Ask Rep. George Miller About Health Care

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Tomorrow I’ll have the honor of moderating a conference call for bloggers with Rep. George Miller on the future of health care, as part of a bipartisan series sponsored by Blogher in partnership with the Sunlight Foundation and Open Congress.

You can sign up to participate here. Or, if you aren’t able to make it, please let me know what you’d like me to ask Rep. Miller by leaving a comment below.

Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Rep. Miller is one of the lead champions of H.R. 3200,  America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, one of the major health reform proposals before Congress.

The call with Rep. Miller is the third in this series. In previous calls with Sen. Amy Klochubar and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, both spoke out in support of Congressional transparency.

Here’s what Sen. Klobuchar had to say. (You can read the full transcript or listen to the audio here.)

[When asked if she supported that legislation be made publicly available online 72 hours hours before consideration]. I certainly do and in fact if you look on my website, for instance, the appropriations I make, I put those up there last year before there was any requirement to do so because my requests. You know, I put all my bills that I’m on and things like that. I’ve just found that transparency is incredibly important.

I mean people may not agree with everything that I do, I think it’s important that they know what I’m doing. And so that we can have discussions about it, or they can e-mail or call our office, so I know what their views are.

And here is Rep. McMorris Rodgers (Transcript and audio available here):

Well, I am a big proponent of transparency and I – and the Internet gives us the opportunity to really shine the light of day on what’s happening in Congress. Give the public the opportunity to actually look at legislation before it’s passed on, give members the chance to hear from people all across this country as to what they like, what their concerns are, and I believe that the outcome will be better legislation.