives, in addition to boosting Congressional and Executive Branch oversight, can help in learning across many boundaries, especially on foreign affairs and foreign assistance, now among the leading issues in every presidential campaign, and can also add to the insights needed for wiser policy decisions and managerial change.

Read more about Scot Faulkner's book here or at his website.

Comments

[FT882003]

Interesting example. Do you think that the effectiveness or lack of it on the part of Senator Evan Bayh might become a campaign issue should he be the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate?

[realitytrumpsbull]

It's called 'a racket'. 9.25 and counting...

[Silpat]

Stifling free speech is not what America is about.

Funny, this didn't come up until Murdoch and the Clintons realized that they couldn't sway the election this time around.