http://finance.yahoo.com/news/INSIDE....html?x=0&.v=2
The civics books say the House and Senate produce a final bill by sitting around a table where the public can watch them work out their differences.
It's a quaint idea, but a different modern reality has been on display this month. Democrats are refusing to open to the public the end-stage negotiations on how the government is going to change the delivery of health care.
And it's not just on the high-profile health care bill; the trend on much legislation is to shut the door and keep the minority party, cable TV and other media on the outside.
Dating back to 1789, the House and Senate have dealt with differences in bills by convening conference committees to thrash out a unified approach that the chambers can pass and send to the president. For the past two decades at least some of these bicameral, bipartisan meetings have been open to C-SPAN cameras.
But in those same two decades, leaders from both parties have held fewer and fewer conference meetings, or reduced their significance to photo ops.
In the 93rd Congress of 1973-75, Congress filed 190 conference reports, the end product of formal House-Senate negotiations. In the session of 2005-07, the last time Republicans controlled both chambers, that number had fallen to 28. Last year, the first year of the current Congressional session, there were only 11 conference reports.
Of those 11, eight were annual appropriations bills or the budget bill, measures that lend themselves to the conference committee process because House-Senate differences on spending levels can be resolved by splitting the difference.
Conferees did meet briefly last February on the $787 billion economic stimulus package, but only after the White House and Democratic leaders had reached agreement on the key issues. A few speeches were made, and the meeting was abruptly adjourned, never to be reconvened after Republicans asked when the negotiating with them might begin.
Other major bills sent to the president last year -- a credit cardholder bill of rights, a women's fair pay bill, a smoking regulation bill and a war spending bill -- were completed without open conference meetings.
Instead, leaders of the two chambers either worked out a deal where one chamber would accept the other's version, or took a "pingpong" approach where each chamber modifies its bill and sends it back across the Capitol for another vote until the two sides agree.
Senate Historian Donald Ritchie said the demise of the conference meeting has coincided with the rise of partisanship, and the health care bill is a perfect example; there's no motivation
