The House Agriculture Committee got a D grade and the Senate Ag Committee received a C- on oversight.
Those grades came from the Lugar Center, which was founded by former Indiana Republican Senator and Ag Committee Chair Richard Lugar, in a report that measured congressional oversight.
The Hagstrom Report says the Congressional Oversight Hearing Index categorizes and catalogs all congressional hearings held over the past 12 years, which totals up to about 20,000 hearings.
After looking through all the data, the index assigns grades to the oversight performance of current congressional committees and past committees going back to 2009.
“Most Americans agree that robust congressional oversight of the workings of our government and society is an important element of American Democracy,” says Dan Diller, policy director at the Lugar Center.
“Until now, there’s been no objective criteria for gauging whether congressional committees are living up to their oversight responsibilities.”
Of the 17 House Committees the center graded, nine received A’s, two got B’s, and three were given C’s. However, the Senate grades weren’t as high. Of the 17 Senate committees given grades, just two got A’s, none were given B’s, four received C’s, and eight Senate committees were given F’s.
