Oprah, Health Care Lobbyists, Among Recent Visitors to White House

ABC's Rachel Martin reports: Oprah Winfrey, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Texas oilman turned wind energy guru, T. Boone Pickens - those are just some of the hundreds of names included on a new batch of White House visitor logs made public yesterday.

The White House says releasing the visitors’ lists is in keeping with the Obama administration’s promise for transparency and accountability and its pledge to be the first administration to start posting all White House visitor records. They are releasing the information in batches. Last month, nearly 500 records were made public. Yesterday they posted more than 1,600 records of visits to the White House, covering the period from January 20, 2009 (President Obama’s first day in office) to August 31st, 2009.

The records reveal a large number of visits by people involved at the highest levels of the debate over health care reform, including top industry lobbyists, lawmakers and key stakeholders. Among the most notable guests – the president of the AMA, Dr. James Rohack, chief executive of AARP, Barry Rand and Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel’s brother and a medical ethicist and special advisor to the White House on health care.

According to the Associated Press’ count, the most frequent visitor was Lee Sachs, the man at the Treasury Department tapped to grapple with the financial crisis.

Source:abcnews.com