powered by cable. >> house committee heard recommendations on modernizing how the house operates. they discussed adding more members and using artificial intelligence and technology to connect lawmakers and constituents.

>> the committee was once again extended this time through the end of the 117th congress. here we are at long last. i want to make clear that this

committee has been part of the plan from day one. it involves focusing on tangible solutions. we have held 37 public hearings and past 171 recommendations. the structure requires bipartisan agreement. we need to think big. we should be open to creative problem-solving and considering ideas that fall outside of our comfort zones. congress is not a static institution. it is supposed to reflect the diversity of this country. new problems demand new solutions. our founding fathers designed a system of government that has lasted over 200 years but if it were perfect, there would be no need for the constitutional amendments.

none of them would have passed if citizens and policymakers were willing to think big and take risks. there are plenty of innovative solutions to the big and small challenges that congress faces and today, with joined by a panel of big thinkers. the committee will use its rules that allow for a more flexible hearing format. in accordance with the house rule, we will allow questioning per witness and the time will not be strictly segregated by witness which will allow extended back-and-forth between the members and witnesses.

there is a lot of work to be done. i appreciate that we can spend time today exploring ideas to improve congress for the betterment of the american people. we have heard from several of you before on other issues. today we will hear about five different ideas for fixing congress. such as expanding the size of

the house, i believe the founders new exactly what they were doing. our system of self-government and checks and balances is the best the world has seen and i think we must tread carefully when we explore ideas that would require amending the constitution. if we are going to access -- assess what is best, we should do a good job of understanding where the system we have today came from. another topic we will be discussing today ai and machine learning in the legislative process is a big idea that we should prepare for.

the future is now and we should ensure congress is at the forefront of technology in civic spaces. i would also like to talk about the calendar and schedule and how ai can help what we have been grappling with that. >> i would now like to welcome our five expert witnesses. we have a bigger panel than usual. witnesses are reminded your written statements be made part of the record. our first guest is a lecturer at the johns hopkins university. he was a senior fellow at the sunlight foundation. he is an author.

he earned his bachelors from round university and his phd in political science from cal berkeley. >> thank you. on the modernization of congress, i appreciate this opportunity to participate in the hearing. one big idea is increasing the size of the house of representatives making it bigger. since it is something that we did for the first 120 years. let's get into the history. in 1790 when the house first met, there were only 65 members each with approximately 30,000 constituents. there were only 13 states and the country was much smaller population wise.

framers envisioned representatives would have close connections to their constituents in districts small enough to make that representation meaningful. the country has grown considerably since then. as the country grew after each census, congress added more seats to reflect the growing population. after the last expansion in 1911, the house settled on 435. they couldn't agree on how to add more seats during that time. as you know since 1911, the population of the country has more than tripled and with women suffrage -- eligible voting population has increased more than sixfold. but the number 435 has not budged. the average number of

constituents per district is 760,000. the larger the district, the more distant the constituents feel from the representatives and vice versa. distance breeds distrust and frustration. it is bad for our form of democracy. a report that i co-authored which i'm submitting for the record recommends increasing the house by 115 members. this would correspond to the number of seats that have shifted between the states even as the population has grown since the cap was stuck upon. this doesn't have to happen right now. the ideal timing would be after

the 2030 census. once instituted, the number would continue to expand as the population grows. an expansion would have other benefits, one is that it would bring new faces and new ideas to washington. the peoples house should be close to the people. all of this could shake things up, but given how dysfunctional things seem to be right now, this could bring new energy and creativity to congress and even help short-circuit some of the hyper-partisan polarization. on that front, i think that

pairing this with other recommendations, it will go a long way. you would have much more diverse perspectives in congress. more broadly as a scholar of political science and history, i see that the decade ahead is likely to be a real moment of transformative change in our democracy. it is clear that the status quo is broken. there are those who want to burn it all to the ground, but i think you all want to restore and renew the privilege of publican democracy in america. i am 100% convinced we will need

big bold ideas to make that work and to innovate and modernize toward a broader future. i look forward to working with you all to achieve some of these innovations. >> our next witness is danielle allen. she is a political theorist. she is widely known for her work on justice and citizenship. she is a member of the american academy of arts and sciences. she earned her first phd in classics from the university of cambridge and her second and government from harvard university. you are now recognized for three minutes.

also known as square, right, that's what you get for that. doctor doctor, good morning chair kilmer, thank you for the invitation vice chair timmons. representative lata. it's an honor to be with all of you and thank you so much for your commitment to self government. you've heard my background. i've also had the honor of being a co chair for the american academy of arts and sciences commission on the practice of democratic citizenship, but i want to share a little bit more about myself for context where my views come from. i grew up in southern california in a family that prized civic engagement. on my mom's side, my great grandparents helped fight for women's right to vote and my great grandmother was president of the league of women voters in michigan in the 30s. and on my dad's side my granddad helped found one of the first chapters in northern florida. so as a matter both of family inheritance and personal conviction. i bring a deep belief to this hearing in the value to all. people have the chance to participate in self government as free and equal citizens. i speak therefore from personal conviction, but also speak today on behalf of the

academy's commission. the american academy of arts and sciences was founded in 1780 before the constitution by the same people who led the revolution. it was founded to secure for the new nation, the knowledge resources needed for the daring experiment in self government. in 2018 the academy convened a bipartisan commission to address the widespread sense that our constitutional democracy is in crisis in 2020 we issued our report, our common purpose. you've heard about it a fair bit. i bet the report makes the case that improvement of civic culture and of political institutions must go hand in hand if we're going to secure the health of our constitutional democracy. so my core message is that tweaking how congress operates is not enough to restore the strength of the first branch of government, healthy congress can grow only out of the soil of a healthy

civic culture. so investment in our civic well being through civic infrastructure is investment in the health of congress. civic infrastructure consists of the local places, programs and people that encourage all residents of municipalities and regions to interact, find common ground and solve problems together. we currently under invest in this infrastructure and under investment shows up in isolation, disengagement, mistrust and contention instead of participation and collaboration against this backdrop, residents and local communities, just like my great grandparents and grandparents are seeking to turn the tide in inman south carolina, local government business people and community residents have collaborated on a revitalized downtown with a new public library and physical infrastructure to better support connections among residents and visitors in lexington kentucky. the nonprofit civic lex builds civic health through accessible coverage of local government meetings and programs for residents and relationship building activities and resident

engagement in local government. the citizens campaign from new jersey, educates local residents and techniques of no blame problem solving and participants form civic trusts as they call them non partisan community based civic associations that search for successful policies at work in other communities that might be adopted in their own local communities need a vote of confidence from national investment. in our report, we recommended the creation of a trust for civic infrastructure, a new national organization for grant making, knowledge sharing, public education and research and evaluation to strengthen civic capacity and connectivity in local communities. a pilot trust is currently forming with private support but the scope and scale of needed investments means civic infrastructure should also be a priority for the national budget. future members of your body need a chance to learn the practices of democratic citizenship. enrich schools of democracy at the

