Calling Out The Democrats

Remember about 15 months or so ago, when "Candidate Obama" promised all of us that the health care debate was going to be televised on CSPAN?

Well, if you've paid attention the last few days you know that instead, the Democrats have decided to hold leadership only meetings with members of only their party to come up with the "conference committee" bill to reconcile the House and Senate differences.

Now someone is complaining. Who? The CEO of CSPAN. He wants the negotiations televised, just like Mr. Obama said they would be.

Jack Tapper at ABC has a great piece up explaining the whole thing.

(edit) Also, WSJ has a nice piece about how this move by the Democrats is probably going to help Tom DeLay's image more than it will give the public confidence in the Democrats.

If you want to know where my money is, I'd put it on not seeing any negotiations on CSPAN. In fact, there is a better chance of Brian Lamb, the CEO being investigated by Congress, than Congress actually being transparent on this.

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Why We Don't Trust Congress

Need a(nother) reason not to trust Congress on health care reform? We've all heard about HR 3200, the House version. Well Chris Dodd's Senate committee also has a 1,000 page bill that they've voted on.

No one on the committee has even seen the full bill, much less the whole Senate getting a chance to read it. The only thing up on their site is 790 pages before amendments. According to this Wall Street Journal article, committee staffers have said it probably won't be posted by October.

We were promised a new era of tranparency in government not long ago. Evidently the only thing transparent is that promise, not the process of health care reform.

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