A fundamental objective of congressional oversight is to hold executive officials accountable for the implementation of delegated authority. This objective is especially important given the huge expansion of executive influence in the modern era. If the Founding Fathers returned to observe their handiwork, they would likely be surprised by such developments as the creation of a "presidential branch" of government (the Office of Management and Budget, the National Security Council, and the like) and the establishment of so many federal departments and agencies. From three departments in 1789 (State, Treasury, and War, renamed Defense in 1947), a dozen more have been added to the cabinet. The newest creation, in 2002, is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Formed from the merger of 22 separate executive branch units, it employees roughly 180,000 people. Contemporary presidents have expressed some concern about the size and reach of the national government. In his 1981 inaugural address, for instance, President Ronald Reagan declared that "government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." Fifteen years later, in his State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton exclaimed, "The era of big government is over." Needless to say, the era of big government is back, if it ever went away. Under presidents of both parties, the national government continues to grow. The administration of Republican President George W. Bush witnessed substantial governmental growth, partially triggered by new domestic security, law enforcement, and military requirements after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. As journalist David S. Broder concluded, President Bush presided over one of the largest expansions of government in history. "He has created a mammoth Cabinet department [DHS], increased federal spending, imposed new federal rules on local and state governments, and injected federal requirements into every public school in America." President Bush also initiated the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)—a major governmental intervention in the private sector—as part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act ( P.L. 110-343 ). TARP was authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in "troubled" real estate and other assets following a nationwide financial meltdown in numerous business enterprises. Democratic President Barack Obama took office in the midst of the most serious national economic crisis since the Great Depression. Regularly, the news media spotlighted such stories as the hikes in joblessness, home foreclosures, or plant closings. As a result, the government intervened dramatically in the marketplace. Trillions of dollars were committed to revive the ailing economy and prevent the recession from spiraling downward into another depression. "Not since Lyndon B. Johnson," wrote a congressional journalist, has a president like Obama "moved to expand the role of government so much on so many fronts—and with such a sense of urgency." In short, the probabilities of any major retrenchment or rollback in the role and scope of the federal government seem remote. Hence the importance of Congress exercising its implicit constitutional prerogative to check the delegated authority that it grants to federal departments and agencies. The goals of this report, then, are essentially six-fold: (1) highlight several reasons for the expansion of the role and reach of government; (2) discuss a few definitions of oversight; (3) spotlight three essential purposes of oversight; (4) comment upon a few oversight laws and rules; (5) review several important oversight techniques; and (6) identify several incentives and disincentives to the conduct of congressional oversight. The report concludes with summary observations. "The role of government in a free society must be a matter of continuous negotiation among members of the public," wrote Princeton Professor Michael Walzer. This fundamental idea is the essence of self-government by the people through their elected representatives. From the beginning, our Founding Fathers argued about the role of the national government. Their basic argument continues to this day. Two schools of thought emerged during this early period, one articulated by Thomas Jefferson and the other by Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson was an advocate of limited government: "That government governs best that governs least." Government closest to the people—state and local units—is to be preferred, according to Jefferson, to a robust and remote national government. As Jefferson said in his March 4, 1801, inaugural address: Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. President Jefferson, however, was not reluctant to use the government to double the size of the country with the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson's rival, Alexander Hamilton, favored a strong national government and an energetic chief executive as essential if the new nation was to survive and prosper. A proponent of the implied powers of government, Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 31 : "A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trust for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people." Hamilton's philosophy, in brief, was that the national government could be a positive instrument for addressing common problems that no individual or locality could resolve by itself, such as maintaining a strong defense against foreign adversaries or creating a national currency. As Abraham Lincoln put it, "Government is people coming together collectively to do that which they could not do as well, or at all, individually." Fast forward to the contemporary era and it appears evident that the Hamiltonian view has largely prevailed over the Jeffersonian perspective. To be sure, Jefferson's ideas of limited government and states' rights resonate powerfully with millions of Americans including lawmakers, analysts, scholars, and others. Yet their actions often belie their words. Today's yeoman farmers might say they dislike or even resent big government, but they strongly support farm subsidies. Many people, it seems, are ideologically conservative but operationally liberal. On the one hand, they may emotionally view government as a necessary evil, but personally they support federal programs that benefit them, and even welcome the government's expansion in various areas (security from terrorist attacks, protection of the environment, and so on). The fundamental reality is that the national government has taken on increasingly numerous functions and responsibilities throughout American history. The 20 th century—from the Progressive era to World War I, from the New Deal to the Great Society—witnessed a huge increase in the size and power of government. Its expansion was driven by a number of factors. Domestic and international crises have expanded the reach of the government. Wars, for example, threaten the nation itself, and the government often accrues new and expanded prerogatives to protect the country. The intelligence community, as an example, grew rapidly during the Cold War as the United States of America faced a major threat from a nuclear-armed superpower rival: the Soviet Union. The internationalization of numerous domestic issues—trade, the environment, immigration, drug trafficking, and more—often requires a federal response for their resolution. Complexity is another factor the promotes governmental growth. New issues and problems constantly arise that call for governmental action, such as food safety or national preparedness in the event of an epidemic or pandemic (H1N1, the swine flu virus, for instance). Many national programs, moreover, are crosscutting—that is, more than one federal agency, jurisdiction, and, in some cases, international organizations are engaged in policy implementation—which adds to the complexness of determining how or what the government is doing. To be sure, a nation with over 300 million people creates a variety of federal issues (civil rights, financial turmoil, high unemployment, and so on). Even when issues have been traditionally under the purview of states and localities, such as education, it does not mean that they are exclusively state and local responsibilities. In brief, a host of military, economic, and social challenges, along with many other factors (industrialization, globalization, scientific and technological developments, public demand, and more), all contributed to the large expansion in the size and reach of the federal government. Given today's large federal establishment, congressional oversight is more important than ever in ensuring that the federal government functions economically, efficiently, and effectively. The American public's traditional and usually healthy skepticism about concentrating power in government underscores the legislative review function's significant role in holding federal agencies and officials accountable for their actions and decisions. To determine the quantity and quality of legislative oversight is not an easy assignment, however. Different definitions of oversight influence perspectives on the adequacy of the review function. Oversight has two basic dictionary meanings. First, it denotes some form of legislative "supervision" or "watchfulness" of delegated authority to executive branch entities and officials. It is this general definition that orients the focus of this report. The second meaning of oversight implies a "failure to notice"—something that is overlooked or inadvertently omitted. Ironically, the two definitions may sometimes overlap one another. As Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill, D-Mass. (1977-1987), once exclaimed: Members "like to create and legislate, but we have shied from both the word and deed of oversight." A Senator offered a related observation about the need for more overseeing rather than overlooking. Congress has "delegated so much authority to the executive branch of government, and we ought to devote more time to oversight then we do." Scholars have advanced a number of definitions of oversight that go beyond the meanings provided in dictionaries. For example, one political scientist wrote: '"Oversight,' strictly speaking refers to review after the fact.