The Quest for Accountability in Congress

...Each study attacks this process as an evil, without attempting to explain the political reasons for its existence: Congress is a political institution, a forge for compromises, and its members try always to reserve maximum flexibility for themselves...

...but for them, too, the bond between going to the polls every two or six years and getting a better public life is remote at best...

...Only one book conveys a sense of a committee's history and evolution: David Price, project director for The Commerce Committees, is the only scholar o? Congress among t he authors...

...he wrote his thesis, Who Makes the Laws?, on Commerce and other Senate committees during the Great Society period...

...No matter how ambiguous the language, Government agencies act under a legislative mandate— in the case of the Forest Service, to manage the nation's public forests for "multiple use and sustained yield"— against which Congress, the executive, or common citizens through litigation may judge their actual policies and behavior...

...Nader nevertheless maintains a special relationship with Capitol Hill...

...Laws passed by Congress now embody the initiatives spawned by his earliest enthusiasms: an agency to recall unsafe cars, an office to monitor gas pipeline safety, strict regulations to remove tainted meat from the market...

...These are political matters, not technical issues of public policy...

...Like other Nader reports, the Congress Project committee studies inquire into policy matters: how can government be made to distribute the benefits of its activities—the business of public policy—in a more " p u b l i c " way...

...So the success of reform lies in enlisting the energies of an aroused public of voters...

...At the end of each volume, project directors prescribe reforms...

...Because the Congress Project studied Congress only during 1972, there is no "longitudinal" data—that is, material over time—and the case studies illustrate Congress as it was, not as it is...

...The research for these volumes ended in 1972...

...open committee meetings and more "oversight," and subcommittee autonomy...

...They too can a s k , ' 'What's in it for me...

...It i s ' 'responsible,'' not as a corporate entity, but in 535 pieces, to more than a hundred million eligible voters...

...Why read them out of the "consumer' ' canon...

...These six huge volumes on Congress and its committees comprise the Nader associates' largest single commitment to print other than the twenty to thirtypage "profiles" of each of the 100 Senators and 435 Representatives released just before the 1972 election...

...These books provide neither the incentive which can motivate members of Congress to visit reform upon themselves, nor the invitation to the electorate to mobilize to force reform upon their representatives by making it electorally attractive...

...Open meetings slow the already glacial pace of Congressional work...

...If the outcome of its work seems to some too conservative, or too liberal, that is a political matter, not a legal one...

...These books on Congressional committees show no understanding of this simple reality...

...Only The Judiciary Committees is available in papierback...

...There would seem to be important publics interested in each of these...

...It was there, in Senator Abraham Ribicoff s spectacular General Motors hearings, that Ralph Nader became a public figure, and he continues to be kindly received...

...And what's in it for m e ?" Members operate with a sharp eye to electoral success, and they regard critically proposals which reduce their freedom to maneuver...

...Though throughout this decade no President has embraced his ideas, from Nader's perspective only a few stubborn, senile committee chairmen keep Congress from hatching into law a clutch of his favorite bills...

...Its " m a n d a t e " is in the Constitution...

...To borrow from the Nader lexicon, where executive mis-, mal-, or nonfeasance appears, Congress is an unindicted co-conspirator...

...And why do the Nader associates not study the Government Operations Committees, the Post Office and Civil Service Committees, the Veterans Affairs Committees, the committees responsible for small business, the aged, education, labor, and public welfare, or the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and the Joint Economic Committee...

...There is nothing here to attract a member of Congress to reform...

...Like that walrus of an airplane, the Congress Project suffered cost overruns, its design was modified endlessly while it was being manufactured—and the final product is likely to damage its engineer's reputation...

...Each study group is so immersed in " i t s " committees' "broad scoped'' jurisdictions, and in strategies for their "transitionalist" periods of reform, that it loses sight of Congress and its workings as a whole...

...Increased subcommittee autonomy translates into greater odds against the whole House or Senate accepting a committee bill, reducing further Congressional "productivity" which the Nader researchers already find shockingly low...

...The magnitude of the present volumes' shortcomings demands a review of two institutions, Congress and Nader...

...The costs of these reforms are nowhere considered...

...Changing the process implies changing its purposes...

...Even if they were current, the committee studies are organized and written in a manner which defies understanding...

...And oversight frequently degenerates into headline-grabbing as members, particularly liberals, are seduced by opportunities to draw media attention to themselves, at the expense of careful legislative work and cultivating support for bills, work which is less visible and "sexy...

...To effect change, Nader must provide incentives for change...

...There are other obstacles to eliciting citizen support through these books...

...Nor, sad to say, is there a great deal for the interested citizen...

...If a Nader researcher asks a Representative or Senator, "How can you and I help Congress to make better public policy...

...Many of t he men and women described in these volumes are now retired, defeated, or deceased...

...John 5. Rosenberg is a student of Congress and a free-lance writer based in Washington, D.C...

...Common to all the books are calls for mandatory rotation of committee assignments to avoid domination of Congress by Southern septuagenarians from safe seats...

...not surprisingly, in most cases, important decisions are reached in private, where they are heavily influenced by lobbyists for private interests or executive agencies...

...Only one, The Judiciary Committees, under t h e direction of Peter H. Schuck, succeeds in drawing a portrait of committees by reviewing each of the committees' areas of jurisdiction...

...By authorizing publication of these books, Nader renounces a most important part of his audience in Washington—the Congress—without yet summoning a new constituency from the nation beyond...

...It is only natural that Ralph Nader's quest for "accountable" public institutions throughout America led him to " r a i d " Congress...

...Most of the other volumes latch onto a few bills, describe t h em in detail that would exhaust a lobbyist being briefed by Ralph Nader himself, and then say, "That's what this committee does...

...What of Congress...

...Some years after the first blitzkriegs investigating Federal regulatory agencies— the Federal Trade Commission Report, The Chemical Feast, The Interstate Commerce Commission—it is now evident that they fail to regulate because Congress demands so little of itself when it drafts bills to establish new agents of government and that it then neglects overseeing their organization and operations...

...Most of them consist of long "case studies" of various bills meandering through Congress...

...In fact, Southern seats are becoming progressively less safe as Republican competition returns to the areas, and—fine irony—it is urban liberals who are now accumulating seniority...

...The six volumes cost $90 a set...

...But to address this question to Congress, or to a member of Congress, is not at all the same thing a s to ask it of a body such as the Forest Service...

...Or rather, they exhort Congress to reform itself...

...Because the books rarely generalize or draw any theoretical conclusions, the great mass of the materials they contain is obsolete and useless...

...By design, it provides the single locus of power outside routine channels of authority, beyond normal policy formulation and review, in our system of government...

...the Representative or Senator can respond without compunction, "Better how...

...This would seem an appropriate moment for Nader to pause, to evaluate his programs, and—to test the support for his ideas—to consider his political options, including {Jiose of endorsing candidates, or of becoming one...