Obama refuses Congressional request on Obama meetings with lobbyists, mega corporations, interest groups and drug companies
Remember when Dick Cheney met with those oil guys in the Energy Task Force before they proposed legislation to drill that would have moved us closer to independence and lower gas prices. The left created all of these conspiracy theories about the meeting, demanded transcripts etc etc.
Well now the shoe is on the other foot and the left and the elite media are like this: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3FnpaWQJO0]
So much for transparency...
Obama tells GOP: Nice try on health care records
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama once promised that negotiations over his health care overhaul would be carried out openly, in front of TV cameras and microphones. Tell that to the White House now.
Republican congressional investigators got the brush-off this past week after pressing for details of meetings between White House officials and interest groups, including drug companies and hospitals that provided critical backing for Obama's health insurance expansion.
Complying with the records request from the House Energy and Commerce Committee "would constitute a vast and expensive undertaking" and could "implicate longstanding executive branch confidentiality interests," White House lawyer Robert Bauer wrote the committee. Translation: Nice try.
It's one more roadblock for Republicans who tapped into widespread anxiety about the scope and costs of the new health care law to regain control of the House in last fall's elections.
So far, they've been unable to repeal the landmark legislation they dismiss as "Obamacare." GOP efforts to deny administration agencies the money to carry out the law are running into unintended consequences, not to mention the sheer difficulty of tracking those dollars. Now it looks like oversight isn't going to be easy either.
"We are both concerned and disappointed by your response," the committee chairman, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., wrote back to Bauer. "The American public deserves the information we have requested. The secret meetings conducted by (White House officials) are a perfect example of why transparency in government is so important."
This is the most transparent White House in history as Obama promised so many times in the campaign.