Citizens Questions: Something that's desperately needed to get action on a number of issues...

[originalpckelly]

1. The Congress is supposed to serve the people. However, it is often a platform for meaningless political posturing.

2. One area where Senators and Representatives grandstand is the Congressional Committee hearing. They make long winded and redundant opening statements, and then when they get around to asking questions, they never seem to ask the right ones.

Therefore, I propose that citizens or other lawful residents of the United States ought to be able to submit questions to the office of their Representative/Senator, that those questions be submitted to the Congressional Committee with the appropriate jurisdiction, to be entered into a pool of questions to be asked during the appropriate hearing.

If the pool should be so large that it would be impractical to ask all of the questions in it at a single hearing, then a lottery will be held to create a second smaller pool of questions.

Then from that pool a final set of questions should be selected based upon the amount of time the question has been waiting to be asked with older questions selected first, younger ones later.

Furthermore, I also propose that if a large number of questions should be asked about a particular topic, a Congressional hearing should be held on that topic in the Committee with the appropriate jurisdiction.

In all cases, the Representatives/Senators would be required to subpoena the appropriate witness to answer the questions posed by citizens. There would be no reason that person would be able to evade that subpoena, unless it is proved before a magistrate that the question cannot be answered without revealing properly classified information. Those compelled to testify would obviously reserve any of their constitutional rights, more specifically the rights guaranteed in the 5th amendment.

The questions would be asked through the proxy of the Committee Chairperson, or any other members of a committee should the chair so choose.

I have once posted this idea before, but it was not exactly a clear posting, and I hope I have been concise enough here that all readers understand the proposal.

I am deeply interested in your thoughts on this proposal, and if there is enough good feedback, we might all consider a campaign to enact a law to provide for it.

[John Q. Citizen]

1. There are over 300,000,000 people in the country. Many speak, Tagalog,

Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, etc.

One hearing could take 30 or 40 years to complete. A person would have a better chance to win the lottery than to have their question asked.

And what if in the lottery the question was something like "What's your favorite color?"

I think your idea is very impractical.

[originalpckelly]

2. I agree with last part there about the frivolous questions...

maybe there would be a little ability to judge the questions in the office of the people who forward them.

In addition, I highly doubt that many people will ask questions. Just the folks actually interested enough in public affairs.