What’s going on behind those closed White House doors when the President meets with Congressional leaders in an attempt to negotiate an agreement on the national budget and the debt ceiling? Obama says they will be meeting every day until they finish their job, but so far the reports emanating from those meetings indicate that no progress is being made. Today they met for two hours and reported “no progress.” So what did these people say to one another during those two hours? Here’s a suggestion: Televise the sessions. Our lives and the nature of our government are at stake here. We should know what these people are saying to one another, what arguments they are advancing. In fact, we should demand to know. There’s a lot of talk about the need for transparency in government, and it is true now more than ever. If they won’t let us in the meetings, we can only conclude they don’t want us to know what they’re up to. So let’s start a movement to demand that tv cameras be brought into the White House for those sessions. Call your Congressperson. Write to your Senator. Contact the journalists and the networks. Tell them to let the sunshine in.
Meanwhile, here’s today’s (r)evolutionary music from Hair: “Let the Sunshine In.”