Watchdogs push Obama on health care execs visiting White House
By: Julie Mason
Examiner White House Correspondent
June 23, 2009
A watchdog group pressing the Obama administration to fulfill promises on transparency filed a request Monday for the names of health care executives who have visited the White House.
“If you are going to criticize other people for secrecy, you better have an open door,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “They talk about transparency more than they exhibit it.”
The organization’s Freedom of Information Act request follows an earlier demand for a log of coal executives visiting the White House, which was followed by a lawsuit when those records were refused.
A spokesman for the administration said the policy on visitor logs is under review by the White House counsel’s office.
The push for visitor logs is the latest salvo from open-government groups critical of President Barack Obama’s record so far on transparency and openness — pledges he made central to his campaign.
“Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” Obama said on taking office.
During the campaign, Obama criticized the Bush and Clinton administrations’ records on open government and vowed to do a better job.
The White House so far is resisting CREW’s efforts to learn which captains of industry are visiting the administration on energy and health care policy, two of Obama’s biggest legislative agenda items.
With a few exceptions, Obama has backed off from a campaign pledge to enforce a five-day waiting period before signing bills passed by Congress, to allow for public review and comment.
Instead, the administration will start posting bills when it looks like they are close to passage, by linking to the Library of Congress Web site.
It’s unclear whether a system for comments will be created.
“I thought this was one of Obama’s sillier campaign promises, and I wasn’t terribly sad or surprised to see it so quickly broken,” said Dan Froomkin, an open government watchdog who writes the “White House Watch” online column for the Washington Post.
“Real transparency would involve pointing the public toward in-progress versions of major bills, encouraging public comments and responding to them, and openly discussing White House deliberations,” Froomkin said. “Of course, I’m not holding my breath.”
Obama’s commitment to transparency has been criticized before, notably for his administration’s invoking of a Bush-era state secrets policy, the president’s recent reversal on releasing detainee abuse photos and more.
The issue of White House visitor logs, however, has already been litigated.
A federal judge twice rejected claims by the Bush administration that the logs fall under the Presidential Records Act and are not subject to public disclosure.
The Obama administration is making a similar claim, pending the outcome of a policy review by the White House counsel’s office.
