The ((previous)) select committee created to reform Congress, which focused on budgeting, passed exactly zero recommendations by the time it ended in 2018. So, how did this modernization committee become one of the most high-functioning bipartisan workplaces on Capitol Hill, creating what a Roll Call reporter called a “parallel congressional universe”? How did it manage to adopt, in just four years, 202 bipartisan recommendations, about two-thirds of which have already been executed or made significant progress in that direction? What in God’s name is going on over there?

And what, if anything, can the rest of us learn about how to get things done in our own divided institutions and families?

A lot of it was rearranging the usual way of doing things so both sides could see and interact with each other in normal ways:

They stopped sitting up on high, on a dais, like every other committee and started sitting in a round table format, at the same level of the people who came to testify. Turns out that fixing politics starts by rearranging the furniture. “You can foster more productive conversation when you can look each other in the eye,” Kilmer says when I ask him to explain the obvious.

Also, having bipartisan dinners together. Having Republicans sit next to Democrats instead of separate groups. And talking about the difficult things… like being afraid of being murdered during the 1/6 treason.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/09/house-modernization-committee-bipartisan-collaboration-lessons/. About 2,500 words.