Reform Thyself

The 9/11 commissioners not only produced a best-selling report, but their recommendations have prodded Congress to conduct some homework during its August recess. In addition to holding congressional hearings to probe possible structural changes to the intelligence community, Senate leadership set up a working group to examine its own structure and come up with ways the Senate can improve intelligence and homeland security oversight.

Congressional reform was one of three key recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, a prerequisite for ensuring that its proposals for creating a powerful national intelligence director and a national counterterrorism center succeed.

Because congressional reform means tinkering with existing jurisdictional fiefdoms, turf battles appear inevitable. So in an apparent attempt to head off these fights, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) tapped 22 powerful Senate members to look at ways its committee structure can be reshuffled for better oversight of intelligence and homeland security.

Members of the working group include Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell Jr. (R-Ky.) and Minority Whip Harry Reid (D-Nev.), along with the chairmen and top Democrats of the Senate Appropriations, Armed Services, Foreign Relations, Governmental Affairs, Intelligence, and Rules Committees. These committees would be affected by any restructuring.

Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Sen. Susan M. Collins (R-Maine) sees the working group as "an opportunity for us in the Senate to prove that there really are no turf battles here and no protection of personal interests, but that our paramount goal is to do the work we are charged with doing to make this country safer."

At press time, the group was set to begin work when Congress returned from its August recess. A Daschle spokesman says the "goal is to have the working group's recommendations delivered to the leadership sometime in September" before Congress adjourns in early October. The group, he says, is tasked with assessing and making recommendations on congressional oversight of intelligence and of homeland security, and on expediting the nomination process for national security appointees.

IN ITS REPORT, the 9/11 Commission described congressional oversight as "dysfunctional" and strengthening it "among the most difficult and important" of its recommendations. Current House and Senate Select Intelligence Committees lack "the power, influence, and sustained capability" to provide effective oversight, the commission said.

In his Aug. 2 announcement of the creation of a powerful intelligence director and a counterterrorism center, President George W. Bush "strongly agreed" with the 9/11 Commission's "recommendation that ... oversight of intelligence and of the homeland security must be restructured and made more effective."

"Tinkering with the existing structure is not sufficient," the commissioners concluded. They recommended either the creation of a joint House-Senate intelligence committee along the lines of the former Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, or the creation of an intelligence committee in each chamber with combined authorization and appropriation powers.

The commissioners also recommended that only a small number of members, perhaps seven to nine, be appointed to either the joint or separate committees. This is far fewer than the 20 members serving on the current House panel and 17 serving on the Senate counterpart.

In contrast to the six- or eight-year assignments that House and Senate panel members have had, appointed members of the newly formed committee or committees should serve indefinitely, the commissioners suggested. This would give them "the time and reason to master the subject and the agencies ... and be clearly accountable for their work."

To beef up homeland security oversight, the commission recommended the creation of a single permanent homeland security committee in each chamber. At present, only the Select Committee on Homeland Security exists in the House. The Senate has a plethora of committees, each with jurisdiction over some facet of homeland security.

Dan Byman, a Brookings Institution scholar, views the formation of a joint intelligence committee as "a perfectly reasonable way to go. It may be the most efficient way to reform Congress's oversight function."

However, a government specialist at the Congressional Research Service, Frederick M. Kaiser, writes in an Aug. 25 report: "Critics of the proposal for replacing the current House and Senate intelligence committees with a single joint committee contend that it would weaken oversight and compromise a fundamental feature of the Congress, namely, two different (and sometimes competing) bodies."

James Carafano, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, claims there are ways to correct the problems cited by the 9/11 Commission other than centralizing all responsibility for oversight and appropriations under a joint committee or separate committees in the House and Senate. "No one has convinced me that overcentralization is the right answer." What would "be the check and balance if a single committee had the responsibility for oversight and appropriations?" he asks.

Carafano would like "to see a fuller debate on this." But, he fears, "Congress is likely to do something just to claim it has done something." It is, he contends, "just as egregious to move too quickly as it is foolish not to move at all."