http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/06/eveningnews/main6064298.shtml?tag=pop
President Obama wants the final negotiations on health care reform - a reconciliation of the House and Senate versions of the bill - put on a fast track, even if that means breaking an explicit campaign promise.
\\"The House and Senate plan to put together the final health care reform bill behind closed doors according to an agreement by top Democrats,\\" House Speaker Nanci Pelosi said today at the White House.
The White House is on board with that, too, reports CBS News political correspondent Chip Reid. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stressed today that \\"the president wants to get a bill to his desk as quickly as possible.\\"
During the campaign, though, candidate Obama regularly promised something different - to broadcast all such negotiations on C-SPAN, putting the entire process of pounding out health care reform out in the open. (That promise applied to the now-completed processing of forging House and Senate bills, too.)
Back when Republicans controlled Congress and George W. Bush was in the White House, it was Democrats who angrily complained about secret backroom deals.
Now the roles are reversed.
Nice. The senators and representatives want to be able to argue their points without the people who elected them knowing what points they individually argued.
They make a play pretending it's to make the process faster, but the reality is that the only difference having cameras in that room is going to make is that each person talking will be held accountable for what they push for in the final bill.
One group that's liable to get burned by this are the pro-choice people. Personally,
and behind closed doors, a lot of democrats are against abortion, and that's one of the key parts of the bill that is going to be determined in these meetings.
Democracy in action, indeed.
