Legislative Oversight
Congress justifies its oversight abilities using two main reasons; the first is the Necessary and Proper Clause of the US Constitution (since courts found that the clause includes the power to require reports from the executive on anything that can be legislated) and the second is the Power of the Purse. Congressional oversight focuses on the supervising of the budget, quality of analysis, legality of actions, and intelligence failures. The two principal committees that are charged with intelligence community oversight are the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: Oversight Subcommittee.
Read more about this topic: United States Intelligence Community Oversight
Famous quotes containing the word legislative:
“However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)