A quick search for the word ‘transparency’ on the White House website brings up 769 results. Over and over again, the White House mantra is repeated that the goal is “to increase transparency, collaboration and participation in government.” Despite this pledge, President Obama and his Democrat peers met behind closed doors this week to negotiate differences in the health care bills passed by the House and Senate. Subsequently, this video made the rounds on the internet, showing the President promising over and over again to open up negotiations to the public by allowing C-Span cameras to record the process.

But, despite his vow and the media and public disapproval of the current process, this will not be the first time that the President has broken this particular promise. Back in February of 2009, the same issue was brought up as it related to the negotiations of the stimulus package. Note in the following line of questioning, Gibbs’ answer that the President was pleased with the product and with the process.

Q I just wanted to try again on the issue of the open conference committee question. We just didn’t really resolve it the other day. I mean, on the transition website it said explicitly that the President wanted the conference committee process to be open to the public. In light of that, how does he feel about the conference committee process this week on the stimulus which was, even to apparently some members of the conference committee, not open? And going forward, does he intend to fulfill that promise?

MR. GIBBS: Well, I haven’t seen the particular comments. Obviously the President hopes for greater openness and transparency in government. Whether it’s the transparency that’s part of this bill or transparency that’s part of conference committees, whether that transparency — obviously there’s a lot of things that he believes can be improved. And I think that’s something that we’d like to continue to see.

We talked about — and something that we’re struggling to implement that we talked about during the campaign, which was putting legislation on the web — non-emergency legislation on the web for five days before it’s signed. The White House is struggling with trying to figure out how to do that in a way — when do you do it, how do you do it, what do you put up.

So I think all this is a work in progress. And as I said, it will take probably longer than a few weeks to change how this place works.

Q Was he satisfied with the process this week?

MR. GIBBS: Ask me that when the Senate finishes and we have something.

Q I mean the conference –

MR. GIBBS: Yes, I think the President is happy with the product that Democrats and Republicans put together.

Q The process, not the product.

MR. GIBBS: The process and the product.

Q Robert, some White House aides participated in that conference committee process, meeting, negotiating behind closed doors, in some sense, I guess, validating that process. I mean, could they not have been insisting upon a more open process where C-SPAN cameras come in and record that, as the President promised to do on health care negotiations?

MR. GIBBS: Unclear if Rahm could satisfy some FCC requirements. (Laughter.) But I think the President is, as I said, pleased with the –

Q Cable. (Laughter.)

MR. GIBBS: Yes, the FX channel, unfortunately, is what we’re going to do. (Laughter.)

He’s pleased with the process and the product that has come out. And I think when the process is done, I think the American people will be proud of the product that we believe and we hope will begin to stimulate the economy, get people hired, back to work, and moving things forward, and putting people — putting money back in their pockets.

You don’t have to know much about politics to note how Gibbs dodges this line of questioning from the get-go. First, he states he’s unfamiliar with any complaints about the process. Then, he emphatically states that the President was proud of the process. Then, when directly confronted with the President’s promise to allow C-Span cameras to record and broadcast negotiations, after making a few quips, he repeats the President’s satisfaction with the process and posits that despite the lack of sunshine along the way, Americans will be happy with the end results. In other words, the means justify the ends.

After all, what’s one pesky broken promise? Except that this was one of the cornerstones of the President’s campaign, ushering in a new era of openness and transparency. But now that he’s at the helm, he didn’t just break his word, he urged Democrats to push the bill through and quickly behind closed doors. In the era of Obama, speediness trumps open dialogue about legislation. When public support isn’t on your side, the need for speed to get a bill on the President’s desk becomes priority number one, taking a backseat to bothersome details like cost and a piece of legislation’s effect on personal liberty, taxes, the deficit and our health care system in general. It’s get the bill through at all costs and preferably before the State of the Union. And some of us thought things couldn’t get any worse…

With the passing of Sen. Kennedy this week and all the other important stories that surfaced during what was supposed to be a ‘light’ news week ($2 trillion increase in the deficit projection, Bernanke’s reappointment, Holder’s CIA investigation, etc.), this article from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal titled “Health Care Secrets” is not likely to attract much media attention. But, this article brings to light a suspicious situation – namely, why is Sen. Dodd hiding the health care bill passed by the HELP (Health, Education, Labor & Pension) Committee that he oversaw in Sen. Kennedy’s absence?

