⇒ Congressional committees are the focus of Congress’ oversight function. Members of the executive branch can be questioned and held accountable (e.g. committee created to look into the Iran-contra scandal and an intelligence committee was created to look at the findings of the CIA and it reported there were no WMDs in Iraq)
⇒ Standing committees have expertise (e.g. Senator Patrick lee has been on the Judicial Committee for 36 years)
⇒ Senate confirms Presidential appointments (e.g. Marco Rubio interviewed Rex Tillerson and asked controversial questions about his relationship with Russia)
⇒ Congress have the power to veto the President and can override the residents veto (e.g. Congress veto overrode Bush’s Medicare veto, 2008)
⇒ Divided government - oversight tends to be stringent and act like a watchdog (e.g. Democrats investigated the scandal over the healthcare provided for war veterans at the Water reed medical centre)
⇒ United government - even with a united government there is still effective oversight (e.g. democrats held back money for Obama to close Guantanamo bay as they said there was no plan)
⇒ United government - when the President's own party is in Congress they are reluctant to embarrass the President with stringent oversight (e.g. Rubio voted in favour of Tillerson even though he said he had reservations)
⇒ Point-scoring - party representatives can base their opinions on who is in charge (e.g. in 2005, Obama said Justice Roberts was qualified to be a justice but voted against his nomination, then in 2016 the Rep Senate refused to hear Merrick Garland)
⇒ Congressional committees not always effective (e.g. John McCarthy had to be centured from the Senate after his behaviour as chair of a committee)
No
⇒ The parties do have bi-partisanship. In 2013, 87 Republican members of the house voted to end the government shutdown by voting for Obamacare. Also agreed the budget for the next 2 years
⇒ Only because of a lack of Republican support that Trump’s Obamacare repeal was pulled
Yes
⇒ Only because of partisanship that the government shutdown happened in the first place
⇒ Many of the laws that are passed are trivial because the parties cannot agree on more important bills (e.g. a bill was passed on what size coins were used to be used in the baseball national hall of fame, but no bills on gun reform or immigration)
⇒ The super-majorities needed to pass a bill are hard to achieve - the requirement of super-majorities was put in by the founding fathers to create an intentional negative bias
⇒ Also see our notes on: