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Oversight is quickly becoming an overused word on Capitol Hill now that the new Congress is in town.

Republicans failed to provide proper oversight of the Bush administration on everything from hurricane recovery efforts to education, Democrats argue. That's going to change under their watch, they claim.

Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, not many Democrats are beating their breasts about the many programs that Congress has failed to reauthorize for many years.

It's a dirty little secret that the House and Senate keep scads of programs running each year, even though laws authorizing them have expired. By simply throwing a funding level in an appropriations bill, the program lives on, even though it remains unauthorized. That's supposed to be against the rules, but the rules are always waived.

But with House Democratic leaders promising to stay in town and work more than the Republicans did, some congressional analysts say Congress actually could get in the trenches and reauthorize some programs.

"I'm very optimistic that with a five-day work week, we're going to see better oversight and maybe even reauthorizations," said Don Wolfensberger, director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and former Republican staff director of the House Rules Committee.

But Wolfensberger added that it is far easier to pass a reauthorization bill in the House than it is in the Senate, where bills often can get bottled up. "You still have the Senate dynamic," he said. "That's where House bills go to get lost."

Each year, the Congressional Budget Office issues a report on unauthorized programs. This year's report is a bit confusing because the fiscal 2007 appropriations season is not finished and it is not clear which programs might not get funded.

However, CBO recently reported that in recent years, the total amount of funding for unauthorized programs ranged between $160 billion and $170 billion. The CBO also said that approximately 68 programs will expire on or before Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, totaling about $548.1 billion. However, almost $526 billion of that total is the annual defense authorization bill.

Although Democrats would like to blame Republicans for the mess, they share some of the blame, especially where some of the expiring laws like the "Rural Electrification Loan Restructuring Act of 1993," were enacted when Democrats were still in power.

Some of the unauthorized programs are quite large. Take the Community Development Block Grant program, which was last reauthorized in 1992. Or the State Department's diplomatic and consular programs. Or the Coast Guard.

Wolfensberger said there might be several reasons why Congress has been reluctant to reauthorize. "It's a time factor," he said.

You've got to have a ton of hearings to figure out what's working and what's not working. You've got to have someone draft a bill. You've got to mark up a bill and find floor time, particularly if you work two-and-a-half days a week. This all gets in the way of raising money for re-election.

Committees are also worried about opening up hot-button issues for reauthorization, Wolfensberger said. That's when members on the left and the right might try to make mischief.

Democrats say they are optimistic that the longer work week will help. "I think Democrats believe in regular order," said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., who sits on the Oversight and Government Reform, Armed Services and Budget committees.

Cooper said that Congress should not rely on appropriators to reauthorize programs, when there are committees that were specifically created for that purpose.

"The system works best when both sides work," Cooper said. "We have nothing against our Appropriations friends."

Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., agreed that the number of days should help with both oversight and reauthorization issues. He pointed out, of course, that his panel will concentrate on oversight.

But as a veteran of another panel, Waxman said, "I could never understand why the Republican leaders of the Energy and Commerce Committee never wanted to reauthorize many of the health programs."

Budget hawks have argued for many years that unauthorized programs should be the first to be cut when Congress is seeking ways to shrink the federal deficit.

Their rationale was that if a program was worthwhile, a committee would have reauthorized it, and if a program was not reauthorized, nobody had taken a good look at it for a while.

"If you're going to make spending cuts, the best place to make it is in unauthorized programs," said former Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas, who was a budget hawk as a founder of the moderate-to-conservative Blue Dog Coalition. Stenholm, now a policy adviser at the law firm of Olsson, Frank and Weeda, said he tells clients that if they are worried about programs, make sure they show up on the congressional agenda -- even if it is on the House suspension calendar, where legislation gets quick attention, but also passes quickly.

In defending the shorter D.C. work weeks, Republicans had emphasized that they needed to spend time at home because they needed to bond with their constituents. They wanted to be citizen legislators. They couldn't gauge the needs of the voters by staying inside the Beltway five days a week.

Stenholm said they had it wrong. "The work of the Congress is not in the 17th District of Texas," he said. "It's in Washington, D.C."