local level. when local communities know how to bridge divides and engage residents and productive collaborations, we will be on our way to securing a healthy political culture nationally. this will improve your working conditions only with innovation. can we pass on to future generations our valuable inheritance of constitutional democracy in better shape than we currently find it. so again, we thank you for your willingness to renovate our constitutional democracy. >> thank you. dr allen our next

witnesses, joe mariani, did i get that right. alright. mr mariani is the technology and innovation leader at the center for government insights at deloitte services lp. his research focuses on the intersection of culture and innovation in both commercial businesses and government organizations. previously, he worked as a science teacher at saint anselm abbey school and served as an intelligence officer with the us marine corps. mr mariani earned his bachelor of arts and philosophy from the university of chicago and his master of arts from dartmouth college. mr mariani, you are now recognized for three minutes. >> excellent, thank you. chair and vice chair timmons members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. as you heard, i'm joe mariani and i lead research into emerging technologies for deloitte center for government insights and i've come to that role with a broad range of experience from marine corps intelligence officer to high school science teacher, from consultant to the government to commercial technology researchers today's task of kind of mining the breadth of industry and academia for the big ideas that can help transform government is exactly what gets me out of bed in the morning. so for the past five years we've been looking at the potential impact artificial intelligence or ai could have on government and from that research we've identified two ways that we think could help transform the legislative

process. the first is ai microscope that is using ai to assess the impact of existing legislation. so machine learning or ml models can accurately find patterns in data without having to specify ahead of time what those patterns should be. so just as a microscope can look at a leaf for example and find structures and patterns invisible to the human eye. these machine learning models can look at programs and find patterns in their outcomes that may be invisible to humans just because of the size, scope or even age of the data. so for example, machine learning models have found that patterns in government r and d. investment during world war two have impacted the location of innovation hubs even to today. and you can use these machine learning models on more recent policy problems as well. so in allegheny county pennsylvania, researchers have used machine learning models to help understand which interventions are most effective at reducing infant mortality. and it's that ability of machine learning models to predict policy outcomes. it kind of begs the next question which is what if we did something differently? what would change? and answering that question is exactly our second use of ai ai is simulator. so creating an ai simulator for problems can help policymakers test different approaches in much the same way that a flight simulator allows pilots to test different ways of

flying an entirely new airplane. so researchers in ireland have recently taken advantage of this to simulate parts of their economy. so they use data from patents, knowledge flows other economic trends to simulate how individual companies and investors might react to different policies. so for example, the researchers could examine if different tax incentives or offending funding eation of new high tech small businesses in certain specific parts of the country. and using ai in this way to simulate the complex systems that congress deals with every day can actually improve the quality of debate and do so in three key ways. first, it can articulate the often unspoken assumptions and values that we all bring to these issues second, and can uncover the drivers of particular problems. and third, can help us understand which interventions will be the most effective and at what cost. ultimately, these simulations can help members agree on what they disagree on. and in fact,

there's even evidence that just experimenting with these models alone can help drive consensus on emotionally charged issues. now, using ai in the legislative process is certainly going to uncover some unique challenges, new skills, new security requirements, new business processes will likely be required. but examples already at work in other industries show that with the right human machine teaming ai can help provide common foundation for debate, encourage consensus and produce meaningful results for the american people. thank you, i look forward to your questions. >> thanks mr mariani. uh next up we've got kevin kassir dr kassir is a senior fellow at american enterprise institute where he studies the us congress, the administrative state and election reform. prior to a e i he was the vice president of research partnerships at the r street institute and was the co founder of the legislative branch capacity working group. he also served for more than a decade as an analyst with congressional research service. he is the co author of the book. congress overwhelmed the decline of congressional capacity and prospects for reform. doctor costar earned his bachelor of arts in political science from ohio state university and his master of arts and phd in politics from new york university. dr costar welcome

back. you are now recognized for three minutes. >> all right, well, thank you much. chairman kilmer, vice chairman timmons and uh members of the select committee for having me here. and i also appreciated the setup. you gave my topic in your introduction, you referenced rule 11, clause two j two. um kind of gets to my point and i think it's also interesting that this room is located right next to energy committees room and above that is a portrait of the late john dingell who had many famous kips, one of them was that, you know, you can write the bill, but if i write the rules, i'll win. but being john dingell, of course, the language was much more salty. uh the importance of rules to the legislative process and the fact that rules on the waving of the rules ultimately can be very determinative outputs is, you know, little appreciate, i think, out of outside of capitol hill, it's only when you get here and you start seeing how the wheels turn, that you realize how impactful they are. so yes, i'm

here to uh i was called here to talk about excessive complexity of house rules for moving legislation. um, your staff had flagged a committee had written for the hill where and i decried excessive complexity, particularly citing a process by which the debt limit was raised by something like $400 billion dollars or more, which was baffling to even long term congress watchers who follow this stuff. so if it's baffling to us, i mean, my goodness, how can anybody else in this country understand what occurred now? i want to say? of course, you know, there's nothing inherently wrong with complex rules when you're dealing with humans who are interacting and legislative chamber. there's a lot of things that can go wrong. and so of course, you want to create rules and try to have them work towards a productive end. but i think what we've seen is over time that the number of rules have built up and this is not a phenomenon unique to congress. all organizations often face

this blight. i mean, we often decry red tape in government agencies what's red tape. it's a surfeit of rules, its rules being layered on and aggregating year after year after year and ultimately creating an incoherent jumble, which is exceedingly difficult to navigate and often can make it difficult for the organization to do what's expected of it. um, you know, ultimately, the rules governing any human actions within an institution need to serve the ultimate objectives of the institution. they should embody the shared values of the institution and they should be readily understandable by participants in the enterprise. and i think, you know, i am not a rules nerd. there are those of the current over congressional research service where i used to work, who working totally nerd out on the specifics of nerds, but just as somebody who's been watching congress for 20 years in this town, it feels to me that there are clear signs that the rules have grown overly complex. um you know, the committee here has previously conducted a deep dive on the budget process, which is just, you know, it's one slice of legislative process which is

rife with arcana paygo three ot 30 to be allocations that goes on and on and on. um you know, their whole fields of expertise, nerds who devote their lives to studying budget process and just budget process because it's that complex and then you consider that's just part of the whole i mean, my goodness, house legislators supposed to operate in this environment. um the ♪ 7rules setting aside the budget rules, the rules governing legislative process are prolix to put it mildly, you know, they begin on page 345 of the house rules and manual and they conclude some 700 pages later, emmanuel holds rules, you know, 130 devoted to committee procedures, like the one you cited, 56 pages address motions and amendments, 86 pages relate to the aforementioned budget process and so forth. um, you know, as a point of contrast, the great state of ohio, its legislative rule book has only 200 pages and not all 200 are

devoted to rules of moving legislation. they're devoted to other stuff. member conduct and such things. we really need that many rules here compared to state of ohio or perhaps other states. i think it's a fair question to ask. um, and i think, you know, when you talk about rules piling up, they ultimately are going to come with the cost, um, not least as alluded to the more rules an organization has the fewer people who can understand them and of course that's going to create power imbalances. you know, i referenced the iron or iron law of oligarchy, oligarchy. there's always somebody at the top of the organization who knows more things than other people and therefore is able to get their way. um, that's kind of inherently problematic if taken to extremes for a representative legislature where you're all supposed to be equal and you all have constituencies and states to take care of. um, you know,

when i conducted a study um, with timothy lapierre, a professor and lee druckman and we surveyed congressional staff some years ago we saw some clear evidence that even staff whose job it is to help you guys do your work. we're struggling to understand the rules and we weren't asking arcana were asking some pretty straightforward stuff and the percentage of folks who understood it wasn't especially high.

