{"id":4670,"date":"2011-10-11T11:37:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-11T18:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=4670"},"modified":"2011-10-11T11:37:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T18:37:00","slug":"when-secrecy-is-appropriate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=4670","title":{"rendered":"When Secrecy is Appropriate"},"content":{"rendered":"

An article in today’s New York Times seemingly berates the “Super Committee” (Deficit Reduction Committee) for doing its work in secret<\/a>. It appears those not on the committee want a window on the committee’s work, while the committee is still forumulating its proposal. Those on the outs say that they want visibility into the choices being made; those on the committee say they need their privacy so that they can honestly make budget decisions.<\/p>\n

My opinion? There should be more<\/i> secrecy. Let’s take the whole supercommittee and sequester them like a jury until they have a proposal. They can send out for food. They can request information. But they cannot interact with other congress critters or lobbyists until they are done. <\/p>\n

The only reason I can see for those on the outs to want visibility is to try to influence the committee to be intransigent on a party line or for a special interest, not what it is the best interest of the country. This supercommittee should be like the BRAC: they make a recommendation, and it is either voted up or down, with congress knowing that the automatic cuts are a result of a down voice. That’s the only way that this congressional game of chicken can be resolved and the country can move forward.<\/p>\n

(oh, you don’t believe me that it is a game of chicken? I suggest you listen to this Planet Money Podcast: When Congress Plays Chicken<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article in today’s New York Times seemingly berates the “Super Committee” (Deficit Reduction Committee) for doing its work in secret. It appears those not on the committee want a window on the committee’s work, while the committee is still forumulating its proposal. Those on the outs say that they want visibility into the choices Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1],"tags":[315],"class_list":["post-4670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-lj-xfer","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}