What Congress is Doing
March 20, 2007
Here are a couple examples of alarming things that were happening during the Bush Administration that we did not know or would never have found out about until we had Congressional Oversight:
FBI Abuses of Spying - This should send chilling reminders of COINTELPRO
Attorney General firing judges who pursued corruption investigations against Republicans
Here are a few things that could possibly have been prevented if there had been Congressional Oversight before this year:
Patriot Act
Warrantless wiretapping
Secret monitoring of Bank Accounts
The Democrats are now the Majority Party in the Senate and the House of Representatives, due to the result of the elections this past November. Now that they have been in for a couple of months (they were elected in November 2006 but not officially sworn in until 4 Jan 2007), you are beginning to see some differences in how things are working.
The act of exposing and acting as a check and balance within the government is called oversight (when done by Congress, it is Congressional Oversight). That is something we haven’t seen since 2000. What this means is that there is now one branch that can look over the shoulder of the other two. There is someone there to hit the brakes on crazy or dangerous governmental intentions. There is a way now for people to be able to see what is happening in our government and not be stonewalled in the name of national security or not needing to know.
A concept key to how our government works is called Checks and Balances. This basically means that each branch of government (in the U.S., the branches are: Executive (President), Legislative (Senate & House), Judicial (Supreme Court)) has a way to keep the other branches in check and keep power evenly balanced between the branches. If all three branches of government are operating checking and balancing one another, no one branch should dominate the other two. When this is not case, it can lead to terrible things.
Since 2000 when G. W. Bush took office, we have been experiencing governance without checks and balances. The Republican-led Congress laid down for whatever the Republican President said or demanded. The conservative-leaning Supreme Court, which installed Bush, also sat by idly. That changed with the 2006 election, and now we have a situation where there is a Republican President and a conservative Supreme Court, but there is a Democratic House and Senate, meaning that we are no longer effectively a one-party system.
This is important to understand because understanding how and why things happen the way they do is key to understanding how to make things happen in ways that we want. I believe that we are only scratching the surface when it comes to all of the shady stuff we may find out about that has been going on over the past 6 years. I am also afraid that it will take longer for the Democrats to undo what it only took the Republicans 6 years to do. Thank God they have started down this long road.
So the next time that you or someone asks, “What’s this Congress doing?” You can say, “Their Job.”
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3 Responses to “What Congress is Doing”
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I know you somewhat mentioned it, but I think especially important in this discussion of checks and balances is W’s placement of his boys to do his ignorant bidding not just in the supreme court, but in all levels of government. John Bolton, for example, one of the most influential men in the world right now, was streamlined into his position because he took orders well. He’s certainly produced at the cost of the people. Today it was confirmed that the US iron fisted efforts to call a ceasefire in the Lebanese/Israeli conflict last summer in order to stamp out Hezbollah, even though we trained and resourced Hezbollah for years. You’ll remember that this conflict was the beginning of the recent Iran conversations. Not a coinky dink.
Those of you who may say, well everybody puts their folks in office, thats why you try and win the presidency… I gotchu. But trust me when I say, no president, even W’s dad, has ever surrounded himself with just yes-sayers to this extent. No president has ever gone to war without ever speaking with the veterans in congress accross aisles. Bush and Rove and all the neo-cons learned how to play the game well, without respect for the ethics of checks and balances– but thats because they were focused on the game itself, not caring about its outcomes, nor what checks and balances are there for… US.
You’re absolutely right when you say that we need to understand these checks and balances to know how to use them for what WE want. But also, as we look at institutional/government checks and balances let us not forget that this country was founded on two other checks and balances that have never reached their full potential for the majority of us in this country– voting and the media. The media has known about all of this for as long as its been going on, they knew about Abu Gharib before it came out, they knew there were no WMDs, they knew that the 2000 election was a fraud, the list could go on. The mainstream media knew about all of this and did nothing because Bush/Rove/NeoCons looked beyond just our governmental checks and balances and mapped their allies into societal checks and balances as well.
Thank you Anonymous, very well stated.
Calling out the media for what it is, a check and a balance, represents a way of thinking about media that has not truly been seen in the country since Thomas Paine. At that time, the media was used as a vehicle for change, not simply one for consumption. Seeing media as a change agent forces you to take a more critical perspective not only of the media itself, but of the issues and events that the media addresses.
This thinking is at the foundationof the Media Reform Movement. It is thinking that seeks to reject compromised (not just corporate) media in favor of media outlets that are more transparent and less likely to sacrifice their integrity.
In order to make these sorts of efforts sustainable, we have to support them. Try watching your local TV network one night a week instead of American Idol. Try listening to a local talk radio station instead of some BS Top 40, recycled-playlist-playing music station.
We have to support people making changes in order to make those changes permanent.
[...] against it), the “war” on terror (fighting to hold the Executive branch accountable for warrantless wiretapping), the Patriot Act (only Senator to actually read it, voted against it), [...]