Battle Heats Up Over HealthCare.gov Paper Trail

A battle over the paper trail documenting the troubled building of the Obama administration’s online health insurance marketplace heated up on Friday as contractors declined to withhold some documents from congressional overseers and the lead investigating committee’s ranking Democrat accused his Republican counterpart of unfair dealing.

In a related move, Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee invoked House rules that they say bar Oversight Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., from publicly releasing any of the newly obtained contractor documents until after a special committee meeting to negotiate terms for the documents' release.

The Democrats' interpretation of the rules is disputed.

Democrats have accused Issa of selectively leaking sensitive documents to damage the White House in a manner that could endanger national security and invade Americans' privacy. They say the contractors' documents at issue could show hackers a path to pull consumer information out of HealthCare.gov's servers.