Do you watch Congressional hearings? I do. Senate, mostly, and for good reason. A lot of what happens in the Senate happens off the floor. Unlike TV news and blogs and newspapers and often the Senate floor itself where the rubber frequently meets the roadblocks, in hearings you regularly see Senators from both sides get down to the business of the people they were elected to serve. There isn't the same formality in hearings that you typically see on C-SPAN if you limit yourself to gavel to gavel coverage of House and Senate proceedings, and witnesses in hearings are often asked some pretty tough questions.
So, if you're interested in the policy more than the politics, and need to kill some time during those long quorum calls, hearings are where it's at. You can watch a lot of them live and archived on committee websites and on C-SPAN and listen to live audio at CapitolHearings.org. You may even learn the answer to that really big question philosophers have been asking for centuries. Well, at least in the context of Senate hearings.
In his opening statement during yesterday's hearing, Small Business Committee Chairman Kerry took a moment to explain how he and Ranking Member Olympia Snowe (R-ME) conduct business in the committee they lead, and why Congress people do that thing they do.
I hope you'll watch the full hearing, which is archived on the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee website, or wait a bit to watch it from the C-SPAN archives, where the video quality is considerably better, in particular if you're a small business owner, but also if you're just a taxpayer like me who is interested in how the Senate conducts oversight. It's a big part of what they do, and this is an excellent example.
While we're on the subject of Small Business, Senator Kerry will be live online at BizBox today at 4:00 ET.
Join Sen. John Kerry for a Discussion on Small Business
On Wed, November 14 at 4 pm EST, Sen. John Kerry, Chair for the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, will be online with BizBox to answer your questions on small business. Discover what the Senate and the members of the Committee are doing to promote and protect small businesses in the U.S. Issues like affordable health care; tax incentives to encourage investments in small businesses; the SBA Disaster Loan Program and entrepreneurial development all affect small business. Submit your question and join the conversation!
