A top House committee responded to the mounting voter backlash against backroom deals on health reform by seeking more information Wednesday about White House negotiations with industry groups.

Hours before President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address, Republicans and Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee agreed to pursue a revised GOP request for additional documentation about the talks that led to a series of controversial administration agreements with doctors, hospitals and drug makers at the outset of the health care debate.

The rising tide of anger against those industry-endorsed pacts — coupled with voters’ frustration about other last-minute concessions party leaders made to wavering Democrats — helped propel Republican Scott Brown to the Senate in Massachusetts in a shocking result that has imperiled health care reform on Capitol Hill.

Under the agreement Chairman Henry Waxman brokered with Texas Republican Rep. Michael Burgess, the California Democrat has offered to help Republicans get a comprehensive list of meetings the White House held with industry representatives, as well as records documenting calls and e-mails between outside groups and the Department of Health and Human Services.

“I have long been an advocate for transparency in government,” Waxman said. “At the same time, I believe Congress should wield its oversight power judiciously.”

The deal Waxman struck is narrower than what Burgess initially requested. The Texan had asked for a vote on a resolution of inquiry that sought communications between the president and his top aides, along with his top aides’ e-mails and phone calls to industry officials. That broader request ran the risk of violating executive privilege laws that bar Congress from demanding private communications from inside the White House.

“The resolution is overbroad,” Waxman said. “It raises core privilege concerns.”

Instead, Waxman persuaded Burgess to accept a scaled-back request.

Waxman himself has been a critic of the White House deals and said Wednesday that he, too, would like the administration to offer up more information about those agreements. Other Democrats complained that Republicans aren’t the only ones whose requests for information often go ignored.

“We don’t get our letters answered, either,” said Rep. Gene Green, a Texas Democrat, during the committee meeting.

The Burgess inquiry stems from a series of deals the administration cut with various players in the health care fight.

Obama’s top deputies set out to avoid the same pitfalls that plagued former President Bill Clinton and his team when they tried — unsuccessfully — to provide health care coverage to every American. So the Obama team cut deals with the same industries that helped defeat that earlier effort, in the hope that the deals would limit outside opposition to the president’s reform push.

Back in May, representatives from six stakeholder groups, including the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the Advanced Medical Technology Association, met at the White House to announce an industrywide pledge to slow skyrocketing health care costs by decreasing growth by 1.5 percent each year — saving an estimated $2 trillion.

“Two trillion dollars and we don’t know who said what to whom,” Burgess declared. “We don’t know if the deals struck were in the best interest of the public.”

As the debate progressed, many of these groups announced other industry-specific deals, like PhRMA’s now-infamous agreement to find $80 billion in prescription drug savings if Congress agreed to uphold a lucrative reimbursement scheme for Americans who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid.

Waxman ignored that deal when he drafted his bill in the House, and other Democrats have been critical of such agreements. But the move Wednesday gives Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee an opening to request additional information from the White House that could prove politically embarrassing for Democrats at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

“That’s farther than I expected to get,” Burgess said. “I fully expected him to swat us down. ... The commitment to being open and above board is one the chairman takes seriously, and this was his chance to show that it wasn’t just rhetoric.”

Burgess first asked the White House for more information about its contact with outside groups in a letter dated Sept. 30 of last year. He didn’t hear back until this Tuesday, after forcing a vote on his resolution of inquiry back in December. He and other Republicans complained the White House response was insufficient.

“It’s an insult to our intelligence,” Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey said about the White House letter.

Waxman didn’t have much of a choice to ignore the resolution. According to chamber rules, ignoring Burgess’s request would have allowed the Republican to bring it up on the House floor. And defeating it would have required putting fellow committee Democrats on the record voting against Republican calls for increased transparency — a difficult vote to defend in the upcoming midterm elections, given the public outcry over backroom negotiations and sweetheart deals.

“Who wants to vote against transparency?” Burgess said.

In addition, voters in Massachusetts and elsewhere have been highly critical of the deals.

“Every member in there is getting hit on these issues,” said Oregon Republican Greg Walden. “I don’t think they were left with a choice but to move forward on this investigation.”

Waxman has a long history with congressional investigations, in both the majority and the minority. As chairman of the House oversight panel, he launched multiple investigations into the administration of President George W. Bush, including seeking the logs of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s now-infamous Energy Task Force.

In 2004, Republicans denied Waxman’s request for lists of the names of energy industry executives who attended those sessions, a point of contention for Democrats on Wednesday.

Wednesday’s committee meeting gave Republicans another chance to direct their fire at the Democrats for what they argue has been an opaque process clouded by closed-door negotiations.

“It has not been an open and transparent process,” complained Texas Rep. Joe Barton, the top Republican on the panel.

Democrats shot back that Obama’s first-year record has been far more transparent than that of his predecessor, Bush.

But the meeting was not without its levity. In the best exchange, Barton, the ranking Republican on the panel, misspoke, making an accidental reference to streaking. As he corrected himself, Waxman interrupted him to joke, “It would be transparent.”

Barton cracked a wry smile and said, “That was your best line all year.”


To view the original article, click here.