Bipartisanship?

Amanda Carpenter | February 11, 2009 10:20 AM

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised bipartisanship would flourish under her leadership. So why were Republicans not invited to last night's conference negotiations on the stimulus bill?

(Although no one can really be surprised, House Democrats drafted their version of the bill in secret without any GOP input.)

Dave Schnittger, who works for Republican Minority Leader John Boehner, blogged at the leader's website today, "It appears that Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid’s staff met all through the night in secret with Democratic conferees’ staff to cobble together the 'stimulus' conference report. Republican conferees were frozen out."

"The objective appears to be to produce a final conference report on the trillion-dollar spending bill by this afternoon so that floor action can take place in both chambers by Thursday," he wrote.