In Memoriam: Elise Bean, Public Servant

Elise Bean was a singular figure in the world of congressional oversight. She spent her career on the Hill working for Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich), most notably as his chief counsel and staff director for the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI). There she led the staff of one of Congress’s most storied investigative committees under the chairmanship of a senator known for his commitment to congressional oversight and institutional prerogatives. Many of the most important investigations she led at PSI are discussed in a book she wrote after leaving the Hill in 2014, Financial Exposure: Carl Levin’s Senate Investigations into Finance and Tax Abuse (2018).

Elise passed away on January 14 of this year at the much too young age of 68. I was stunned to learn of her death the next day when it was announced at a panel on congressional oversight that she was supposed to moderate. I had last spoken with Elise a couple months earlier, and at the time she was in complete remission from pancreatic cancer. But the cancer returned suddenly. The loss it caused will be felt deeply by the entire congressional oversight community and her many friends and colleagues.

Although we overlapped on the Hill, I did not really know Elise until we met in connection with the Legislative Branch Capacity Working Group (Make Congress Great Again!), which was launched in 2016. Elise was a tireless advocate for enhancing congressional capacity and, in particular, for strengthening and professionalizing Congress’s oversight capabilities. In her post-Hill career, she helped to establish the Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of bipartisan oversight capacity both in Congress and state legislatures. One of her significant initiatives as the director of the Levin Center’s Washington, D.C. office was to put on “oversight boot camps” at which hundreds of congressional staffers have been taught the techniques of conducting investigations.

Elise was also incredibly generous with her time. Each semester I taught congressional oversight at the George Washington School of Political Management, Elise enthusiastically agreed to guest lecture one of my classes. And her enthusiasm was contagious—student evaluations consistently rated her lecture as one of the highlights of the course. Elise would illustrate the “Levin Oversight Principles” with examples from her days at PSI. She was particularly fond of recounting PSI’s investigation into abusive practices at credit card companies. The lead witness at the committee hearing was a man named Wannemacher (aka “the wedding guy”), who had incurred $3,200 in charges for his 2001 wedding, paid nearly twice ($6,300) that amount to the credit card company over the next six years, and still owed more ($4,400) than the original debt. The power of such stories to mold public opinion was demonstrated by the fact that the company forgave the debt right before the hearing in a desperate (and unsuccessful) effort to keep the wedding guy from testifying.

One of the Levin Oversight Principles was to be “relentlessly bipartisan,” something that Elise always stressed. This is not an idea that is much in fashion these days; undoubtedly many people on both sides of the political divide would scoff at it as naïve, weak and impractical. But while Elise’s support for bipartisanship might have been partially rooted in an optimistic view of human nature that many (myself included tbh) do not share, it was also pragmatic. A bipartisan investigation is going to be far more effective in getting information and a sympathetic hearing from the public, and lasting reforms are far more likely when there is bipartisan support. And while ruthless partisanship may seem attractive in the moment, it has a tendency to backfire. (How many Senate Democrats wish today they had listened to Senator Levin when he warned of the consequences of nuking the filibuster for nominations?)

A corollary principle was to first “focus on the facts” in any congressional investigation. Just as the facts don’t care about your feelings, they don’t care about your political party. If the ultimate purpose of congressional oversight is to effect policy change that will promote the public good, as Elise deeply believed, establishing a clear and comprehensive factual record (preferably one agreed to by both the majority and minority) is the first step in identifying needed reforms. Having a debate about the best policy response based on a shared understanding of the facts, she would argue, is the most constructive way to proceed. And if you believe that your ideas and policies are truly the best, why would you fear agreement on the facts?

But whether or not you agree with Elise’s approach to congressional oversight, no one could dispute her commitment to her craft, her amazing work ethic, and her infectious spirit that made everyone around her better. As Senator Blumenthal noted in a tribute delivered on the Senate floor: “She looked for the good in people, in our government, and created more good in the world. Those who knew her will cherish and strive to continue her legacy.”