Sen. Ben Sasse's Big Idea: Get cameras out of Senate hearings

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., is suggesting a bold proposal for how to calm the raging political atmosphere while making Washington run more efficiently in the process: remove cameras from Senate committee hearings.

Hearings are ostensibly meant as fact-finding missions to advance legislative goals, but Sasse claims that in reality his colleagues have little to no interest in what witnesses have to say and use the time in front of the camera to push their own political agendas.

Sasse noted that much of the work done by the Senate Intelligence Committee is done without cameras present, and there he sees Republicans and Democrats working together toward common goals instead of engaging in partisan bickering, which regularly takes place in televised hearings held by other committees.

Those hearings regularly make headlines, such as when Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz went before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss his bombshell report on the FBI’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the Russia investigation, as well as a number of contentious hearings on federal judicial nominations.