What Pelosi Really Said About Transparency

Q: Madam Speaker, it came to light today that C-SPAN wrote a letter, Mr. Lamb wrote to you guys to have this process be transparent in regards to the conference committee. Right now it’s being done with a ping-pong. Any response on that? Mr. Boehner announced the favor of this to be out in public. President Obama was in favor of that on the campaign trail…

Speaker Pelosi. Really? There are a number of things that he swore on the campaign trail. But I have referred that letter to the Assistant to the Speaker. Mr. Van Hollen, would you like to respond?

Assistant to the Speaker Chris Van Hollen. Thank you, Madam Speaker. Let me just point out first that the health care debate in this piece of legislation has been subjected to an unprecedented degree of public scrutiny and input. The original bill was put on the Internet for the public to inspect. You then had a summer where you had thousands of hearings around the country and town meetings and both town hall meetings where people were showing up as well as telephone town hall meetings. You had a whole series of hearings. In fact, I think it is important to note that there were over 100 hearings held by the chairmen of the three committees who are here with us today - heard from 181 witnesses, 83 hours of markup, the list goes on.

So we will continue to have that kind of open process as we go through this next phase. There will obviously be discussions between Members of the House and Senate, but we will continue to keep the American people informed as we have in the earlier stages.

Q: Will you allow the C-SPAN cameras in?

Assistant to the Speaker Van Hollen. We don’t even know yet whether there is going to be a conference, as the Speaker said.

Speaker Pelosi. It’s not excluded.

Assistant to the Speaker Van Hollen. It’s not clear whether that is going to happen.

Q: Madam Speaker, one of your colleagues today called bypassing conference committee - he told me that it’s an assault to democracy. So how are you going to convince some of your Members that…

Speaker Pelosi. Well, I don’t know who you are talking about, but what I will say that there has never been a more open process for any legislation and anyone who serves here has experienced. As Mr. Van Hollen said, and as you know, tens of thousands of people participated in our town meetings, over 100 witnesses in our bipartisan hearings that were held, and the list goes on. I’m not going to repeat what he has said.

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