Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy

09/09/2026

📄 Matthew Dull explores the rise and decline of the House Appropriations Committee's Surveys & Investigations staff, offering new insight into congressional capacity and institutional competence.

This article follows the arc of congressional competence through the development and decline of the House Appropriations Committee (HAC) Surveys & Investigations (S&I) staff, an enduring oversight un...

09/09/2026

Join us TOMORROW at 12:15pm EST!

Join us for a seminar featuring the Levin Center’s 2025/26 Elise J. Bean Oversight Fellow, Kevin Angell, as he presents his research on the relationship between congressional budget processes and legislative oversight. Kevin’s project, “Pushing the Purse,” examines how Congress uses its budg...

09/09/2026

Thanks for following our series on The Politics of Congressional Reports in Legislative. Together, these articles show what great research comes out of great data sets.

Check out CORD here:

The Senate Committee on Armed Services issued a Committee Approved Report regarding large numbers of counterfeit electronic stemming from problems within the Department of Defense's supply chain and contractor management.

09/09/2026

📄 Jenn Kim, Benjamin Kinnard, and John Patty show how selection effects can shape studies of congressional oversight, offering a new framework for understanding activity.

In honor of the creation of the Congressional Oversight Research Database (CORD), we explore some of the selection effects that observable measures of oversight may be subject to. We present a model ...

09/08/2026

📄 How do minority parties use ? Cody Drolc and Jordanutcher show how reports help minority lawmakers communicate priorities, challenge majority narratives, and document dissent.

The minority party in Congress faces structural barriers to influencing policy and controlling the oversight agenda. Yet even when excluded, it can use investigations and formal reports to challenge ...

09/08/2026

📄 How do oversight committees communicate information? Kenneth Lowande and Mark Weiss examine how partisanship shapes the types of claims made in congressional reports.

Congress negotiates while uncertain about the effects of proposed policies, and often relies on committees to conduct oversight that reports about the past and projects the future. Little is known ab...

09/07/2026

Labor Day was special for Senator Carl Levin. He loved the parades, particularly Detroit’s. He and his brother Sandy would walk the entire route, shake hands with the crowd, and happily honor the legacy and contributions of U.S. laborers and their organizations.

09/04/2026

📄 Claire Leavitt examines how House investigations contribute to legislative outcomes, showing that investigations are often an integral part of policymaking; not simply political theater.

What inspires and propels investigative work in Congress? Members consistently cite legislative action to claim credit for their investigations, but what makes certain inquiries more legislatively pr...

09/04/2026

Pushing the Purse: Congressional Budgeting as a Tool of Oversight

2025/26 Levin Center Oversight Fellowship Presentation
Thu, Sept 10, 2026
12:15 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. Eastern
Zoom Webinar

Join us for a seminar featuring the Levin Center’s 2025/26 Elise J. Bean Oversight Fellow, Kevin Angell, as he presents his research on the relationship between congressional budget processes and legislative oversight.

Kevin’s project, “Pushing the Purse,” examines how Congress uses its budgetary authorities to shape executive branch behavior and respond to instances of presidential non-compliance. Drawing on interviews with congressional and executive branch staff, as well as original quantitative data on committee reports, hearings, and budget activity, his research explores how oversight functions in practice within the appropriations process.

This seminar offers an opportunity to engage with original research on the intersection of congressional budgeting, oversight, and executive accountability.

RSVP:

Join us for a seminar featuring the Levin Center’s 2025/26 Elise J. Bean Oversight Fellow, Kevin Angell, as he presents his research on the relationship between congressional budget processes and legislative oversight. Kevin’s project, “Pushing the Purse,” examines how Congress uses its budg...

09/04/2026

📄 New research from Sean Theriault examines whether congressional oversight reports influence future legislative activity and finds strong evidence that and lawmaking are deeply connected.

This article assesses the linkage between the House and Senate oversight committees' reports and subsequent legislative efforts in those policy areas from the 106th to the 116th Congresses (1999–2020...