Last October, it came out that the Obama administration had been issuing ObamaCare waivers to a list of unions and corporations that correlated rather suspiciously to the donor rolls of the Democratic National Committee. The indignation caused by this news increased proportionally as the total number of special dispensations grew to 111 by November and to twice that amount in December. And there was general outrage when an additional 507 new waivers were posted to the approval list the day after Obama's State of the Union Address.Yet the Obama administration is stonewalling requests for information on these waivers were granted. For an administration that talked about "transparency", their actions indicated otherwise:
The list now includes more than 1,000 unions and other entities. Thus, several Republican committee chairmen in the House are interested in all of those visits the President received during the run-up to the final ObamaCare vote.
According to Bob Bauer, who ironically needed a waiver from the President's famous "ethics pledge" in order to qualify for the post of White House Counsel, complying with congressional oversight just involves far too much work: "To provide all possible information encompassed by your request... would constitute a vast and expensive undertaking."(Read the full text of "A Thousand Points of Blight".)
The letter also contained this familiar-sounding passage: "To the extent you are also seeking documents reflecting internal deliberations and communications; it also would implicate longstanding Executive Branch confidentiality interests."
Why does this sound familiar? It is how the Bush White House responded to initial questions from Congress about Vice President Cheney's "secret meetings" with those evil oil industry executives.
As Glenn Reynolds might ask, "Remember the 'fierce moral urgency of change'?"
