The Obama-Pelosi-Reid regime marched into office pledging to provide the most transparent federal government in American history. I was looking forward to that.
On Inauguration Day, President Obama told his senior staff:
The way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable. And the way to make government accountable is make it transparent so that the American people can know exactly what decisions are being made, how they’re being made, and whether their interests are being well served.
Mr. President, live up to your statement and ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to simply show us the bill.
How much have we backslid? Just a few months ago, Americans were asking members of Congress to read the bills. But that was apparently too much of a challenge. Now we’re simply asking if we can see the crucial Senate health care plan.
Are we sticking our noses where they don’t belong? Are we wrong to take Reid at his word, based on a posting on his website, that transparency is a critical part of the health care reform process? Reid’s statement from early November, entitled, “Transparency is one of the guiding principles of health insurance reform,” included this:
And as we head for the finish line, one of the most important parts of this process is transparency.
So Mr. Reid, SHOW US THE BILL.
Sen. Mitch McConnell put it aptly:
And here’s the most outrageous part: at the end of this rush, they want us to vote on a bill that no one outside the Majority Leader’s conference room has even seen.
As an aside, Sen. Reid also said this in the November 2 statement:
We have listened to the vast majority of Americans who know that a public option for health insurance is the best way to keep competition up, keep costs down and keep insurance companies honest.
Then why drop it, ole Har? But I digress…
President Obama and Sen. Reid set the transparency bar for themselves – we didn’t. It wasn’t some standard imposed on them by conservatives in a game of gotcha. They made the pledge.
Yet with one of the most paradigm-shifting pieces of legislation of this decade, Sen. Reid won’t even show the bill, let alone post it online for taxpayers to see.
If the Democrats in Congress give two wits about the taxpayers of this country, they should show us the bill or vote “no” because average Americans have been excluded from the process.
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