“Change we can believe in” would be on C-SPAN

Keep my commitments. That’s high on my list of unenforceables. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s hard. Candidate Obama made this commitment about health care reform:

"I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process."

It would have been hard for the President to put the closed-door negotiations in the House and Senate on C-SPAN; after all, that’s the prerogative of those two houses. But the negotiations about a final bill?? They’re being held at the White House. It’s Obama’s house. It would be very easy for him to invite C-SPAN in.

So why hasn’t he done it? Looks like an ethics violation to me. And over the issue that’s gripped the political scene for the past eleven months. This isn’t change we can believe in.