There has been a brouhaha among a few people in the media and in certain parts of the blogosphere about how the Democrats are handling the reconciliation of the differing health care bills passed by the House and Senate. Normally a conference committee is set up which includes members from both houses and from both parties. The problem is, however, doing it the regular way would allow opponents of the bill to stall things, especially, apparently, in the Senate. The Democratic leaders do not want this. They want to get this thing passed – in a hurry. Therefore, the President, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid have decided to skip the conference committee and just come up with a bill themselves.
While this kerfuffle was happening, another one arose when a few people remembered that, during the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to televise the negotiations on health care legislation on C-SPAN. President Obama’s press secretary has, as you can imagine, had some problems with reporters’ questions on the topic. Obviously, he can’t just come out and say that President Obama is not going to do what candidate Obama promised he would do. He can’t just say that what candidate Obama said was a bunch of hooey that no reasonable person would expect anybody to follow through on – though I would not be surprised if he would like to say that.
Clearly, the negotiations are not going to be on C-SPAN – or anyplace else where the public could get a chance to see how the final bill is agreed upon. I suppose the differences between what then-Senator Obama said on the campaign trail versus what President Obama is doing now makes for a nice case of "gotcha" that the Republicans can use against the President, but substantively it is meaningless.
What is more important, and actually could be helpful – and should be done as a matter of good government – is to let the members of the House and Senate have enough time to actually look at the bill before they vote on it. The House version does not come into effect until 2013. The Senate version does not come into effect until 2014. There is enough time to let individual members of Congress, and maybe even a few members of the public, have a chance to look at the bill before it is passed. But don’t look for that to happen, either.
There is already talk about how President Obama and/or the Democratic leaders in Congress want the health care bill passed before President Obama’s State of the Union address. It is to be a triumph for the President. That means that there is just barely enough time for the leaders to agree on a bill and the members to vote on it. There certainly won’t be time for the members of Congress to actually see what they are voting on before they vote on it.*
It sort of reminds me of the way the people of Illinois got stuck with Roland Burris as our senator a year ago. Soon-to-be-former Governor Blagojevich appointed Roland Burris to the Senate on December 30, 2008. The Democratic leaders in the Senate were objecting to the Burris appointment – until the word came from President Obama that the whole Burris "thing" was threatening to be a distraction to his inauguration. So, the Democratic leaders told Burris that they would seat him if he promised to tell the truth in the upcoming investigations in Illinois. He agreed, so they did (i.e., they seated him) and he didn’t (i.e., tell the truth). But it didn’t matter to President Obama. His inauguration had been protected. And the fact that Illinois got a lousy senator for two years? Well, at least Burris has been showing up to vote. That is more than his predecessor did.
------------
* I suppose that the rush is also a matter of getting the bill passed before people get a chance to see what is in it.
Comments