because they can discuss things more candidly. While the public hearings only real purpose is to give the politicians something they can use on the campaign trial to show their constituents that they are "fighting for them on Capitol Hill." For various reasons politicians have come to the conclusion that if they don't get a certain amount of airtime on the C-SPAN channels, then their constituents are likely to conclude that means they are not fighting for them on Capitol Hill. Hence why you see so much grandstanding on any of the C-SPAN broadcasts.

Then they will give a synopsis of the legislation to the elected folks, and then the elected folks will vote on the actual piece of legislation as it is being printed. O/U on number of pages is about 1800 pages with an additional 10000 pages of regulations. Keep in mind, the ACA was 2500 pages(with 17,000 pages of regulations), Dodd-Frank 1800 pages, and this is the government stepping into an area that they have done little to regulate in the past. Congress could decide to create a new agency to oversee this and make rules to govern all college athletics. And if you think that Title IX won't be an issue with football and men's basketball funding, Think again, there is no way that any politician in DC is going to not demand equal (or close to it) funding for men's and women's basketball and all other sports.

However, my post was specifically limiting the "work" to just what can get accomplished in committees or subcommittees when the cameras are turned off. During those sessions they are able to talk about any classified or highly sensitive information that may be relevant to the piece of legislation because they don't have to worry about it leaking to public. In terms of "productivity," politicians tend to be a lot more productive in closed sessions than open sessions.