ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured editorial, The New York Daily News points out that Barack Obama should put health care talks on C-SPAN like he promised.
Ready for prime time: Obama should put health care talks on C-SPAN, as promised
Candidate Barack Obama made a straightforward health care reform promise on the campaign trail in 2008: “We’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so the people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”
At the time, he hit all the right notes. Populism. Transparency. Good government. But today, President Obama is not quite with the program.
With health care reform legislation heading to a House-Senate conference committee, the idea of televising the crucial melding of the bills has fallen by the wayside.
C-SPAN chief Brian Lamb has sent Obama and members of Congress a letter respectfully requesting “that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American.”
The network would even, Lamb assured, “employ the latest digital technology to make the cameras, lights and microphones as unobtrusive as possible.”
Over to you, Mr. President. Over to you, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Over to you, Majority Leader Harry Reid. Open the doors and let the public in to observe and decide.
