http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128517427
Tea Partiers and other “strict constructionists,” did you know that the Constitution does not explicitly provide Congress the power to “investigate” the executive branch? To most of us, however, oversight is implied in Article I, Sec. 8 and Article II, Secs. 2 and 4.
This is an example of an implicit grant of power. Nowhere appearing within the Constitution’s 4,543 words are the words “investigate” or “oversee.” Congress’s own – the Congressional Research Service – puts it this way, “the Constitution grants no formal, express authority to oversee or investigate the executive or program administration” yet, “oversight is implied in Congress’s impressive array of enumerated powers.”
Con. Annotated “The [Supreme] Court has long since accorded its agreement with Congress that the investigatory power is so essential to the legislative function as to be implied from the general vesting of legislative power in Congress. . .[quoting Justice Van Devanter in McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U.S. 135, 174–175 (1927).]’there is ample warrant for thinking, as we do, that the constitutional provisions which commit the legislative function to the two houses are intended to include this attribute to the end that the function may be effectively exercised.’
. . . Justice Harlan summarized the matter in 1959 [Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U.S. 109, 111 (1959)].. ‘‘The power of inquiry has been employed by Congress throughout our history, over the whole range of the national interests concerning which Congress might legislate or decide upon due investigation not to legislate; it has similarly been utilized in determining what to appropriate from the national purse, or whether to appropriate. The scope of the power
of inquiry, in short, is as penetrating and far-reaching as the potential power to enact and appropriate under the Constitution.’’ 189
Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.
Ron Chernow
Of course, had it really been the case that those who wrote the charter could best fathom its true meaning, one would have expected considerable agreement about constitutional matters among those former delegates in Philadelphia who participated in the first federal government. But Hamilton and Madison, the principal co-authors of “The Federalist,” sparred savagely over the Constitution’s provisions for years. Much in the manner of Republicans and Democrats today, Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians battled over exorbitant government debt, customs duties and excise taxes, and the federal aid to business recommended by Hamilton.
