Obama gets off to a slow start on one transparency pledge

When President Obama signed into law an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program on Wednesday, he was keeping one promise while breaking another.

The measure, designed to expand health insurance to some 4 million additional children, was a significant step toward his pledge to "require that all children have health care coverage. And in his remarks at the signing ceremony, the president called it a "down payment" on his broader pledge to bring universal coverage to the United States.

But by signing the bill the same afternoon it was passed in the House, Obama fell to an 0-2 record on one of his most specific good-government promises, announced more than a year and a half ago during a campaign speech in Manchester, N.H.: "When there is a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it."

The wording of that pledge has since been amended to refer only to "non-emergency legislation," but neither the SCHIP legislation nor the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act Obama signed into law last week meet that test. The White House eventually did post the Ledbetter legislation online, but only after it had already been signed.

In response to inquiries, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro sent a statement reading in part, "We will be implementing this policy in full soon; currently we are working through implementation procedures and some initial issues with the congressional calendar."

The White House has made some progress toward fulfilling this promise. Whereas Ledbetter didn't appear on WhiteHouse.gov until after it was signed, the administration posted a link to the SCHIP bill on Feb. 1.

"Their actions are filling the spirit of openness they pledged," said John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation, an open government group. "But they are so far failing to follow the letter of the pledge that they made."

Along with the link to the text of the legislation, the bill's page on WhiteHouse.gov included a commenting section -- but it is unclear from the site how that feedback is used, and there is no provision for seeing others' submissions or voting up and down suggestions, as there was on Obama's transition Web site. And then there is the complaint that taking feedback after a bill has already reached the president's desk means it's too late for tweaks and amendments.

"Ultimately, it seems to me that it is a meaningful thing for Obama to do, but not necessarily for immediate effects," said Wonderlich. "It's very unlikely he would veto something because of bad feedback. But it brings people into the process."

Check out the blog Lost in Transition, a joint effort of Government Executive and National Journal.