The Problem with Congressional and Senate Committees

[Mike 03]

Over the past six months I've spent a lot of time watching Congressional and Senatorial committee investigations into all aspects of the economic crisis. I think there is a fundamental problem with the assumption that Congress or members of the Senate are equipped to understand some of the issues they investigate.

They CAN represent the voice of the average citizen who only has a vague understanding of issues like economics, banking, mortgages, depressions, etcetera. What they can't seem to do very well is understand the deeper ramifications of the answers they receive, or understand the testimony they read and hear.

Too many of them, on both sides, are only there to perform for their constituents. You can watch them and see with your own eyes that they are not listening to the answers to their questions but thinking about what they are going to say next. Some of them just make speeches and don't even ask questions.

I wonder if a solution to this problem might be to have our elected officials design committees for such purposes. In other words, the Banking Committee would have on it people with some understanding of banking, and the same for global Economics, Financial oversight, etc...

There are some exceptions to what I'm about to say, but in general, the politicians who sit on these committees exploring complicated issues have no clue what they are talking about. It would be evident to anyone with any minor expertise in any of these areas. It's getting embarrassing.

I think this situation could be resolved if our elected officials served as appointers who created proxy committees upon which qualified people could sit.

To give an example, Paul Krugman would sit on a banking or economic committee instead of some of the current participants. Or Roubini, or any number of other economists, or bankers...

[glowing]

1. Well, isn't the third branch of govt the one that goes into further detail on these subjects?

If you want to prosecute fraud, wouldn't you allow a jury or judge to rule out the sentence? I know that its important for these idiots to understand how to make the law to avoid depression in the future... but most of their bills are written by special interest groups anyway.. that's the problem. ANother problem is that there are too many lawyers and business people as elected officials. I'm sorry, but these idiots don't understand science or finance or education or any of the things they are making laws about.