One Nation Under Siege: Congress, Terrorism, and the Fate of American Democracy

4: Terror Wars and Turf Wars

4 terror wars and turf wars The Homeland Security Committees Later on today, we will vote to create a Select Committee on Homeland Security. Members of this select committee will oversee the creation of the Department of Homeland Security to make certain that the executive branch is carrying out the will of the Congress. This select committee will be our eyes and our ears as this critical department is organized. The standing committees of the House will maintain their jurisdictions and will still have authorization and oversight responsibilities. The House needs to adapt to the largest reorganization of our executive branch in 50 years, and this select committee will help us make this transition. —Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 2001, the executive and legislative branches took several drastic steps to alter the structure of the federal government to provide improved administration and oversight of homeland security. In the executive branch, these steps included the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, adding a fifteenth department to the federal bureaucracy of President George W. Bush’s administration . The creation of this department led to significant reorganization of the jurisdictions of the existing bureaucratic agencies. A member of the House Republican leadership summarized the institutional changes, stating: There is a historical expansion of federal government structure after crisis . The FBI changed forever. Before it only reacted to a criminal event. Now it is an agency that is primarily charged with preventing domestic acts of terrorism. There has also been institutional change in terms of the 110 One Nation Under Siege relationship between intelligence agencies like the FBI and CIA brought about by the Patriot Act. . . . There is a Director of National Intelligence over the intelligence community. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security is permanent and positive. The House Committee on Homeland Security is permanent because a department needs oversight. There was a permanent effect of what we did after 9/11. This legislative reorganization constitutes an important piece of the institutional change brought about by the terrorist attacks of 2001 because of its relative uniqueness in the history of congressional committees . While numerous committees have been added to the institutional roster to process legislation more efficiently over our nation’s history, the trend of the last fifty years has been a reduction in the number of committees and a streamlining of committee jurisdiction. Committee Reform The modern committee system dates to the late 1940s, when the Congress passed the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. This act led to many changes, including the reduction in committees on the House side from forty-eight to nineteen and on the Senate side from thirty-three to fifteen . In addition, committee jurisdiction was clarified through chamber rules. Since this time, remarkably few adjustments have been made to the committee system. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 focused on a more open committee process, increases in committee staff, and transformation of the Legislative Reference Service into the Congressional Research Service. Later in that same decade, Congress created committees in both the House and the Senate to review the president’s budget proposal and draft a federal budget. Also, a temporary Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress was established in 1993 to review the committee system. This committee made several recommendations, some of which were adopted by the newly elected Republican Congress in 1995. Under the leadership of Speaker Newt Gingrich, the new Republican majority further eliminated three House standing committees in 1995: the Committee on the District of Columbia, the Committee on the Post Office and Civil Service, and the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. All of these reforms were introduced in light of a perceived institutional threat, a new partisan majority, or internal partisan cleavages. The Terror Wars and Turf Wars 111 Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, for example, was in response to a perceived institutional threat. In light of the growing dominance of the executive branch due to congressional deference provided to President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression and World War II, Congress sought to reclaim institutional power and prestige through reforms that would encourage efficiency and effectiveness throughout the legislative process. Walter Kravitz highlights the uniqueness and magnitude of these changes: “Never before had Congress, in a single stroke, made such broad changes in its organization, administration, procedures (both committee and floor), resources, and workload, in relations between...