another cost of the complexity of rules is that, you know, regular order starts to your road no longer can you, you know, do the schoolhouse rock thing where you say, okay, i'll introduce the bill, it's gonna get referred to committee or multiple committees, there'll be a committee process, a bill will emerge from its gonna calendar to go to the floor, etcetera. no, not so much doesn't work like that. it's exceedingly complex. and as you all know, and have experienced, um, frequently, you know, if something does get out of committee, all the rules get waived suddenly goes into rules committee land where special rules are written. and the thing is handled in ways that are often surprising and confusing and it's bundled up with other stuff. so i suggest that, you know, it sounds pretty rich, but select one thing i suggested, the select committee considers establishing a select committee to study the rules in a bipartisan way and think about ways of simplifying them and making them better and value body the values that you all want for the institution, one of which i think is legislator participation in a meaningful way. um, it won't be easy. rules tend to change slowly here and the process for changing them inevitably is a majority vote by the majority party at the start of each congress. and so that naturally drifts the rules towards being increasingly partisan and arcane. but if

nothing is done, then the institution is going to continue to get bogged down in the equivalent of red tape with that. thank you. >> thanks. dr kassir and our final witness, last but not least, is our colleague, representative john larson, mr larson has represented connecticut's first district since 1999. he serves on the house committee on ways and means, where is the chair of the subcommittee on social security? mr larson is also the former vice chair and chair of the house democratic caucus. mr larson welcome. you are now recognized. >> well, thank you. mr chairman mr timmins mr later, uh great to be here and i applaud you for the big ideas that are coming forward and i think they're essential to a democracy. there are many that i would like to explore and i apologize, i got here a little late because i'm very interested in the, in the testimony and what kevin was just alluding to. i think part of the problem whether it's a member or staff is getting acclimated to congress, especially for the first time, even if you've had state legislative background or interest and you may understand or have a grasp of the legislative process, but it's

different here and it's compounded by the distance that a number of people have to travel. not everybody has a short trip like you do representative kilmer. but uh, it's uh, and the stress that that creates both on the individual and i dare say uh families as well. uh, we could spend the day talking about impact on spouses and families and how little congress does with regard to that too? the ongoing, um, i think atrocity that people have to sleep in their own buildings because of the cost of living here and they sleep in the house and shower down in the uh, in the locker room, you know, contrary to what public opinion is about, what happens to congressional members. so some time ago and i think i was on house administration at the time, had

introduced a bill that said, one of the ways that we could correct this was to have four year terms for members of congress, not dissimilar to what the senate does have four year terms and then stagger those terms so that there still would be an election cycle every two years, but only half of the 435 members would be up for election. why? so that you would have an opportunity, first and foremost to learn and a climate with regard to the practice to former presidents, president eisenhower and president johnson um both felt and were astounded at the enormous amount of pressure that's placed on a member in the house of representatives and as all of, you know, too, well, you know, sooner get here. and the first thing you're doing even before you're sworn in is down at your

respect of uh, d triple c or the republican committee to re elect raising money. uh, and everyone that you meet in the first days that you're here, we'll all tell you the same thing, what you gotta do is make sure that you go down and raise money. so the brief acclamation that people have most of it off campus, i remember the trip up to harvard where we had, you know, we spent maybe a day and a half. i just think it requires far more time than that and that people ought to be a lot of the time to make sure that they and their families get to adjust to the very rigorous schedule that, that congress has. most people do not understand that the day isn't done for a member of congress after voting is through uh, for a number of people when

they're here, the fundraising continues and there's always your constituent work back in your district as well. it's a 24/7 job. and to have that election cycle every two years only compounds the problem. our colleagues in the senate as you all know, you know, have six year terms and they're staggered. so that only a third of the body is up. why shouldn't the house have a similar system keeping with the tradition of having an election every two years, but only half the body. and after the first election, it would work, you know, odd or even numbers. however, it will be determined by the house. people would then have that opportunity and i believe therefore able to focus more clearly on the task in front of them and to familiarize

themselves with the process, including as kevin said, their staffs as well, having that opportunity to fully appreciate understand both their colleagues the process uh, and fundamentally how a bill really becomes law appear. and with that mr chairman, i yield back and happy to answer any questions, especially from the person voted the handsomest man in congress. i don't know how many people know that, but i just wanted that for the record >> really bringing my a game. thank you chairman larson. i now want to recognize myself and vice chair timmons to begin a period of extended questioning of the witnesses. any member who wishes to speak should just signal their request. either me or vice chair timmons. i want to

start actually with dr druckman. so i i just want to think through kind of what the pros and cons of adding more members to the house are. so last last hearing we focused on constituent services and i think it is probably undeniably so that your capacity to do case work and to address constituent concerns is probably easier with a smaller district at the same time over the course of the hearings that we've had. it's striking how many witnesses that we've had, who've spoken about the importance of relationships within a legislative body. and i can see probably some downside. if you substantially increase the size, it's already hard to have relationships with 400 and you know, if you include the delegates 440 others other than yourself that you know, that that that's tricky. and so i'm just curious if you can talk a little bit about what's achieved by increasing the number of members and you know, if you've got a sense of the puts and takes.

>> yeah, well, like everything, there's pros and cons. uh, so certainly it does bring members closer to their constituents. if the districts are smaller, i think it has the potential to make congress more representative of the people as a whole, if there are more members, but you know, it does, it is more members for you all to, to interact with. i guess the question is at, you know, if you go the proposal that we've put forward in this report is to add 150 members. so to go from 435 to 585. so that's, you know, more people to get to know. but you know, i think, i mean, i think the house has gotten to a point where it is just hard to get to know everybody, especially if you're only here for, you know, for two years, potentially. and then your, although most people are here for longer, but constantly running for reelection, you

know, so in terms of of members getting to know each other, i think if, you know, to your point, congressman larson people spend less time having to go into their fundraising dens and and more time just hanging out if folks were here more and not just flying out on, flying in on tuesday and flying out on thursday and you know, folks actually brought their families here and spent more time here, that would help. but you know, i mean, there is there is certainly a trade off with, with size, it's harder to, you know, get to know everybody, but on the other hand, you know, when when was the last time the house celebrated as a whole? >> uh yeah, so i was even just thinking about like in committees right already, it's a little bit tricky in committees and we're lucky we have 12 people on this committee. so our capacity to actually have dialogue is all right. you know,

