Reid and Pelosi to negotiate final healthcare bill in secrecy while a senior Democrat urges them to “kill the bill”

  Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi appear ready to forgo the public debate during the reconciliation process and will merge the House and Senate bill behind closed doors. In secrecy and in private, instead of in the manner that this process is usually conducted. And this is coming from the party that promised to run the most transparent congress in history. The question is, what are they trying to hide? A follow up question would be, from whom are they trying to hide it. It seems to me that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are trying to hide the final bill from both the public and the people who will be voting on the bill.

  The people are already skeptical of this bill and in light of the secrecy that this congress is working under, they are right to be skeptical. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi do not want the American people to know what is in this bill– now and before the 2012 election. There is a reason that while the tax increases will be effective immediately, the “benefits” will not go into effect until after Barack Obama runs for re-election. They do not want the American people to know how inefficient and unfriendly this bill will be until it is too late and Barack Obama’s re-election is guaranteed.

  We have reached a new low in government secrecy and gamesmanship and we have reached it under the administration that promised to do just the opposite. But it is not just the American people who are growing more skeptical about this bill, many of our elected officials are also growing skeptical of this bill and the secrecy under which it is being negotiated.

  Representative Louise Slaughter– Democrat from New York, a senior Democrat in the House and also chairwoman of the House Rules Committee and co-chairwoman of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus– has grown so skeptical of this bill that she is calling for the Senate’s version of the healthcare reform bill. She is now calling for the Senate’s version of the bill to be killed and is asking to start anew on the healthcare reform bill debate, which the Senate has warned needs to be changed very little if the Senate is to pass the reconciled bill.

  She has called the Senate’s version of the bill “not worthy of the historic vote that the House took a month ago.” She has called the bill fatally flawed and while her reasons for wanting the bill killed are different from the reasons that I want the bill killed, this highlights a potential rift in congress that might not easily be overcome.

  She opposes the senate bill because of its lack of a public option and its restrictions on abortion funding and states that “it’s time that we draw the line on this weak bill and ask the Senate to go back to the drawing board, the American people deserve at least that.”

  I disagree with her reasons but agree with her sentiment, it is time to kill this bill and start over, the American people deserve it.

  The rift is growing and it may not be as easy as I had feared that this bill will gain easy approval in congress. There is much to be leery of in this bill and there is much to be leery about in the way in which this bill has been negotiated– in secrecy behind closed doors with only a few privileged participants. If this bill was as good for the American people as it is being betrayed, why did it take payoffs to key senators to get it passed in the senate and why are they afraid to negotiate in public?

  There are too many unanswered questions, it is time to kill the bill and start over, using just a little bit of common sense and transparency. We want to know, and we deserve to know, what is in the bill before it is passed and congress deserves to know what is in the bill before voting on it. I have just one last question, is that too much to ask for?