[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 19]
[House]
[Page 25182]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      HEALTH CARE AND TRANSPARENCY

  (Mr. BURGESS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, it's now been over 5 months since the 
White House announced numerous deals with major stakeholders in the 
health care debate. Little or no details regarding these negotiations 
have been released. And last week during the Finance Committee hearings 
in the other body, a plan for a commission to slow the growth of 
Medicare spending was revealed. But it was then revealed that the 
hospitals would be exempt from this commission because, according to 
Congress Daily, they had already negotiated a cost-cutting agreement 
with the White House.
  You know, despite the rhetoric of last fall, then-candidate Obama's 
promise to make all health care reform negotiation public, we still 
have very few details on what exactly was agreed to during these highly 
publicized but very secret meetings last May. How can Congress do its 
due diligence in creating policy before us without the crucial details? 
More importantly, how can the American public know what we are doing is 
indeed in their best interest?
  In January of this year, we were promised an administration that 
would bring all parties together; we were promised an administration 
that would not negotiate behind closed doors and in fact would be 
broadcasting these negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people 
could see for themselves what the choices were.
  When will these cease to become promises and become reality?

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