if you look behind you, the armed services committee really big. right? >> so, i mean, 11 thing to think about it is also the committee structure, right? i mean, kevin is talking about the complexity and you know, there's some things that can be done with simplification, but the there's a lot of things that congress has called on to legislate on and think about and oversee and i think if you had larger, larger congress, you might have the potential for more committees and subcommittees to that. there just has to be a level of specialization among members of congress. you know that it's really hard to be a generalist given all of the things that you need to be thinking about. so having a larger member having having more members might allow for more potential for people to really focus on particular subcommittees which you know where you could develop some real expertise. like there's a certain amount, you've just got to trust each other and delegate to each other to to really solve

some very hard and tricky problems >> dr allen did you want to weigh in on this? >> a small footnote? my understanding is that both the u. k. parliament and the german bundestag are larger than our congress. their populations are smaller of course. so i think it would be very productive if your committee were to reach out to them and ask that question about what it means to operate in a body of that scale. >> you're going doctor, they're both about 700 members just to riff off lease point with respect to oversight. 435 members who have to oversee, you know, a $6 trillion 180 executive agencies. um you know, as the executive branch has grown in size and complexity. the number of members of congress has not and the size of staff has actually declined

since the 1980s in the house. and so you just think about the information of symmetries there, you know, obviously adding more members, i'm dr drummond, then i want to bring vice chair timmons in the conversation. can you speak a little bit about how this would work? you know, how would adding seats to the chamber and reapportionment work? and you made a passing reference to maybe not using single member districts but having a different approach? i was hoping you could say a little bit more about that. >> yeah, so, you know, i think in addition to increasing the size of the house, we ought to think about increasing the size of districts to go from single member to proportional multi member districts, 3-5 members per district. and the i think i think one of the challenges in this moment of our politics is things have become so deeply divided. hyper partisan polarization is real, it's a tremendous problem and there's just a tremendous amount of gamesmanship that that is going on uh and you know, trying to trying to crush the other side. i mean, i'm watching in horror

as as i see the d triple c. putting money to elect the most extreme republicans, but but within the single member district with a zero sum winner, take all election, you win by disqualifying the other side. and one way to disqualify the other side is to have their side be the most extreme. uh now that's i think an incredibly dangerous and dumb game, but it is the logic of our single member system and the binary choice that it forces. now imagine, you know, if you three or five member districts, you know, you it's not zero sum, it's not winner take all anymore. you have a diversity of representatives who represent the larger diversity of that district. i mean, you all represent very diverse districts and, you know, i mean, i know you worked very hard to try to represent all of your constituents, but ideologically

values wise, you know, demographically, there's some constituents who it's hard for you all to represent, even even if we did increase the size of the house and thus reduce the size of the district. so i think if we had proportional multi member districts where three or five members represented the district and split up the district and represented different constituents in different perspectives, we would have less of this binary zero sum. that is really destroying the ability of congress and our government to work, see more conservative democrats, more liberal republicans, maybe some, some, you know, new new parties, new new perspectives represented. um, and you combine that with increasing the size of the house. i think you you come you create a congress that is just much more representative of the diversity and pluralism in this country and i think much better able to work out some complex compromises because

everything is not, you know, we've got to crush the other side because they're evil. and that's that's the mindset that i think is really overwhelming the ability of this congress to function. and it's terrifying where this is leading. >> vice chair timothy. did you wanna weigh in? >> well, i just wanted to make a comment about that. i think the biggest threat that we face in our democratic republic and i apologize for not catching all the testimony. but when mr cosby was talking about rules, ah the house has already passed over 400 plus bills that sit in the senate and they haven't voted on one of them. and that was a practice both under harry reid and it's still a practice, i'd

say mitch is far more successful about it, but for a member of the house, uh, and whether you're a democrat or republican, the committee chairs and that whole process has been neutered or by a senate rule, nothing in the constitution that says that you need 60 votes to pass a bill, nothing in the constitution that says a filibuster is a constitutionally authorized. it may be somewhat argue a tradition, but this isn't. mr smith goes to washington. this is simply people in their room saying calling a closer vote and no house bill moves in the united states senate and you can argue that even the last two bills that the house has voted on from the senate, major bills, the infrastructure bill, and most recently, the so called gun violence bill never went through

a public hearing in the house. never was vetted and came from the other body and it's alarming how much this has happened and becoming part of the norm instead of what is called regular order. these things used to be sorted out in what's called a conference committee. there are very few people in congress today that can even recall what a conference committee is, but that's where the so called issue of hyper bipartisanship got resolved within those committees of conference when there was disagreement. but the house is now at an enormous disadvantage because of a senate rule. and frankly, the media pays no attention to it. 70% of the bills that passed the house that sit over in the senate are bipartisanly passed. so this notion that we are bipartisanly always have one another's throats simply isn't true on the

major issues where there are philosophical, ideological and regional differences. that has always been the way it's been throughout history and rightfully so. but a democratic majority, whether it's republican or democrat, it needs to govern and it can't be govern, and it can't be minority rule and ruled by culture vote, or what they call rule 22. something i would like to submit to the record, the new catch-22 is rule 22. >> thank you. i actually like your idea about the four-year term, and i want to give you something to think about. how would you deal with redistricting? >> that is a great question. >> it gets really tricky.

>> it depends, redistricting is up to the states. cracks but if half of the members have four-year terms, and they are alternating, someone would be in the middle of their term. they can do state-by-state, certain get reelected. something to think about. >> in terms of what that would mean with odd and even districts, how it would break down in terms of who is up for election in the two-year cycle. >> when you redraw the line, it would get tricky. i will talk about the calendar and schedule. welcome to the party. the variables are this. 435 members of congress --

so we have to be here more. we need more time. the best schedule i can come up with is 104 days. which is not going to happen. if we get 80, we will be lucky. can ai fix to where we just d conflict a little bit? >> i won't promise it. you are describing basically just an optimization problem. there is a ton of data, and within these defined parameters, we need to find the optimal

solution. that is exactly the type of thing ai is really good at. we talk about human machine teaming, because their strengths are what humans are weak at, and human strengths are what ai is weak at. we have so much data and so many variables, and we can't crunch all of those numbers. that is where ai can help. we talk about contextual variability and emotion, value judgment, that is where humans are significantly better. but scheduling, ai can help. >> the biggest challenge, submit he and subcommittee meetings left to the chair and they don't want to be told what to do. and floor votes are left to the majority leader, and he's not going to listen to anybody. that is what he gets to do. factor that in. how do you factor in -- can we get optimization without being directive?

