C-Span president and founder Brian Lamb sent a letter to the White House last week asking that his television cameras be allowed to film the negotiations taking place between the leaders of the House and Senate who are hammering out a compromise between their two versions of the health care reform bill. He was turned down flat. The negotiations are being held in secret, and no one, least of all the public, is being allowed to see the ingredients being kneaded into this particular legislative sausage.
Not only is this a dismaying abuse of power on the part of the Democrats, it represents yet another of the President's broken promises. At least eight times while he was campaigning for the presidency he promised voters that all negotiations that involve bills affecting the American people will be conducted with transparency and even be televised on C-Span so that everyone can see what's going on. Here's the video:
(If this doesn't work go here)
Now, when it's time to man up and keep his commitment to the American public, the President has nothing to say. Little wonder that fewer and fewer people put any confidence in our president's words. Candidate Obama was apparently no more serious about transparency than he was about not hiring lobbyists, giving citizens time to study every bill before it was voted on, closing Gitmo, withdrawing from Iraq, and not raising taxes on the middle class.
Like many other politicians before him Mr. Obama seems willing to say anything he thinks people want to hear in order to get elected, and then, once in office, he turns out to be just another run-of-the-mill pol. It'll be a long time, I suspect, before another politician campaigns on the promise of hope and change, a phrase that Mr. Obama is sadly turning into a joke.
See Big Government for more on the President's failure to abide by his commitment to transparency.
RLC