Hope and Fail

Final health care push … behind closed doors

Despite the president promising over and over during the 2008 campaign to broadcast health care negotiations on C-SPAN, and being implored by the network to do just that, the final negotiations between the White House, the House and the Senate aren’t going to be public.

They’re not even going to take place in a conference committee. From Politico:

President Barack Obama and congressional Democratic leaders agreed Tuesday to forgo a formal conference committee for reconciling the Senate and House health care bills, according to three Democratic congressional aides.

The decision means that the White House, Senate Majority Harry Reid, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will attempt to reach an agreement through private negotiations with key lawmakers. Once a deal is struck, the bill will go back to the House for passage, then to the Senate and onto to the president’s desk – a legislative path that has been described as “ping pong.”

The decision to bypass the conference committee, which the aides said came during an Oval Office meeting Tuesday, formalized what many Democrats had long known: If they have any hope of passing the health care bill quickly, they would need to circumvent the normal order of business.

Someone needs to let the Schoolhouse Rock folks know that it’s time to rewrite “I’m Just a Bill.”

President Obama’s promise to be uber transparent when it comes to health care was no passing statement. He said it in the January 2008 Democratic debate, he said it at an August 2008 rally in Chester, Va., he said it in March 2008 in Lancaster, Pa., he said it in August 2008 in Albuquerque, N.M., he even said it all they way back in November 2007 while speaking to Google employees in Mountain View, Calif.

Here’s just one example, from the debate of Jan. 31, 2008:

That’s what I did in Illinois, to provide insurance for people who did not have it. That’s what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are.

Nancy Pelosi apparently finds it amusing, her quip that “there has never been a more open process” aside. But it’s actually kind of sad. Greta van Susteren of Fox News put together a nice montage of a few times the president promised to negotiate health care with C-SPAN cameras rolling:

And Naked Emperor News has a compilation that’s even more extensive:

The White House doesn’t seem to care. And we shouldn’t be surprised. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about the promise during the daily briefing, and when asked if the president regretted making the promise, he said, “no:”

Q: Okay.  And there’s been some talk of not having a formal conference committee on Capitol Hill, to just sort of do this informally, probably behind closed doors.  Does the President have a view about whether this should be an actual conference committee or just be negotiated out?

MR. GIBBS: I think the President is anxious to get the differences worked out and get a bill to both houses and passed out of them.  I think you can go back and look through the past many years and see where situations — where they work out the differences between two bills — it happens very similarly to what the President is engaged in now.

Q: Okay, just lastly, why can’t you answer the C-SPAN question –

MR. GIBBS: I did.

Q: Well, you didn’t, because you said –

MR. GIBBS: I said I hadn’t seen the letter, which I haven’t –

Q: Why do you need to see a letter?  I mean, this is something the President said during the campaign and he talked about he wants everything open on C-SPAN –

MR. GIBBS: Dan asked me about the letter and I haven’t read the letter.

Q: Well, I’ll just ask you about having it on C-SPAN –

MR. GIBBS: I answered Dan’s question and I answered this before we left for the break, Keith.  The President’s number-one priority is getting the differences worked out, getting a bill to the House and the Senate.  We’ve filled your newspaper and many others with the back-and-forth and the details of what’s in these bills.  I don’t want to keep that from continuing to happen.  I don’t think there’s anybody that would say that we haven’t had a thorough, robust, now spanning two calendar years’ debate on health care.

Q: There are a lot of reasons not to do it on C-SPAN — people could showboat.  Does he regret making that statement during the campaign?

MR. GIBBS: No.

Of course not.