can we make suggested optimization? >> absolutely. the other way to do it is the second model we talked about. you can sort of set the parameters of a system, here's all of the rules in play, what we want to accomplish and allow people to play around with it. different players in that model, committee chairs, folks who need your time to play around with it . from that, you can create 1, 2, 3, then human judgment can choose between we don't want to work on christmas eve or something like that. >> what business would we hire to help? we have been trying to create a committee calendar, a unified committee calendar so people could see. we are not trying to use ai to fix anything, just make it so you can tell what you're doing when you are doing it, as opposed to picking time out of thin air and saying interesting, 90% of the subcommittee has

another committee meeting at the same time. that is not great. maybe do it now -- an hour later, or earlier. we can figure out how to get a unified committee calendar, nonetheless optimize it. do you know anybody that does this? >> the good thing is, these types of optimization problems, they can be found across government and industries. a lot of folks have expertise applying these and seeing them to the context. the challenge is everyone has experience adopting ai models and using them potentially at scale. how do you cross it with the unique context of having those technological tools work in congress? i think what we are starting to see, as we heard from other examples, other legislatures, other parliaments starting to take those first tentative steps in using ai at small-scale processes. south africa has an ai personal

assistant that gets what you're talking about. members can ask questions and it will automatically respond about the content in a bill, or the time and conference room you need to get to in the next two minutes. those are the things that are out there. they're discovering the unique challenges of using ai and legislative context. i think your question, the challenge is learning both. learning from those examples and industry where they are doing this. how do you do it at scale, and learning from the small-scale content out there in south africa, the netherlands, brazil, about the unique requirements to do this in a legislative content. >> thank you. >> small footnote. every college and university has this problem and we have methods for solving it. so i would recommend calling a major public university and asking them -- middle schools -- true, but this relevant scale, the relevant scale that you need, you know, and yes, there are optimization tools. so i think you'd easily find something usable. >> one real quick follow up dr brightman, ignoring the policy considerations around having another 150 members of congress

and the staff and all that stuff. my biggest question is just space. where do they go? we can't put another 150 people on the floor. we, i mean i guess we could build another house office building. >> right. i mean you got that parking lot south of -- and some beautiful parks. >> it's overwhelming to think about adding another 150 members. >> right. i mean, you know, but also also people work from home more now. i mean it's a post pandemic. we've sort of figured out remote work a little bit. i mean not not that it can all be remote but yeah, but i think, i mean you can build another office. there's space south of of the three existing office buildings. i mean i hate to lose this beautiful parks but you know, it's interesting. >> our first year, one of our early hearings, somebody suggested moving the capital to nebraska. >> -- so we could maybe couple moving the capital to nebraska with that.

i'm just kidding plenty of land there. -- >> i'm just kidding. >> plenty of land there. i mean it would be in the middle of the country. >> i think the chairman, the chairman would appreciate that. but thank you. i yield back. >> thanks for mr. chairman and mr. vice chairman for today's hearing and to our witnesses. and this is kind of is an interesting hearing that we're having today. first of all, people are agreeing with me. first of all, i can make this very simple, you know, we always talk about schedules. we didn't know how legislature. it's not this is not rocket science. on tuesday, wednesday, thursday when we had session? we started at a certain time in the senate. if they said we're starting at 11:30, we started 11:30 next -- the next day, on the floor at 1:00, we are on the floor. the other thing is, you weren't allowed to run committee hearings during session.

very simple. i've advocated these things, so it's good to hear these things come up. the other thing is also good to hear, come up, i advocated this. our committee sizes are too large. and the other thing is if you go back 50, 60 years ago, members didn't serve on 234 committees. they served on one and they became experts on that committee. so, you know, we can simplify things for people having always been broken up into where they need to be at a certain time by simplifying the process. and so i'll just throw my two cents in there real quick. but one of the things that i think you mentioned, you know about the -- were talking about the executive branch and how large it has gotten, and congress hasn't kept up. i think part of the problem is congress just advocated its power to the executive, so you don't have to take the blame. you know, it's just like we've done it. you guys take care of it and

it's out of our hands now. so how do we pull that back in to start saying we're gonna start bringing that power back to the house, back to the senate so that the executive doesn't have it? because again, you know, i can remember as a kid, my dad was here from 59 to 89, but i can remember driving down independence avenue where these office buildings are today. they are quonset huts left over from world war ii. look at photographs, that's what we had. it's amazing that this government operated much smaller scale than we have today. but how do we bring that back? >> well, as as a person on the right, certainly, i would suggest that congress consider doing something to pare back the size of the executive branch. do we really need all 180 agencies? it's been a long time since i think i've seen any sort of concerted effort to do some sort of like, let's let's put together a bipartisan list and let's start zeroing things out. maybe hold a vote at the start of each congress and hold hands and jump together. it can be done through a legislative procedure, an

expedited one or something like that. that would put incentives in the right direction and, you know, make the job a little more manageable. i think that there also is, you know, the information to symmetries are so immense. i don't think the house did itself any favors in growing government, but then reducing the number of staff over the past 40 years. i think technology can help make up for it. i think this is where ai is very interesting. when committees get together and study a problem, yep, 3, 4 years later, very few people on the committee are still there, many of the staff have left and what you have is a bunch of printed hearing volumes and that's just that knowledge is just fading from memory because you guys are all working on new stuff and being able to manage that knowledge especially so new members can come in, get up to speed fast and get a sense of what really, you know, are the options of what should be done one of the problems. i think that that is that is part of the mix. the basic incentive, like, you know, james madison thought that the legislature would be the

most pow the basic and center, like james madison thought that the legislature would be the most powerful entity of all in the three branches. the ability to exercise power, power of the purse, power over the law, he thought that would be absolutely irresistible to members. i think would be baffled by the fact that members frequently delegate authority. they delegate authority up towards leadership, and they delegate authority over towards the executive branch and therefore have grown this massive administrative state. so some of this will be an attitudinal change, but i think also the difficulty that the initial number has in exerting his or her will, why put in the work to try to rein in an agency or change policy if your bill is not going to get out of committee? if it is not going to get called for a vote, and if the senate is going to sit on it. empowering members to get stuff done i think has to be part of

the equation. >> just quickly a follow-up for you. you are also talking about there are rules and procedures. it has gotten well out of hand. let's just go back to the jefferson manual? >> no, i think we have to go a little bit beyond that. i think there are, you know, some of the specializations i think are valuable. when you are talking about a trade treaty or certain other specified areas having an expedited procedure can be valuable. but certainly the whole corpus needs to be paired back. you have rules that are on the books but not even used. calendar wednesday has been around for how long? when is the last time it has been voted? but it's in the books and theoretically can be in vote. don -- told me that congress picked up a new rule at the start of last january and regularly and waves the rule.

