Inside Washington: Secret Bill-Writing on the Rise

But in today's Congress, formal conference meetings are rare, the minority party is usually shut out and the public has little or no access to the process.

That trend has been on display this month as Democrats and the White House engage in closed-door talks on how the government is going to change the delivery of health care that have effectively excluded the public and the media.

Dating back to 1789, the House and Senate have dealt with differences in bills by convening conference committees to thrash out a unified approach that the chambers can pass and send to the president. For the past two decades at least some of these bicameral, bipartisan meetings have been open to C-SPAN cameras.

But in those same two decades, leaders from both parties have held fewer and fewer conference meetings, or reduced their significance to photo ops.

In the 93rd Congress of 1973-75, Congress filed 190 conference reports, the end product of formal House-Senate negotiations. In the session of 2005-07, the last time Republicans controlled both chambers, that number had fallen to 28. Last year, the first year of the current Congressional session, there were only 11 conference reports.

Of those 11, eight were annual appropriations bills or the budget bill, measures that lend themselves to the conference committee process because House-Senate differences on spending levels can be resolved by splitting the difference.

Conferees did meet briefly last February on the $787 billion economic stimulus package, but only after the White House and Democratic leaders had reached agreement on the key issues. A few speeches were made, and the meeting was abruptly adjourned, never to be reconvened after Republicans asked when the negotiating might begin.