[O]ne of Congress’s most powerful tools has been completely sidelined: the public hearing.
In the days before House members left Washington last month, for instance, House and Senate committees conducted several well-publicized hearings with the heads of key agencies dealing with the virus. While congressional leaders have since spoken to those leaders by phone, rank-and-file lawmakers have had scant opportunity to hold officials to account.
“The framers intended for us to represent our districts and our states, and if the legislative branch isn’t being heard from, what happens is, obviously, power shifts to the executive branch more and more,” Portman said. “And I don’t think that’s consistent with the Founders’ notion of checks and balances and the separation of powers.”
On Wednesday, Sen. Todd C. Young (R-Ind.) asked the director general of the World Health Organization to appear before his Foreign Relations subcommittee to address the WHO’s response to the pandemic, in particular its dealings with China. But he did not set a date for the hearing, only that it would be scheduled “once it is safe to meet.”
Meanwhile, the timing of other key hearings is uncertain. Confirmation hearings await for John Ratcliffe, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence; Kenneth J. Braithwaite, his nominee for Navy secretary; and Brian Miller, his pick to oversee trillions of dollars in coronavirus relief spending as a special inspector general.
In the House, committees have gotten explicit guidance from the House Rules Committee that “virtual hearings” are not allowed under the chamber’s rules, which require the physical presence of at least two members of a panel to conduct a hearing. To defeat motions to adjourn, which are common in contentious hearings, a quorum of at least half a committee would need to be physically present.
Instead, panels have been told that they are better off holding “briefings” or “roundtables” that take place outside of the formal hearing procedures — but also are not considered official House proceedings.
In a bid to demonstrate what a remote hearing could look like, several experts involved in congressional modernization initiatives held a mock remote hearing over Zoom last month — recruiting former Reps. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) and Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) to serve as “chairmen” of the panel.
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Guidance in the Senate has been less explicit — but that chamber tends to operate according to precedent rather than on an exhaustive rule book, and there is no precedent for virtual hearings. Some senators have explored alternatives with varying degrees of success.
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