Congressional Committee Members as Independent Agency Overseers: A Case Study

This paper is concerned with the behavior of members of a Congressional committee in their role as overseers of an independent regulatory commission. Congressional committees seem periodically to become aware of the presence of the regulatory agencies and after a more or less spectacular examination of one or another of them, allow them to slip back to an undisturbed and unnoticed routine. Their status as “independent” agencies leaves to Congress the formal responsibility both for checking on the fulfillment of their legislative mandates and for preserving them from domination by their clientele and the President. Too little notice has been taken, however, of the nature of the control of these regulatory agencies emanating from Congress. This study results from an examination of the House Education and Labor Committee as it reviewed the performance of the National Labor Relations Board in 1953. My sources are the public hearings of the Committee in the 83d Congress and interviews with Committee members over a two-year period thereafter.