Why Republicans want to hide their dirty little health-care bill

The GOP bill is not going through the committee process. There will be no hearings. There will be no markups. It's being written in secret. Here's why.

Shhhhhh.
(Image credit: Ikon Images / Alamy Stock Photo)

When Republican senators heard about Montana congressional candidate Greg Gianforte body-slamming a reporter who was so rude as to ask him a question about health care, they apparently said to themselves, "We need to make sure that never happens to us." So the answer they came up with was to minimize the terrifying prospect that they'd have to answer questions from the press when they didn't want to.

So it was that on Tuesday, Capitol Hill reporters were stunned to learn that according to an edict coming down from Senate Rules Committee chairman Richard Shelby, they would be forbidden from interviewing senators in the halls of the Senate unless they had prior permission — meaning none of the hundreds of impromptu interviews that take place nearly every day outside hearing rooms or on the way from one meeting to another would be allowed any longer. Marianna Sotomayor of NBC tweeted, "NBC's coverage teams and other TV outlets were waiting to get reactions from senators at several hearings when we were told to evacuate halls." After chaos and anger descended over the press corps, Shelby released a statement saying that "The Rules Committee has made no changes to the existing rules governing press coverage," apparently because some never-enforced existing rule allowed him to shield senators from intemperate questions. A couple of hours later, after a wave of blistering media coverage and a torrent of tweets, the committee reversed itself and said that journalists could resume asking senators questions.

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Paul Waldman

Paul Waldman is a senior writer with The American Prospect magazine and a blogger for The Washington Post. His writing has appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and web sites, and he is the author or co-author of four books on media and politics.