Or see if she can’t destroy all copies of this photograph:

 

Beginning in January 2007, the new Democratic-led 110th Congress took
numerous steps to begin to change the way we do business in Washington
and to restore accountability and transparency to government. … Now, the 111th Congress will continue to focus on government reform and restoring accountability and openness.

So saith Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, on her Web site. 

If that’s the case, Ms. Pelosi has some ‘splainin’ to do about health care.

Multiple sources report that the House and the Senate will reconcile their vastly different health care bills through a process referred to as “ping-pong.” Rather than appointing a conference committee with members of both houses and both parties who might take weeks or months to arrive at a final bill, The Hill says of the ping-pong ploy:

Democrats would enjoy some strategic advantages by declining the formal
conference process. They would avoid having to go through a series of
votes on appointing and directing conferees, and having to invoke
cloture on a conference report. The process would presumably also allow
Democrats to work out differences on the health bill internally, and
avoid GOP manuevers to stall passage of the legislation.

It could also get a bill to President Obama before his State of the Union address in early February, even though Senate leader Harry Reid would again have to get 60 votes for final passage.

Liberal House members are squawking because they want a conference committee, which would presumably move the final bill leftward, with a public option, and no abortion-funding ban, among other things. My guess is this is simply noise to mollify their exercised base. No liberal Democrat would vote against the Senate bill if that were the only option available.

Still, what does it say about a majority party’s pledge of transparency, when its signature legislation would so blatantly bypass a collaborative process for a bill that most Americans don’t want ? and one that would remake one-sixth of the U.S. economy?