Newspaper: Shed light on Democrats' shady backroom deal

Here's some of what Investor's Business Daily has to say about the Democrats' intention to negotiate the final version of Obamacare behind closed doors:

Bypassing a conference committee also cuts out a public that will suffer losses from whatever monstrosity is produced by the cover of darkness. Americans stand to lose their power of choice over health care decisions and be stripped of a significant portion of their earnings to pay for a plan most don't want. They deserve to see in an open forum what is being done to them. Instead, they're likely to get whatever the Democrats want to force on them.

Without sunlight to disinfect the sordid mess, the public option could be quietly slipped into the final bill. Committee members could set the taxes on high-end insurance plans at an excessively punitive rate. The mandates placed on private insurance companies could drive many out of business and make premiums unaffordable to millions.

A long list of harmful ideas exists that could be tacked onto the bill, and few of us would know about them. Without a conference committee, the rule that requires the conference report to be publicly available for at least 48 hours before a vote would not apply.

In the 2006 and 2008 elections, Democrats gave their word that under their care, government would have superior transparency. In August 2008, while campaigning for the presidency, Barack Obama made a similar pledge, saying he would hold health care legislation talks in the open "around a big table."

"We'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN," Obama said, as he was "going to allow people to stay involved in this process."

Earlier in the year, the president repudiated "negotiating behind closed doors" and vowed to bring "all parties together" and broadcast "those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process."

Despite those promises, C-SPAN's offer to televise the negotiations in their entirety has not been accepted.

Read the full editorial, Let The Sun Shine," at the newspaper's Web site.