Congressional oversight of Homeland Security comes under fire again

BY KATHERINE MCINTIRE PETERS, KPETERS@GOVEXEC.COM

Four years after the 9/11 commission recommended that Congress create a "single, principal point of oversight and review," 86 congressional committees and subcommittees oversee the Homeland Security Department. That's about 80 too many, in the view of several officials with expertise in DHS operations.

"Congress has protected its prerogatives and privileges at the expense of oversight," said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., at a forum on Wednesday sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. Since the start of the 110th Congress, Homeland Security officials have testified at 359 hearings and conducted 4,300 briefings for congressional committees -- most for committees other than the House and Senate homeland security panels.

With so many committees exercising jurisdiction over various aspects of Homeland Security's mission, the department is put in the impossible position of having to satisfy competing and sometimes conflicting demands from Congress, said Rogers, ranking member of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Management, Investigations and Oversight. In addition, the demands of reporting to so many committees have put an untenable administrative burden on the department, he said.