what? >> yeah. it is a problem. mr. murray, a quick question. [inaudible] communications technology right across the -- energy and commerce. and we are talking about all the ai. and one of the things of course we have had a lot of questions about in the past is about how algorithms are said especially when we are talking about ai. how would you make sure that those algorithms are correct, that they are not by one biased to one side or the other? >> the short answer i think is that everyone involved every step that the process has a role in ensuring that those ai models are accurate and equitable. and that starts even before the models are made. it starts with selecting and collecting the data to make sure it is accurate and clean. and most important for equity, that for purpose. because you can gather one data set in one concrete context, and it can be representative an obvious one way or the other. but, use it in a different context and it can accidentally introduced bias. those types of controls and

governance processes need to extend into the next phase where you are making the model and using its own focusing on transparency. in those steps is probably the most important. to identify what are the weights, what are the assumptions that we are using. and then into members that you are themselves, to make sure that when you're using the outputs that you have kind of the literacy of how those models work so that you can understand their left and right lateral limits. ai as a powerful tool but it is not in the infallible oracle. it is a decision made for yourself. and probably also unique to the legislative context, having enough knowledge to be able to communicate to constituents how those models are made so that you can build their trust and confidence in how ai has been used as well. >> i have two more questions if i could mister sharon. thank you very much. doctor owen, in your testimony, you are talking about, we are always trying to figure out at home, across the home country. how do you get people back engaged? but, a lot of people they're

putting themselves in. they stay home, it is just like years ago. and i'm not going to date myself on this by saying it but, when you could go to the corner store and pick up a cassette tape and you are going to take it home and watch a movie, the theaters all said nobody is going to do that. nobody is going to stay home and watch it on their own tv, this movie. well they were all proven wrong. and we see more and more where people are, they just keep pulling things back. they are out there communicating with one another. neighbors, you never see neighbors until spring. everybody kind of disappears for six months. so i guess my question is, we want to get people actively involved again in the political process, which our founders wanted this all to be. how do we get these people reengaged? it is like, disengaging themselves from their phones. that is it every piece of

legislation but, 95% of all accidents on the road today are driver error. and most of it, i was over at highway patrol not too long ago in ohio, it is because we will play with their phones. so how do we get people reengaged in this? >> i really appreciate the question. i think we all have direct experiences of the sort of disconnection that people are living with and the negative psychological and behavioral consequences that flow from that. the good news is that there really are people in communities across the country who know how to pull people back. at the end of the day, social connection is rewarding. it is empowering, it supports mental health and well-being. and so when people have opportunities to participate again, they tend to come back. so they don't just participate once. but in order for that to work, you need those, in effect, civic entrepreneurs who are going to put in that time and energy to build the context, to

issue the invitation, to follow up with people, and so forth. and that is what we have historically had a habit of investing in. and that happens has fallen away. so if you look at the sort of earliest history of the country, take massachusetts in the colonial period 1600 even. the state governments, sort of colonial assembly insisted that every town put resources into a school. that was the beginning of public schooling. you can think of that is the first example of the began of a structure. the purposes were civic. they were economic to, but civic first. and then throughout the late 19th, early 20th century, we had these extraordinary philanthropists. andrew carnegie, and so forth, who built libraries all over the country. he was not alone. our contemporary billionaires do not invest in civic infrastructure in the same kind of way, and that is something that we should all recognize. and even the question of, what can congress do to incentivize private philanthropy back into supporting these local level civic entrepreneurs is really

important. so the short messages, the people are out there who know how to pull people back into connection, but they are not getting support in the way that they have historically gotten it in this country. >> thank you, mister chairman, i know i've got over my time but i have so many other questions. but thank you so much for your indulgence. >> i want to follow up with mr. larson. i don't think that there is anything magic about two years. i think that there is a sense, though, that maybe the intent of the founders was to make sure that we are closer to our constituents, more accountable to our constituents. i imagine that might be a push back against extending the length of the term. i just want to get your sense of how you would respond to that. >> you are absolutely right. the founding fathers had a major debate over this because they thought it should be one year. and the idea was that in a democracy they wanted to make

sure you had one chamber that was close to that people and that the people elected every year. and that is the concept that i think eisenhower and johnson used almost the exact same phrase that you did. there is nothing magic about two years. but the idea of staggering them what i think also creates opportunities to unity upstream for those who are in the house but don't have to necessarily give up a seat in order to run for a governorship or run for the united states senate. but the primary goal here is, i think both guys johnson and eisenhower recognized, people really need to understand the responsibility and role. and to do that in a two-year period and obviously it has been done. but when you complicate that

with both the need to raise money and the family concerns that that has on spouses and children, it just seems to me to be a bar more humane way to go about this business that we are in and allow both for greater understanding, camaraderie, and i think a better legislation in the final run. >> doctor costar, i want to get your sons. i've been struck over the course of this committee's existence that, i guess by two dynamics to the roles. we have a bunch of rules that we don't actually follow. there is a ton of under brush. i've been here nearly ten years, i don't think we have done calendar wednesday. but it is in the rules. there are all of these rules that we consistently waive and lord knows that the budget and appropriations process we have,

in that instance there are laws that govern that process o'brien large we don't follow either. i guess i'm just curious your sense of, can you point to an example of either another parliament or a state legislature that has done this process that you are suggesting that it successfully kind of cleared this under brush and control alt delete on the rules and refreshed it? >> unfortunately, no. and i think, you know, in part when you look at state legislatures, i don't think that they have had the same kind of kadri problem that the house has had where things have gotten so out of control so rapidly. their pairings, i, think are more modest incremental changes. but things in get out of control. things got out of control here and that we have each congress, little tweaks of the rules, but no fundamental re-visiting because it is just not part of

the process of but i certainly would love to see, and again this is maybe where our friends at the research service or ncs out, national council of state legislatures could partner up and work together, unjustly the house rules next to the rules of four states where we have well functioning legislatures and just compare. . >> well i, also i find myself thinking your recommendation of whether it be another select committee or continuing the work of the select committee, to do a deeper dive into this, i'm just curious how much you think that actually fixes stuff. we had a year of people testifying in front of this committee and we're just getting back to regular order. i came out of a state legislature where everybody is taken up under an open rule where if you had an amendment that was that all germane to the bill, you could offer it. it would be debated. and it would be voted on. in my experience in the state legislature, that was abused five maybe six times for gotcha

politics. the notion of doing that here is laughable. it would be used for gotcha politics at every angle, and that is not a rules problem, that is a culture problem. so i'm just curious how much you think that we should invest into a deep dive into rules change in light of that dynamic. >> yeah. well there is a sikh kind of relationship between the rules and the behavior and there has been this process where when it comes to the floor, some bad behavior crops up so the rules could tighten more. bad behavior springs up elsewhere. it is almost like dealing with a rebellious child or something like. that i'm gonna put more rules on you to stop you from doing it and then the bunkers figures out a way to get around. it they are extremely effective so you keep ratcheting and ratcheting and that is the dynamic. and i think no, it is going to require larger conversations amongst members to get people to say, do we want to keep living this way? is this how we want to be

legislatures or do we want to change the rules and away? and we had a bit of that in the class of 74 when they came in and took over congress, they said we are not playing by these rules. and we have had enough of them making a cultural demand change and the rules were changed so that they could do what they can do. >> doctor alan, one of the values of my long commute that mr. larson mentioned is a lot of time to read. so i read the our comic purpose report, and i thought was really thoughtful. my recollection of chapter four was that the civic bridge building chapter. you spoke to this dynamic. that part of the division that you see in congress is driven by division in our communities. i had this crazy experiences last fall, where two things happen. one we had a series of attacks on religious institutions into coma. there was an endless lawmaker center they got burned to the ground. to buddhist faith leaders got

exulted outside of their temple and a church got vandalized all within the span of three weeks. and in the spirit of something good coming out of something bad, we actually saw an inter faith alliance spring up and say, we are going to pull together. everybody get in the same room and say that is not what we are about in this community. and it was actually a great event. afterwards one of the faith leaders came out to me and said, that was really powerful but if we are going to do this right, this wouldn't just be a 90 minute exercise, this would be something that we do on an ongoing basis. and i, said out of curiosity, any federal response for something like that? and i said not really. and then a bit later i visited a ymca thinking that they were going to talk to me about my quickly socks because we're building gymnasiums. that's all they want to talk about. they said all the polarization that you see in d.c. and washington d.c. are shown up in our why. we've literally had arguments and fights break out over pick your red or blue issue. and they said it's been so bad that we have hired a consultant that's been training our staff and board and conflict resolution.

