GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has just sneaked a little resolution into the new House rules package that will make the new session of Congress much more interesting for the American public.
On Tuesday, Fox News reported that the Republican Congressman had introduced an amendment to the House rules that would allow C-SPAN to have full access to the House during normal proceedings and to broadcast all the proceedings.
Last week, America watched in real time how our government is functioning.
I’m introducing an amendment to allow @CSPAN cameras on the House floor at all times.
Broader transparency in Congress is a net positive, and we need more of it.https://t.co/O6GCKowris
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) January 10, 2023
.@RepMattGaetz amendment to the House Rules package would allow CSPAN cameras to film the House floor at all times — as we saw last week pic.twitter.com/EVC7tmdP2o
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 10, 2023
C-SPAN became all the rage among the American public during last week’s contentious House Speaker race. For the first time, many Americans tuned in live to see the American government in action.
Gaetz told Fox News Digital that this is what inspired his new suggestion.
“I’ve received a lot of feedback from constituents about how interesting it was, and that you were able to see in real time how our government is functioning, what alliances are being created, what discussions are being had, what animated moments drive the action,” he said. “And the pool view of the Congress is antiquated and a little boomer-fied.”
Not only that, Gaetz said that his proposal has broad support inside Congress, with no member seeing it as a bad thing to have more transparency and more public access to the proceedings of the House.
“I have talked to a handful of colleagues and I have yet to encounter one who didn’t view the broader transparency as a net positive.”
Exactly! There is no reason why this proposal is a bad thing. Americans deserve to know what is happening in their own government. Government transparency and openness are the way that Americans are able to trust what their government is doing, which is an absolute necessity in any functioning society.
Yet Gaetz has also suggested another reason why this proposal would be a good thing for the American public: It would show the public moments of bipartisanship and shared congeniality between rival members of Congress that we don’t often hear about.
He highlighted his friendly conversations with top Democrats such as Sheila Jackson Lee and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to show that “there are moments of bipartisanship and collegiality that occur every day. And the country doesn’t get to see those.”
For viewers of last week’s proceedings, perhaps one of the most interesting of these moments came when Gaetz and his Republican colleague Rep. Paul Gosar had a friendly conversation with radical leftist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat.
These representatives could not be more different politically, and Gosar and AOC have a rather contentious history. So it is rather nice to see these political rivals having a warm interaction.
Perhaps if the American people are allowed to see political rivals interacting with each other in a more civilized way, rather than the heated way they are often shown in the media, the political climate would be much less polarizing.
Overall, there is nothing bad about Gaetz’s proposal: It encourages openness and transparency from our government and it allows the American people to see moments of bipartisanship between political rivals.
Maybe this seemingly small resolution will have a major impact on the political atmosphere in our nation.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
