Senators Susan Collins and Lamar Alexander are apparently engaging in a bidding war over how many billions of taxpayer dollars to spend on corporate welfare to insurance companies.

Memo to Rand Paul: It’s time to fire up the copier again.

On Tuesday, the simmering controversy over Obamacare “stability” legislation came to the boil, as conservatives increasingly voiced objections at bailing out Obamacare and giving tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to fund abortion coverage in the process. But the controversy centers around a “deal” of which the precise contents remain a closely guarded secret.

While Democrats deliberated on Obamacare in 2009 and 2010, Republicans frequently attacked the non-transparent process. Then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) went so far as to call the law’s backroom deals “kind of [a] smelly proposition” that empowered Democratic senators “to extract some special deal for them at the expense of everyone else in the country.”

But at least Democrats (eventually) made the text of the Cornhusker Kickback, Louisiana Purchase, Gator Aid, and other provisions public. For the Obamacare “stability” bill, Senate Republican leaders have yet to indicate exactly what legislation they wish to pass.

Substance and Process Unclear

As I noted last week, while Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) recently claimed in an op-ed that the “stability” legislation would appropriate $10 billion in reinsurance funds for insurers, the public version of legislation to which he referred—a bill introduced by Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Bill Nelson (D-FL)—appropriated “only” $4.5 billion in funds to health insurers. Collins and Alexander are apparently engaging in a bidding war with themselves about how many billions worth of taxpayer dollars they wish to spend on corporate welfare payments to insurance companies.

On the policy substance, Senate leadership has refused to disclose exactly what provisions comprise the “deal” Collins supposedly cut with Senate leadership. Did they promise $4.5 billion in reinsurance funding, $10 billion, or more than $10 billion? What other promises did they make in exchange for Collins’ support for repealing the individual mandate in the tax bill?

So too on process: While Collins has been more than willing to shout from the rooftops that she cowed Senate leadership into accepting the “stability” package, neither the leaders nor the presidential administration have stated publicly what actions they committed to taking.

Did Republican leaders pledge merely to support an open process and a vote on the “stability” measure—as Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune (R-SD) implied on Tuesday—or its enactment into law? How exactly could they promise the latter, when any such bill would require 60 votes to break a potential Senate filibuster—a number that Senate Republican leaders do not have, even if they could persuade their entire conference to support bailing out Obamacare?

Then and Now

As noted above, we’ve seen this play before, when Democrats rammed through Obamacare through a series of backroom deals cobbled together behind closed doors, notwithstanding then-candidate Obama’s pledge to televise all health-care negotiations on C-SPAN. Here’s what McConnell had to say about that lack of transparency in a December 2009 floor speech:

Americans are right to be stunned because this bill is a mess. And so was the process that was used to get it over the finish line. Americans are outraged by the last-minute, closed-door, sweetheart deals that were made to gain the slimmest margin for passage of a bill that is all about their health care. Once the Sun came up, Americans could see all the deals that were tucked inside this grab bag, and they do not like what they are finding. After all, common sense dictates that anytime Congress rushes, Congress stumbles. It is whether Senator so-and-so got a sweet enough deal to sign off on it. Well, Senator so-and-so might have gotten his deal, but the American people have not signed off. Public opinion is clear. What have we become as a body if we are not even listening to the people we serve? What have we become if we are more concerned about a political victory or some hollow call to history than we are about actually solving the problems the American people sent us here to address?

Some may argue that passing “stability” legislation bears little comparison to home-state earmarks like the Cornhusker Kickback that plagued the Obamacare bill the Senate passed on Christmas Eve 2009. But when Alexander remains adamant about passing “stability” legislation about which senators of both parties now seem ambivalent at best, one must ask whether his insistence stems from the fact that it would provide a significant financial windfall to his biggest campaign contributor—making it a “sweet enough deal” for him too.

The fact that no Senate leaders will dare explain publicly what they have promised privately should tell the public everything they need to know about the merits of this secretive backroom deal. As McConnell might say, it’s “kind of [a] smelly proposition.”

Mr. Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, a policy consulting firm based in Washington. He is on Twitter: @chrisjacobsHC.