Remember these words from Nancy Pelosi a few years back?
Pelosi: “[I would like] to come as close as you can in the political reality to a bipartisan management of the House.” Pelosi said in a Wednesday interview with CongressDaily.
“I’m a big believer in bipartisanship on so many issues. You can’t address the entitlement issue, the health care issue, and do it in a partisan way. They are too big, they involve too many people, and they involve too much money, private and public money. You’ve got to do it in a way that has legitimacy.”
And then Obama was elected. Via Redstate we learn:
…Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Harry Reid (D-NV) met at length last night to put together the House/Senate conference report on the “stimulus” package. Only Democratic conference committee members were informed of the meeting and permitted to attend.
The purpose behind the meeting was apparently to produce a conference report on the over $800 billion borrow-and-spend bill that was entirely free of Republican input, and that could be presented no later than this afternoon in preparation for House and Senate floor action tomorrow.
Ironically, the Democrat-heavy House yesterday voted unanimously in favor of a GOP-sponsored resolution stating that the bill should be made subject to a 48 hour review period by the public before it was finally passed by Congress — something that seems very unlikely to happen, given Democrats’ actions over the last twelve hours.
In a post here on RedState, Congressman Tom Price (R-GA), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, confirmed reports of the Democrats’ midnight meeting. “Negotiations have already begun under the dark of night,” wrote Price this morning. “In closed room somewhere in the Capitol Building last night, Congressional Democrats and Obama administration officials met with no Republicans present.”
Price continued:
Rules for the conference committee dictate that there must be an open hearing for negotiations, but that hearing is controlled entirely by the majority party. It is the prerogative of congressional Democrats as to whether the hearing will be an honest and open forum or instead a dog and pony show while real negotiations take place in a smoke-filled backroom.
With a trillion dollars of taxpayer money currently at stake, it is critical to provide the American people a full and complete understanding of how it is going to be spent.
House Democrats haven’t been shy about voicing their intent to use the conference to re-insert a large portion of the spending taken out of the Senate’s compromise bill, which was passed due to support from three Republicans who, apparently and inexplicably, thought Reps. Pelosi and Hoyer (D-MD) would be content to allow pet pork programs to remain on the cutting room floor when presented with the opportunity to reinsert them in conference.
The three RINO’s believed the pork would stay out? Puhlease.
They don’t need any GOP input due to the three losers, Snowe, Specter, and Collins joining forces with the Democrats. And in the end we have the opposite of “open and transparent” government. Backroom dealings abound.
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