and we are gonna host, as you suggested, we're gonna host bridge building discussions where we get people to talk to each other and listen to each other rather than have the jerry springer show show up in our ymca. and they, said any special support for that? and i said not really. at least not. currently and, you know, there are common purpose report acknowledges that we do support this kind of civic infrastructure investment through the national endowment for democracy. but that supporters to other countries to strengthen democracy in other countries. so i see i absolutely see value in this. in fact, western simmons and i, we have ten democrats and ten republicans on a bill to, maybe not create a trust but set up a pilot program that could except private philanthropy and to do this grand making two local organizations. i think the question that most commonly comes up is, one how do you measure success, and to, why is this an innately federal

obligation? you mentioned that there are philanthropists who are supporting this endeavor already. as i have spoken with colleagues on the floor and said, hey do you want to sign on to this? probably the most common question i get is, why is this something the federal government ought to do? so can you respond to both of those. >> absolutely. >> sorry for the long wind. up but i wanted to give you a sense of. i think you are on to something because we're seeing it in our communities. >> absolutely. we are seeing it all over and i want to lift up your bill. i think that the building civic bridges act, i think it is very important. so i'm happy to lend my voice and supports events and whatever appropriate points. but in brief, i think there are three really important points and i will admit that as our commission conversations on this started, i was a skeptic about the interest for civic infrastructure for exactly the reason that you just articulated. the question of, well should the federal government be doing this? should this really be what we do at a local level anyway?

and i change my view, basically. and i came to try views for a number of reasons. the first is just recognizing our practice of investing in infrastructure democracy and other countries came at a time historically when we were really building a strong wall of defense against a challenge of communism. and we have to be honest that, at this point in time, the greatest challenge for democracy on the globe right now is our weakening democracy. and we need to civic strength here at home. and we need it as a matter of defending democracy for the globe. so, in that, regard the same motivation that led to this national investments in the past. pertain but they pertain here at home. now the challenge of course is the question of, what do you think the federal government should be involved, you sort of worry we'll, will that become very partisan in terms of what kinds of investments are? so in that regard, i think that

a way to avoid that problem is really to focus on a project of seeking to match other investments of local communities. so the investments, there should be a broad set of principles design principles for the kinds of investments, but not a kind of blueprint of like here is everything everybody must do. because local communities need to be able to provide definition to give us the diversity and flexibility across the country are finding precisely what this infrastructure should look like. so, than one might be some of those broad design principles that congress might be sort of interested in in the matching grant program? one i think is the idea that civic infrastructure should help ensure that self government is operational. and so, what does that mean exactly? we expect that with more investments in civic infrastructure we should see higher trust, higher volunteer -ism, and more effective community problem solving. those are all measurable things. we have some existing data. approaches the do you measure them, we would improve and then

it would need to. and one of the things that the trust would do would be to improve precisely the sets of indicators being used to measure whether or not self government is operational at that local level. second design principle is for all. self government, for all. we have another challenge which is that, in so far as our civic infrastructure investments have historically been, i refer to the colonial period were sort of massachusetts required talents to invest in schools. we had philanthropist and soap fourth. we have a situation now where well resourced communities are able to invest inside of a structure and those with lower property tax bases are just not in the same sort of way. so there is a need for congress's investments to sort of illicit investment in those communities where the issue of support is more challenged. but again, i do think it is really important that this be about drawing out philanthropic dollars as well, and ensuring that community foundations are fully activated against the hull of the community. and then what congress can also

assist in is helping people build bridges across jurisdictional and regional lines, which is a major challenge right now for people who are trying to support investments in this space. and the last design principle i would point to is connectedness. another version of bridge building. we have been able for decades to measure increases in residential ideological polarization. worsening dynamics of hyper subject segregation for low income communities of color, and increasing experiences of loneliness and disconnection across demographic groups. and honestly, we see those data points showing up and also in things like mass shootings and so forth. so this is connected to a lot of big stuff in our society. so just as we can measure all of the ways in which those have been worse, and those, reversing those dynamics would be indicators of success for investments and civic infrastructure around that design principle of connectedness. >> that's great. west or timmins? >> i guess i am going to throw

at another big idea and just get y'all's feedback on it. i think one of the biggest challenges that our society is facing is right here. technology, interconnectedness, our inability to interact with one another. we often talk about whether the hyperpartisan in congress is a congress problem or a society problem. and it is probably a little bit of both. but i think one of the biggest challenges is our inability to, i guess, digest information. because, you get a lot of information that previously humans just wouldn't get because the journalism would weed it out before it got that far. and i think screen posted on social media anonymously, just by crazy people. and so how do we grow past the challenges that technology, interconnectedness are creating?

anybody? >> i am happy to speak to that if. so, i think your question gets to the deepest issues we are all facing. the question that's all of these suggestions relate to, which is, we are facing a crisis of representation. of the activity, and practice of representation. and it is not a crisis of any particular individuals making, it is a crisis that, at the end of the day has been finally driven all of the way home by the invention of social media. and i just want to be very clear about why and how, and therefore why your committee is so important. basically, we all know the federalist papers. we all know federalists ten. the argument of federalist tennis that the design of the constitution, among other, things its job was to mitigate the problems a faction.

