DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
No Thought Police - 1st Amend. Honored Here!
HTML https://nothoughtpolice.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Senate
*****************************************************
#Post#: 9--------------------------------------------------
Get cameras out of Senate hearings
By: pattiurlvd Date: September 11, 2020, 1:29 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
The Big Idea is a series that asks top lawmakers and figures to
discuss their moonshot — what’s the one proposal, if politics
and polls and even price tag were not an issue, they’d implement
to change the country for the better?
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., is suggesting a bold proposal for how to
calm the raging political atmosphere while making Washington run
more efficiently in the process: remove cameras from Senate
committee hearings.
Hearings are ostensibly meant as fact-finding missions to
advance legislative goals, but Sasse claims that in reality his
colleagues have little to no interest in what witnesses have to
say and use the time in front of the camera to push their own
political agendas.
Sasse noted that much of the work done by the Senate
Intelligence Committee is done without cameras present, and
there he sees Republicans and Democrats working together toward
common goals instead of engaging in partisan bickering, which
regularly takes place in televised hearings held by other
committees.
Those hearings regularly make headlines, such as when Justice
Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz went before the
Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss his bombshell report on
the FBI’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA) in the Russia investigation, as well as a number of
contentious hearings on federal judicial nominations.
Getting rid of the video feeds was just one Sasse’s proposals
for sweeping Senate reform that he discussed in a recent Wall
Street Journal op-ed. Others included limiting senators to just
one term but extending it to 12 years, and repealing the 17th
Amendment so that senators are chosen by state legislatures
instead of elected by the people.
Sasse discussed the camera issue in greater detail in written
responses to questions from Fox News:
Q: You proposed removing cameras from committee hearings. Some
may believe that the ability to watch hearings gives the public
a window to the legislative process. Why would removing this
access be better in the long run?
Sasse: The Senate can’t be the world’s greatest deliberative
body if it doesn’t deliberate. The Senate is supposed to be
devoted to thinking carefully about the country’s long-term
future. Instead, we’re devoted to CNN soundbites and Twitter
retweets. The average Senate committee hearing today is a
theater competition; whoever puts on the best show wins. The
incentive structure around the Senate is upside-down. Short-term
posturing is rewarded, and long-term problem-solving is
penalized.
The House and Senate have different, and complementary, jobs.
The House of Representatives is supposed to be loud and fast
while the Senate is supposed to be deliberative and slow. We
shouldn’t have just one or the other, we need both. Senators are
supposed to be asking each other difficult questions, making and
challenging each other’s arguments, and deliberating
thoughtfully about issues of national importance. That’s
impossible when everyone is playing to the cameras. We need to
create conditions where substantive and candid conversations can
take place.
Let’s be clear, too: Eliminating cameras does not mean
eliminating transparency. That’s a false choice. We can ensure
the public’s right to real, radical transparency through readily
available audio recordings and written transcripts.
Q: The Senate Intelligence Committee, of which you are a member,
holds many of its hearings behind closed doors. How is the
nature of those hearings different from, say, the Senate
Judiciary Committee, which is regularly on camera?
Sasse: Behind the doors of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
you won’t spot any of the usual posturing and performing.
Senators talk frankly and forthrightly, and we find ourselves
able to reach agreements on what challenges the country faces in
this area. When we bring in experts, Senators ask actual
questions of them and listen to their answers, instead of
flogging them for the cameras or trying to outsmart them. It’s
people talking to other people, and trying to work through
problems together.
By contrast, take a look at what a complete and total fiasco the
Senate Judiciary’s Supreme Court nomination hearings have
become. It’s just a matter of course now that every Supreme
Court confirmation hearing is going to be an overblown,
politicized circus. No one learns a thing about the nominee, and
the Constitution is relegated to an afterthought. Senators just
browbeat their opponents until the clock runs out, and the most
enduring consequence by the end of it is that the whole nation
is less informed and more angry.
Curiously enough, one place you’ll find genuine, no-pretense
discussion around Capitol Hill these days is the Senate Gym. The
fact that honest, good-faith interactions drop away when
Senators head to committee rooms or the Senate floor is a pretty
good indicator of just how dysfunctional the institution has
become.
Q: High-profile hearings that touch on hot-button political
issues often feature combative exchanges between senators and
witnesses, or even between senators. Do you believe these
moments help the public by allowing their elected officials to
voice the concerns of their constituents, or do they worsen the
increasingly heated and polarized nature of current political
discourse?
Sasse: The dirty little secret of so many headline-grabbing
political moments these days is that they’re about as
“authentic” as reality television. We need real debate, not
staged lookalikes.
First, let’s commit to real, radical transparency, through
immediately available audio recordings and transcripts. No one
should find themselves boxed out of the legislative process.
Second, let’s return to having real debates on the Senate floor.
One of the things that cameras have done is eliminated
meaningful, in-person exchanges. When Senators go to the floor
to speak today, they almost always do so to an empty room;
they’re just speaking into the camera. How are we supposed to
have a meaningful exchange of ideas, when the Senate is just one
person alone in a room? Let’s start packing the floor again, and
have Senators talk to each other, face-to-face. That’s what the
Senate floor is there for. I’m not calling for kumbaya nonsense
– Senators ought to fight hard for our positions, but we ought
to have a good-faith fight without the showboating.
Q: Removing cameras may eliminate the incentive for senators to
play to an audience, but is there concern that the public may
end up being less informed as a result?
Sasse: As the Senate has become less deliberative and more
performative, meaningful public understanding of and engagement
in the legislative process has fallen off.
Right now, most politics is an exercise in red jerseys versus
blue jerseys, and being “well-informed” typically means having
an arsenal of memes to post to Twitter and Facebook. But
politics isn’t Wrestlemania. Self-government means sober
deliberation, open and honest debate, and good-faith effort to
tackle problems.
Q: Do you think that there are senators who grandstand during
hearings because they feel it is expected of them? Would they be
relieved if cameras were removed?
Sasse: Some small set of folks like the posturing and playacting
and Twitter wars. But most are frustrated and exhausted. They
know the Senate is dysfunctional, and they wish it weren’t. The
problem, though, is that when it comes to making changes, all
the incentives seem to run the wrong way. It looks too costly to
stick one’s neck out on behalf of the institution. But if you
talk to them away from the cameras, they know the Senate is not
doing what it was created to do.
I’ve heard from some of my colleagues since the WSJ essay was
published. They have quibbles and disagreements, here and there.
But most of them have made clear that the fundamental point is
dead-on: We have a deeply dysfunctional body, and it’s a loss to
the country that the Senate doesn’t work. But it doesn’t have to
be that way. Now is the time for out-of-the-box ideas. Once upon
a time, the Senate was the world’s greatest deliberative body.
Let’s make it great again.
*****************************************************