The article explains:

“On July 15, six weeks ago, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed an amended $1 trillion health-care bill, with acting Chairman Chris Dodd calling it a “historic achievement.” Too bad the committee won’t reveal this history even to other Senators, much less to the public.Three weeks ago Republicans on the committee wrote Mr. Dodd “to reiterate our request for a full copy of the bill as amended, in the four-week mark-up.” Mr. Dodd has refused to comply. The Senate bill that is available on the committee Web site is 790 pages long. While that is some 300 pages shorter than the House health bill, that’s in part because it doesn’t include nearly 200 amendments that passed when the committee redrafted the bill. Amended sections of the bill might as well be written in invisible ink.

We called Mr. Dodd’s committee office last week to ask why the bill isn’t posted, and a spokesman explained that it is still being “worked on.” Will it be ready by October? “Don’t count on it,” the staffer said.”

You might think, doesn’t this violate some kind of public information or access law for a Senator to do this? The answer is no. When Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act, they cleverly wrote themselves out of the bill, exempting themselves from the requirement to disclose. Second, if the bill that came out of HELP is indeed a ‘historic achievement’ as Dodd has lauded, that’s all the more reason to release the bill, isn’t it? With the Obama administration hitting Americans’ anti-government nerves as Steve Chapman put it, who wouldn’t want to be the one to unveil a health care plan of such magnitude, and be seen as the compromiser, the negotiator in chief that united the two sides on this debate? Right?

Seems like something fishy is going on here. I’d imagine Dodd would be all too happy to wrap himself in the mantle of bipartisanship and to be seen as carrying on the torch for the late Sen. Kennedy. So, what’s really going on? What reasons would Dodd have for not releasing the bill? Having witnessed how heated debates over health care have been all across the country, could it be that he’s scared to unveil this ‘historic’ legislation?

Let’s look at what we do know about the bill. Has it dropped the public option? It doesn’t look like it. On July 7, as his committee was beginning to parse the bill, Dodd said that the bill must include a public option. But, then again, he also said that “only through an open and collaborative process [can] we succeed.” All signs point to him staying faithful to the first point, not so much to the latter.

Does the bill impose fines, thereby penalizing individuals who choose to opt out of the public option? This is another topic that has added fuel to the health care debate. Once again, Dodd has stuck to the liberal course, assessing “shared responsibility payments” (what a lovely way to say punishment) on those who choose not to purchase health insurance.

Does the bill similarly penalize employers who aren’t able to provide insurance to employees? You guessed right – it sure does.

Does it give us more information on how health care costs will be reigned in? Or on how costs will be controlled? Not yet; it leaves this to the Senate Finance Committee which is still grappling with the issue.

Ok, ok, well what about purchasing insurance across state lines? Surely it makes some progress on that issue? No, I couldn’t find any mention of this approach or any of the other approaches conservatives have suggested in the way of reforms in the summary of the bill. So much for bipartisanship.

Finally, what about public funding of abortions? That must have been taken out of the bill, right? On the contrary, Sen. Dodd has no problem with public funds going toward abortions; after all, he is all for choice - just not when it comes to you picking your own insurance or your own doctor. When Sen. Hatch offered an amendment prohibiting federal funds from going toward abortion, it was rejected.

The bill passed through committee 13-10, with all 10 Republicans voting against the bill.

“A good bill that is bipartisan obviously has a chance of not only succeeding but also being sustained, so there’s a value in achieving that bipartisanship.”But not at the expense of a good bill. “I will not sacrifice a good bill for that. That’s not the goal here,” Dodd said.”

Finally, we have some honesty. Dodd is all for an “open and collaborative process”, but he refuses to release the actual wording of the bill. He is for individual choices, just not for you to make your own decisions about your health care in an open, transparent market. And, he is all for bipartisanship, as long as it’s the other side making all the concessions.

If the left still hasn’t realized that Americans have their eye on Washington and that now is not the time to be sneaky, they deserve to lose this battle. As a health care opponent myself, I say, as you were Sen. Dodd.

*Originally published August 30, 2009 on the American Issues Project Blog, here.

