“The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after Democrats took control of the House in 2006.

Makes for mighty interesting reading four years later, doesn’t it?

Or how about this from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in an op-ed piece published just last month: “Throughout this [health-care] debate, we have kept our promise to make this process as transparent as possible. Just as the committee hearings were open to the public and televised, so has the debate been on the final bill.”

Better yet, this is from President Barack Obama himself in August 2008: “That’s what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing parties together, and broadcasting these negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are.”

What do we get instead? House and Senate leaders meeting at the White House this week and deciding to bypass the open conference committee process to merge House and Senate health-care bills. The decision completely ignored a formal challenge from C-SPAN to have all negotiations over the monumental bills televised.

The preferred method is to “ping-pong” the legislation back and forth, with Democrats in the two chambers making amendments secretly along the way. This should be an outrageous affront to Americans of all political stripes.

The horse-trading that will transpire could result in significant changes that not only further offend the already offended opponents of the health-care bills but even outrage those who have conditionally supported them so far.

The mish-mash that comes out of this process, with the complete exclusion of congressional Republicans and the public, is expected to reshape up to one-sixth of the American economy, be riddled with inequities for different states and individuals, and be topped off with heaps of surprise costs, taxes and penalties. It’s a matter that deserves complete transparency, and C-SPAN was fully justified in pursuing it.

But it’s apparent the Democratic leadership may even be choosing to keep their own members in the dark, knowing full well they cannot afford to lose a single vote in the Senate or more than a handful of votes in the House to pass the final, dismal product. When all the amendments are made, we can expect a furious push for a hurried, final vote.

Shame on Congress for doing their business in a dark corner. Just what are they afraid of us seeing?