by Wayne Douma

Created on: August 21, 2009

I have been pondering this question ever since Barack Obama was elected President. Transparency is a pretty simple concept, but in the world of politics nothing seems to be as easy as it seems. Still, "openness and transparency" were long running campaign promises that Obama made to get himself elected, and so far it seems being transparent has taken a backseat to rushing through legislation.

Congressional legislation seems to just breeze through Congress lately, and even more bothersome - a lot of Congressman have recently admitted to not even reading the bills being voted on. I guess there is some openness there - at least they are admitting to not reading the bills.

After George W Bush's eight years in office a lot of people criticized them as being too private. Yes, the White House was fairly quiet during these times, but Congress was actually quite transparent. Even when a Democrat majority Congress was elected during Bush's Presidency, it was still more open on their legislation then we are seeing today.

A recent trend with the current Congress has been to finish bills in the dark of night and then bring it to a vote the next day. The people writing the bills are the only one's who really know what is in there, and no one voting has time to even read the proposed legislation. This brings another campaign promise of Obama to the forefront - what happened to this talk of no pork-barrel spending or earmarks? It seems that Congress has run wild adding pork and earmarks to bills while Obama has occupied the Presidency.

It is understandable that the Republicans are being shut out of the legislative process. After all, Democrats have a 74 seat advantage in the House and 60 members in the Senate. With numbers like that any Democratic agenda can be steamrolled through Congress, and they have been using this to their advantage.

The recent health care overhaul proposals have caused a problem for Obama. A lot of citizens are angry at the thought of government run health care being implemented, and that includes Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. In most recent polls 80% of Americans have health care that they are happy with. It does pose the question then - why overhaul the health care system when 80% are happy with it. The answer is that Obama's base in financing, the far left, wants government run health care. This has been a Democratic agenda since Lyndon B Johnson was President in the 1960s, and yet it has never been passed.

The

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