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Edited on Sun Feb-18-07 03:31 PM by originalpckelly
People ought to be able to send in question to members of Congressional Committees and have those question asked in a committee hearing. Citizens questions would be directed at a person's Senator or Congressperson, then they would redirect the best questions to the chairman of the committee in question. At the beginning of a committee hearing, the Chairperson of the committee would ask the questions in his/her own block of time, and all the questions referred would be asked. (If enough people participate, questions might be entered into a random lottery. And to make sure the best questions got through, the chairperson would have the ability to select a number of question of merit to counterbalance the lottery chosen questions.)
If that idea works out, then we could take it even further, and actually have people register with their member of Congress to participate in a particular hearing, then a lottery would be used to select randomly people to serve on the committee. For the purposes of convenience and travel, the citizen members of the committee would be able to participate remotely, and in may even ask another person to act on their behalf temporarily (if they were going to be busy with work or travel out of town when a hearing would be held.)
I understand that Senators and Congresspeople are supposed represent the interests of the governed, but in practice they really only grandstand and never ask enough meaningful questions to obtain the truth. This system of citizens questions would be a more efficient way of having people represented. I should note that Senators and Congresspeople would still participate in committees, but they would participate in both ideas along with randomly chosen people.
Citizens might even be able to do research and ask the committee for a witness to appear for questioning at the hearing.
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