So Much for Transparency

House Democratic leaders today dodged the question of whether they will agree to let C-SPAN provide live coverage of negotiations with the Senate on the final version of health care reform legislation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she has referred this request from C-SPAN to her assistant, Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen.

“We don’t even know yet whether there’s going to be a conference,” Van Hollen said, when he stepped to the microphone.

“All signs point to no,” my Magic 8-Ball says.

The House and Senate must resolve the differences between their two versions of health care reform before they can send a final bill to President Barack Obama for his signatures. In theory, the two chambers would convene a conference committee, composed of members from each chamber, to hash out these differences in public. In practice, these conferences are rarely held anymore—instead, leaders and committee chairmen from each chamber meet informally to come up with a final bill. This allows them to cut deals behind closed doors to get enough votes to pass the legislation.

It’s more efficient, but it’s far from the transparent process that Democrats promised when they took over Congress, and it breaks Obama’s campaign promise to broadcast health care negotiations on C-SPAN “so that the American people can see what the choices are.”

C-SPAN chairman and CEO Brian Lamb put Democratic leaders in a tough spot by sending them a letter requesting they open “all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings, to electronic media coverage” so that the public would get “full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American.”

It’s hard to explain why that would be a bad thing, so Pelosi and Van Hollen didn’t even try. Instead, they bobbed and weaved around the issue. Pelosi said “we don’t yet know what route we will take” to come up with a final version of health care reform. But, she added, “we will do what’s necessary to pass the bill,” and “we will do it when we’re ready.”

Entrenched special interests, she noted, would like “any avenue” to stop this legislation. Apparently she thinks open negotiations, where conference committee members have to vote publicly on compromises, would gunk up the works.

Van Hollen did promise to keep the American people informed as negotiations continue between the House and Senate.

That would be an improvement over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s strategy during the week leading up to the Senate’s Christmas Eve vote on its health care bill. Reid, kept the details of the compromise he worked out to get the 60 votes he needed to clear the bill secret until the last minute.

The House, by contrast, has been a model of transparency, by Van Hollen’s account. Its original bill was posted on the Internet, subjected to more than 100 hearings by three committees and hundreds of town-hall meetings all over the country, he said.

“We will continue to have that type of open process as we go through this next phase,” he said.

Just don’t expect to see it as it happens.

Republicans quickly seized on Democrats’ reluctance to agree to C-SPAN coverage, even though they weren’t fans of open conferences when they were in control either.

“Hard-working families won’t stand for having the future of their health care decided behind closed doors,” House Minority Leader John Boehner said. “These secret deliberations are a breeding ground for more of the kickbacks, shady deals, and special-interest provisions that have become business as usual in Washington.”

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Kent Hoover is the Washington bureau chief for bizjournals.