Remember when Congress took government seriously?

[Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( Get Jonathan Bernstein’s newsletter every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe](. We are apparently in for [another Secret Service scandal](, with a new book revealing new Trump-era problems and reviewing older troubles going back through multiple presidencies. I don’t know anything about the specifics of managing that agency, other than that it certainly has had more than its share of public woes over the last several years. But let’s take a step back. We’ve just been through a presidency which often seemed to have destroying the government of the U.S. as a goal. Beyond Donald Trump’s unusual presidency, however, we can go back to former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, neither of whom seemed particularly interested in making executive-branch management a high priority — or showed much skill in doing it. President Bill Clinton did have a “reinventing government” initiative back in the 1990s, but whatever that did or didn’t accomplish, we’ve now had 20 years of presidents who appear to have been indifferent or hostile to making federal departments and agencies work well. It’s hard not to suspect that the Secret Service is far from the only government agency that was not up to snuff by Jan. 20, 2021. That’s not all! Once upon a time, Congress used to take its oversight responsibilities seriously. In part, that was because oversight was a way for members of Congress to generate positive publicity for themselves. In part it was because members, and Congress as a whole, were interested in competing for control of the federal bureaucracy. It’s an exaggeration to say that all of that came to an end in 1995, when Republicans won their first majority in the House of Representatives since the 1950s, but it’s not entirely wrong, either. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s supposed revolution, and the radicalism that it infused congressional Republicans with, were about destroying things, not reforming or even controlling them. And it was about partisanship, not governing. No post-1994 Republican House, and increasingly no Republican Senate, has shown much interest in whether any federal agency was doing its job well. If a Republican was in the Oval Office, oversight shut down; when a Democrat was president, oversight meant finding real or imaged scandals that would play well in Republican-aligned media. My impression is that chambers with Democratic majorities have taken the job somewhat more seriously, but less so over time. Democrats, too, have moved in the direction of partisanship, and they haven’t been willing to reinvest the congressional resources that Republican majorities stripped from Congress and its constitutional responsibilities set forth in [Article 1](. None of this is brand new. The congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein were already writing about it in their 2006 book, [“The Broken Branch,”]( where they noted that “executive agencies that once viewed Congress with at least some trepidation because of its oversight activities now tend to view Congress with contempt.” Fifteen years later, it’s surely worse, although at least Democrats seem to be aware that oversight is part of the job. President Joe Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have a lot on their plates. And a lot of the work that goes into maintaining a well-functioning bureaucracy generates few political rewards, although it might prevent some electoral headaches. Still, it’s part of the job, and I’d sure like to see some sign that they are aware of the importance of it. 1. Amy Erica Smith, Matthew L. Layton, Mollie J. Cohen and Mason W. Moseley on [the latest from Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro](. 2. Speaking of oversight: Kate Brannen, Austin Evers, Ryan Goodman and Justin Hendrix have [unanswered questions about the attack on the U.S. Capitol of Jan. 6](. 3. Jonathan Chait on [Representative Liz Cheney’s liberal critics](. 4. Perry Bacon Jr. on the [emergence of new Black leaders]( in various fields. 5. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Noah Smith on [fighting inflation]( — if we should need to. 6. And Matt Viser on [disclosing Biden’s health](. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe](. Also subscribe to [Bloomberg All Access]( and get much, much more. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. Paid Post The power of PayPal online, now in person. Give your small business an easy way to accept touch-free, in-person payments. Create a unique QR code with the PayPal app and display it on your device or as a printout in store. 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