and the answer of how it was supposed to medicate was delivered and federalist ten. it is a two part answer. we only teach one part of the answer. we do see part of the answer that, it is about representative government. the notion that you don't have direct democracy. you have representatives who are gonna filter and synthesize opinion from around the country. but there was a second part to madison's answer and it was literally that the breath of the country, being a broad republic, would make it hard for people with extreme views to find each other and coordinate. so, geographic dispersal was literally a pillar of the original design. so, facebook, knocked that pillar out from under us. and so all of the work that we are trying to do in terms of thinking about the future of congress is answering the question of how to have affective representation when we no longer have the pillar of the geographic dispersal supporting the information ecosystem that supports healthy

deliberation. so, yes you need rules changes. in order to improve the process of deliberation, recognizing that circumstantial change. yes we need a bigger house to be connected to the hole of the country, and yes we need investment civic infrastructure that helps people navigate it completely changed information ecosystem. we need all of these things in order to have a healthy congress. >> yeah, i mean i guess a quick camp would be just members should get off twitter. but, no. it is a long-standing problem that elites in the country have always had a greater voice in the ears of congress. this is political science in the four days that complains that the problem of pluralism is that it always, this chorus always things with an upper class tone. so it is embedded in the system. some people are going to be better connected, some are

gonna have the means to get here communicate, et cetera. but certainly technology has exacerbates it. it has as you noted mediated things. and we have also seen since the 70s a massive uptick in the number of interest groups. not for profit, trade, otherwise, here in washington d.c.. so you guys are getting hit from 1 million directions with a lot of voices. but interestingly enough, most of those are very self interested voice of. their voice views don't necessarily jive with those of the public. but when you are constantly hearing that sort of stuff, it naturally is going to try to pull your brain towards those issues and those solutions and that sort of thing. so how do you counteracted? it is not easy. turning off twitter is one part of it but you are still going to have people beating their way to your front doors and trying to come to your fund-raisers and do all sorts of stuff like that. so, we have to think about new tools for helping you guys better get a sense of the communities and what their views are of things. one of the interesting

experiments that was being done, i heard about it a few years ago, was steve kerr all of, a social scientist, was working on something called voice of the people. he put together these really deep focus groups, postal reform and other stuff, regular americans. and they would come up with solutions. about how you can get something done, but they were coming up with solutions that just never got a voice on the hill. you all have been put in a position of, you go back to your district, you try to do a town hall, but guess what elites will hijack. those interest groups wilson people because they want to create a twitter moment or a youtube moment. they wrecked that too. and so, it is really a tough position. and i don't know if there are technological tools that can help you kind of separate the kind of elite noise and get a better sense of what the irish community can make, other than just the shoe leisure leather that you all put in so much. but it is a real thing. >> i just want to address your question as, well because it is a crucially important question.

i mean, social media has done a lot of good things in connecting a lot of people and it has also done a lot of bad things in connecting other people, i think. the business incentives and social media of course are to drive what gets the most clicks, what is the most emotional, and that is the stuff that people want to read which is how terrible the other side is. there's a lot of confirmation bias when you look at studies like why do people share stuff on social media, it is because it makes them feel good. it makes them feel like they are right, they have it all figured out, and it reinforces that kind of emotional charge that they get by hating on the people that they like to hate on, essentially. and that's is a real problem. but a lot of these trends of division started with cable

news, with talk radio before social media. took over. it in fact it is interesting. i look at some studies. it is really older americans who are most victimized by this fake news because they haven't grown up in this environment of social media and facebook and all of that where they can easily more easily distinguish. and also they are most sat in their views and most likely to believe the worst things about the other side. so a lot of it is really coming from political leadership and, it is a reinforcing dynamic because political leaders say, well, i what i'm just going to say what my angry followers are saying. i should amplify that. as the expression goes, twitter is not the real world. but it is a representative sample of people who are the most engaged in politics. , now one thing that gives me some hope is that, well social

media is obviously everywhere throughout western democracies and the world, not every country that has social media is as polarized and divided as the u.s.. so it makes me think that there is something distinct about what is happening in the united states. and i think that distinct thing is the endless demonization of the other side that is coming from leadership. and political leads and media waits and that filters down and that is where most people get their opinions from it and then they want to paint on the other side. also the geographical sorting that a lot of the polarization is really that people live in communities that are very solidly, our or very solidly d. and when you are surrounded by people who are like-minded, and you tend to become more extreme. and when people on the other side are far away and distant, they become scarier and it is easier to demagoguery and

fearmonger about who they really are. so some of this bridge building is important. people are more polarized in real life, actually, than they are on social media. which is something that i don't think that we really appreciate. so i think social media amplifies a lot of what is happening. but it is an amplifier not a root cause of a lot of the division. and it is true, peoples attention spans are shorter but. believe in conspiracy, there's an interesting paper lately, believing confused conspiracy theories hasn't increased but it is just consolidated more on a few that become more amplified. so i mean, the lack of people's understanding about policy, and this is political scientists of always kind of said. american people don't know anything about politics. american people are so dominant, right? but like, that's not really

fair because most people know what they need to know. from shortcuts, and they depend on political leaders to represent them and helping to figure out what they know. and when political leaders don't do that responsibly, it is very hard for people who really depends on the leadership. leadership matters. >> go ahead, mr. larson, and then mr. marin. >> well i just wanted to, these are all good questions and i enjoy listening. but representative coal and delauro have a bill in history and civics. and, frankly it is not being taught the way that it should be. within our school systems. some do better than others but across this nation the lack of civic understanding and responsibility, which is critical for a republic, isn't

tops. between that and financial literacy, congress is loathe to mandate educational instruction on the states. that is the responsibility of the state. but especially in this day and age where you are bombarded with information and it is hard to distinguish the difference between the two. and frankly, anyone can produce a scientist or an economist or something that supports their point of view and there really isn't a nation that has been grounded in its civic responsibility. there is another notion, an idea, also that we should have to go along with that wettest really a does with a hunted percent voting. and having voting as a requirement. and making sure that civic instruction, in order to get

out of high school that you understand how that works and how we apply that. >> go ahead. >> yeah, i will just strike an optimistic note on the technological side which is, technology certainly has created some of these challenges but it is ultimately a tool. so it's's value agnostic, it does what we tell it. and to dr. costar's point, there are there are some platforms which just tweaking the rules you can drive towards consensus. so the taiwan is a social platform that tyrant the taiwanese government uses to drive towards some of these things. consensus uneven fraud issues like internet regulation. but dr. allen's point about trust in government, you can see that one of the things that we have been looking at and our research is, one of the factors that can drive that is this kind of idea that, psychic distance. how close you feel to that is kind of how much you trust it. so the public's trust local government more than states, state more than federal, and so. on so by creating distance

technology, you don't have to go to your county clerk anymore. you don't need to meet in person with the representative. by creating that distance, it can feed that distrust. but we've also seen the opposite begin to take place. so if you can create a good customer experience for the public, that actually goes a long way. even if it is a digital customer experience that goes a long way to building trust. so we have seen this high correlation between the customer experience of government services and public trust in government. so we kind of have the mindset shift that everyone is describing, we can actually use a psychological tool to actually build some of the trust we are looking for. >> okay. i feel like this was well worth waiting three years for this hearing. this was really meeting. i want to thank our witnesses for their testimony today, and thank our committee members who were able to attend. i also want to thank our staff were putting together another great hearing with such outstanding witnesses, and i want to acknowledge the armed services committee for letting

us go out in their room. without objection, all members will have five legislative days within which to submit additional questions for the witnesses to the chair which will be afforded to the witnesses for their response. i ask our witnesses to please respond as promptly as you are able. without objection, all members of the five legislative days within which to x submit extraneous materials to the chair for inclusion in the record. and with, that our hearing is adjourned. thanks everybody.

>> thank you again, appreciate you guys.

this hearing was held before the senate went on to pass climate change legislation. >>