When Barack Obama was running for president, he vowed to lead the most open and transparent government in history. Candidate Obama even promised to negotiate health care reform live on television.
Then it came time to govern, and President Obama has negotiated major parts of the health care bill behind closed doors. Earlier this year, he announced deals his administration had cut with drug companies and hospitals after brokering them out of public view. And now his top lieutenants are working in secret with leading Democrats to craft the health care bill that will be debated on the Senate floor.
All of the insider wheeling and dealing has good-government groups disappointed in an administration that promised more openness than it has delivered. Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation expressed the watchdog community’s frustration when he said, bluntly, “This is a broken promise. We didn’t get anywhere near the level of transparency that we were promised.”
Obama is learning what some political observers said during the campaign — that it’s unreasonable to promise open negotiations on an issue as complicated as health reform.
“I guess I just never believed it when it was promised. It seemed unrealistic,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “Nobody can have all their negotiations in public because then you never get to ‘yes.’”
But that doesn’t mean Obama’s off the hook, Sloan said. The president needs to explain why he’s not living up to his campaign promise and should at least be briefing the public on what’s happening in the meetings, she said.
On the campaign trail last year, Obama promised an unprecedented level of transparency. - Politico Story
No comments:
Post a Comment