C-SPAN Wants All-Access Pass To Health Negotiations

You can't blame C-SPAN for trying.

Enlarge C-SPAN

Click image to read letter.

C-SPAN

Click image to read letter.

The wall-to-wall coverer of all things political would like to take you inside the smoke-filled rooms where a compromise on Senate and House health overhaul bills will be hammered out soon.

So C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb made his case to congressional leaders in a letter fired off just before the end of the year.

His argument? Health overhaul will affect every American so profoundly that public access to the legislative reconciliation is paramount. And he'll make sure C-SPAN is "as unobtrusive as possible" in videoing everything.

We wish Lamb luck, because these talks sound a whole lot more exciting that most of the hundreds of hours of hearings and debate on overhaul televised so far.

Routine appropriations conferences have been televised, NPR's Julie Rovner tells us, but she puts the odds of the overhaul nitty-gritty being done in public at just about zero. The work could be messy and it won' t be orthodox. All signs point to most of the negotiations happening informally.