Many Americans were looking forward to the promise of change extolled by candidate Barack Obama on the presidential campaign trail. “Change” was printed on every campaign sign, button, bumper sticker and placard, and it served as the background in many of candidate Obama’s televised speeches and campaign rallies.
The politically convenient and rewarding cornerstone of candidate Obama’s “change” campaign was transparency. He promised us that he would be a different kind of president.
Well, many Americans are feeling double-crossed and used right now, after voting for candidate Obama because of his promise to bring transparency to Washington, only to now learn that he and other Democrat leaders are excluding America from the democratic process as a healthcare deal is being forged this very moment behind closed doors in secret meetings.
Regardless of where Americans come down on the policy questions addressed in the healthcare legislation, healthcare impacts every American in one way or another, accounting for one-sixth of this nation’s economy. To say that Americans are entitled to participate in healthcare’s reformation is an understatement and voters should be demanding transparency and storming the steps of this nation’s capital with pitchforks to get it.
Democrat leaders are forgoing an open, public reconciliation of the House and Senate versions of the healthcare reform legislation, opting instead for secret meetings at the White House, which is simply undemocratic and unacceptable. Brazenly excluding the public from this process requires a conscious level of paternalistic and dictatorial arrogance that simply transcends description with the written word.
What is really difficult for Americans to come to terms with is not that candidate Obama has broken his repeated promises to America that he would “bring C-SPAN into the healthcare negotiations.” Instead, it is the disregard for an open, democratic process that President Obama and Democratic leaders have undertaken that really smacks of backroom deals and having something to hide, true or not.
This healthcare legislation is so voluminous, complicated, and unintelligible, that it really requires open debate, challenge and understanding in a public forum, rather than partisan drafting behind closed doors and jamming it through to declare some sort of political victory.
Transparency and having C-SPAN in the room during the healthcare negotiations were explicit promises candidate Obama made to Americans. Voters have long memories and don’t look kindly on presidents who violate their own campaign promises, just ask George H.W. Bush, “Read my lips . . .”
Crossposted from Musings from Middle America
How anybody could have believed Obama or Reid or Pelasi on transparency in government is beyond me. These people are pathetic pathological liars, even when the truth will not hurt them, they still lie. To top it off, this is the most corrupt government in the history of this country. We need to throw them out of office one way or another. In 2010 vote for Freedom first and not corruption.
America to Obama — YOU LIE about everything and anything.
Sure sign of one-termer.
Anyone who will lie to you will steal from you. Welcome to a view of the lying, thieving, democrat party. If the POTUS says it it’s a 99 44/100% chance it’s a lie. The country has reached a new low.
You want “transparency”?? You want to take part in the discussion? You think just because you’re a citizen of this country you’re entitled to a voice?
Well………..
It seems our friends who got caught up by hoax and chains forgot this Obama speech from the campaign trail. Under two minutes he makes a string of promises, including the now famous C-Span promise. ALL of them were broken within weeks of Obama taking office:
The question is: Are the folks who voted for Obama because they believed he was a new kind of politician that would change things for the better going to vote for him again after they see what a liar he is?
let me perfectly clear, you peasants can’t handle the truth.
HA HA HA HA HA!
That is the new GOPer rallying cry? “We want the health care reconciliation meetings televised. And if we don’t get it, there will be hell to pay!”? That’s it? What . . . so you can turn that into the “exchange of ideas” so evident at the town hall meetings last summer? Er no thanks! If the GOPer drug bill debate did not deserve to see the light of day, neither does this!
Besides . . . what difference would it make? None of the GOPers are going to get involved anyway, so they AND THEIR CONSTITUENTS are irrelevant to the discussion. See, cons, in order to have any influence on policy, you have to be involved. When you reject any constructive role and sit in a corner and pout, you make it easy to be ignored. And that is what the GOP asked for and what they will get: ignored.
How long will it take the SCOTUS to shoot down all of the unconstitutional marxist garbage coming out of the Marxist regime? I’ll be one of those with a sharp pitchfork storming the capital when the time comes. May bring a few hundred feet of rope just in case. A democrat on each street light would improve the looks of D.C. and the stink wouldn’t make any difference when mixed with the stink already coming from congress. I see a few really dim democrats still support the biggest liar to ever walk through the white house doors, or was that a window he tried to walk through? If president O’Dumbo told me it was cold outside I would remove my shirt because he would be lying just because he’s a naturally born liar and incapable of telling the truth. Maybe we should have expected that with two disbarred lawyers in the white house. Like all hard drug users there is no hope for rehab.