Shh! Senate at Work on a National Secret.

[groovedaddy]

Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee are trying to tackle the explosive issue of tax reform by offering an extraordinary guarantee of 50 years of anonymity to lawmakers skittish about publicly presenting candid views on which tax credits and deductions deserve to be dropped or altered in a new code. The fear is palpable among senators that disclosing even their thoughts on the subject could damage careers if power lobbyists and angry constituents were to get early wind via Washington’s relentless leak machine.

As a result, lawmakers’ tax writing advice is to be kept under the tightest computer and physical security, according to the guarantees being extended by Senators Max Baucus, the Democratic committee chairman, and Orrin Hatch, the ranking Republican. Names will be shielded with identification numbers. Only 10 Senate staff members will have access to material under a tight login process, and printed copies will be kept in a vault with the identities of who proposed what secreted in the National Archives until 2064, should anyone still care by then.

The move may sound like a desperate exercise in self-parody on Capitol Hill, where leaking information is as burnished an art form as backslapping and grinning on demand. But committee leaders hoped to draw out colleagues for what is termed a “blank slate” process designed to wrest honest input from politicians usually given to trimming their views to protect incumbency.

The goal, already subject to doubt and even ridicule, is to produce a reform bill this fall, with a minimum of members’ fingerprints on the most controversial parts. So far, the effort has produced more than 1,000 pages of veiled notions, according to Senate staff members. The last overhaul of the tax code was enacted in 1986, when there was far more bipartisanship in Washington than there is these days.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/opinion/shh-senate-at-work-on-a-national-secret.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130803

[Scuba]

1. Secret government, secret laws, secret courts, secret spying ... what a democracy.

[rurallib]

2. If they can't talk about it, how could they ever vote for it?

Wouldn't a vote have to be recorded?
Not many "Profiles In Courage" up there is there?

[matthews]

3. I was always taught that sneakiness is dishonesty.

And Washington D.C. is full of nothing but sneaky people with sneaky, devious minds.