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17 Armed Forces & Soc'y 7 (1990-1991)

handle is hein.journals/amdfcsad17 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional Oversight of the Department of Defense: Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdom JAMES M. LINDSAY Complaints that Congress slights oversight of the Department of Defense are commonplace.' According to conventional wisdom, members of Congress examine the defense budget in terms of how it promotes their own electoral prospects rather than how it promotes the national interest. As a result, grandstanding and pork barreling abound on Capitol Hill, but relatively little reasoned consideration of American defense needs takes place. The lesson typically drawn from this is that Congress contributes little to America's national security debate. Despite its popularity, this interpretation of the way in which Con- gress oversees defense issues is misleading and unfair. Critics typically use the wrong standard for assessing congressional oversight, assuming that Congress should act like a bureaucracy. However, Congress is a political institution and not a bureaucratic one. Because it lacks the attributes of a bureaucracy, Congress's ability to review and revise DoD policies is limited; it is not capable of comprehensive oversight. More- over, congressional policy reviews often differ from those conducted by bureaucracies. Because legislators need to win reelection to remain in Congress, they often pursue oversight activities with an eye toward potential political profit. Of course, these problems hinder congressional oversight of any government bureaucracy. Yet congressional oversight of DoD faces three JAMES M. LINDSAY is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Iowa. Address for correspondence: James M. Lindsay, Department of Political Science, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242. ARMED FORCES & SOCIETY, Vol. 17 No. 1, Fall 1990, pp. 7-33.