President Obama wants to add yet another czar, a Health Choices Commission czar this time, to the growing list of these unelected officials that are handpicked by the President and go through absolutely no confirmation process. A Virginia paper recently asked, “how many czars can fit into the West Wing?” The same editorial points out that President Obama is not the first President to handpick senior advisers that work behind the scenes and are not confirmed by a formal process. However, the sheer number of czars that Obama has appointed is troubling. In fact, the longest serving Democrat in the Senate and a constitutional scholar at that, Senator Robert Byrd, has criticized Obama’s appointments of these czars, citing his concerns that this upsets the system of checks and balances that the Constitution requires and that the czars have “taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.”

Here are just some of the czars the President has appointed so far; it seems that no one has a definitive count. Foreign Policy and Glenn Beck put the count at 18. Here’s a partial list:

Health reform czar (this czar is different from the Health Choices Commission Czar now being proposed);

Energy czar;
Car czar;
Urban affairs czar;
Faith-based policies czar;
TARP czar;
Stimulus accountability czar;
Non-proliferation czar;
Terrorism czar;
Regulatory czar;
Drug czar;
Guantanamo closure czar;
Border czar; and
Information technology czar.

The newest czar Obama wants to add the list is the Health Choices Commission Czar who will essentially single-handedly act as a regulator of the newly formed government-run health insurance program. Health insurance is currently regulated at the state level, but when the federal government takes over this arena, this is another power that will be stripped from states’ hands. Under the federally controlled insurance scheme, states could only compete with federal programs or set up a state-based insurance exchange program with permission from the federal czar. This is a completely different vision of federalism as we know it with states answering to the federal government and not the other way around.

Robert Moffit of The Heritage Foundation writes that this is not a federal-state partnership – it is federal domination of the states. Mr. Moffit is absolutely correct. But, this is the goal of the Obama administration – to puff up the federal government at the expense of states’ rights, individual control and freedom of choice. And, with all of these czars Obama is appointing without any repercussions and without any fury from the public, he is succeeding in taking power from states, from individuals and placing it in the hands of of unelected officials who answer to no one but the President.

Obama promised us transparency in his administration. Doesn’t appointing the largest amount of czars any President has ever had cut against this promise completely? When our President has appointed more czars in the course of six months than Russia did over three centuries, it is an understatement to say that something is very wrong. The appointment of these czars is the epitome of government expansion without any accountability.

*Originally published July 7, 2009 on the American Issues Project Blog, here.

“Transparent government is good government, and good government has nothing to hide from the taxpayers who fund it.”

So said Joe Calomino, Illinois State Director for Americans for Prosperity, in response to the Illinois legislature passing House Bill 35 last week, also known as the Illinois Transparency and Accountability Portal (ITAP).

In a state plagued by endemic corruption, this little bit of sunshine is long overdue. ITAP, which is now on its way to Gov. Pat Quinn for signature, will require state agencies to maintain a central database that provides easy access to information regarding state spending, state contracts, employee salaries and tax credits.

Lawmakers hope that this measure will put a stop to wasteful spending and corrupt pay-to-play scandals.

Illinois currently faces an $11.5 billion deficit. And the cost of living in Illinois is only increasing. Individual and corporate tax rates are on the rise, and Chicago residents pay the highest sales tax in the country at 10.25%.

Illinois is widely known for its corrupt politicians and its one-party rule. Its progressive policies have created a high tax, anti-business environment. It is no surprise that a recent study by the Illinois Chamber of Commerce found that “too many state and local taxes, an anti-business image and lack of available incentives are driving businesses out of Illinois”.

With this new transparency, come new responsibilities for the citizens of Illinois. Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s antics recently put Illinois in the national spotlight for its inept and double-dealing leaders. If signed by Gov. Quinn, the new system is expected to be in place in less than a year. Some of the information that will be aggregated into one centralized database was already available to citizens via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests prior to ITAP being passed. However, the creation and maintenance of an electronic database will provide citizens with greater ability to sift through information and, hopefully, to hold politicians in Illinois accountable.

ITAP alone cannot make up for 10 straight years of governors accused or convicted of corruption or for the anti-growth and anti-business policies that have been put in place in Illinois. But with knowledge comes power, and the implementation of ITAP will arm concerned citizens with the facts so that they can fight out of control spending and duplicitous Illinois bureaucrats who put their interest ahead of their constituents’.

*Originally published May 19, 2009 on the American Issues Project Blog, here.