Congressional Oversight of the Department of Defense: Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdom

Abstract

Observers often complain that Congress slights defense oversight. Their conclusions, however, are typically based on the assumption that the House and Senate will act like bureaucracies capable of comprehensive, systematic, and dispassionate oversight. Yet Congress is a political institution, and its ability to oversee defense issues is limited by its institutional makeup and by the nature of defense policy. As a result, the tendency to treat Congress as if it were a bureaucracy produces inflated expectations about congressional oversight. It also obscures the incentives that encourage legislators to conduct oversight-namely, parochialism, ambition, and duty. Although Congress does more oversight than critics acknowledge, congressional oversight is not flawless. Most reform proposals focus on structural changes at the Pentagon or on Capitol Hill. The key to improving congressional oversight, however, lies in reducing the ideological bias of the defense committees.