The sense of that term is that enough laws have been passed, enough Big Issues confronted and it is now time for a pause. They will go back and study what they have wrought. The truth of the matter is that oversight is one of the lesser understood and least exercised functions of Congress. It is overseeing the functions of government and the actions of its officials. In a word, it is investigation.
All congressional committees have an oversight role, but few take it seriously.
At noon on Jan. 3 for the first time since 1953, John E. Moss was no longer the representative from California s 3rd District. For if this is in fact the Oversight Congress, as its leaders have proclaimed, Moss would have been in hog heaven had he stayed. In many ways, at least in recent times, John Moss had to be considered the inventor of oversight. For two decades, his subcommittee investigations put a relentless light on almost every imaginable kind of federal and corporate misdeed. Moss flayed, groused, flayed, pestered and then flayed some more as he charged along on his legislative Rocinante.