Would it eliminate iron triangles if we prohibit agencies from testifying before Congress?AMERICAN GOVENMENT 2

It would do not good to prohibit agencies from testifying
before Congress.  As long as the Congressional committees control the agencies' budgets,
the agencies will have to listen to what they say -- not testifying would make no
difference to that relationship.

One thing I can think of
would be to stop having the most interested committee oversee the agency and its
budget.  In other words, the Ag Committee, made up of farm state members, would need to
stop overseeing the Ag Department.  Then the members of the committee that oversaw the
USDA would not be so interested in trying to control
them.

But this really strikes me as being pretty
antidemocratic -- to prevent the people most affected by agriculture from having control
of the Department of Agriculture.  I think the only real way would be to have
countervailing pressures from other interest groups.  We would have to form interest
groups that were opposed to what the iron triangles
want.

For example, if the agriculture iron triangle wants
wasteful farm subsidies, we would need to have an interest group that would work hard to
lobby against those subsidies.  This would be the only really effective way of breaking
iron triangles -- to have different interest groups lobbying the way that pluralist
political theory says they should.