It was pretty clear in November that the White House was having a tough time selling its Medicare plan. Democrats didn’t like it because it was forcing seniors into HMOs and was basically a sop to insurance companies. Republicans didn’t like it because it was going to cost $400 billion at a time when we have the biggest budget deficit in the history of the world. The administration rammed it through, but it wasn’t easy.
Last weekend, we learned that the White House was pretty much lying to everyone about the scheme, especially congressional Republicans about the cost of the plan. As the Washington Post reported:
Bush administration officials had indications for months that the new Medicare prescription drug law might cost considerably more than the $400 billion advertised by the White House and Congress, according to internal documents and sources familiar with the issue.
The president’s top health advisers gathered such evidence and shared it with select lawmakers, congressional and other sources said, long before the White House disclosed Thursday that it believes the program will cost $534 billion over the next decade — one-third more than the estimate widely used when Congress enacted the measure in November.
The higher forecast, coming less than two months after President Bush signed the landmark bill into law, has fueled conservative criticism of White House spending policies and prompted accusations that the administration deliberately withheld financial information as it pushed the bill through a divided Congress.
The Bush administration wasn’t just off by a little, either. Late last week, the White House put the actual cost at $534 billion, over a third more than what Bush told Congress just two months ago.
But wait, it gets worse. Much worse.
Yesterday, the Center for American Progress reported that the White House has announced a massive taxpayer-funded television ad campaign to promote its controversial Medicare bill. Specifically, the White House will use $9.5 million from the Department of Health and Human Services — money that is supposed to be used to implement the law and could go to restore some of the cuts to social services for the poor — on political commercials that “rebut criticism of the new Medicare law.”
In other words, the White House lied about its Medicare plan to get it into law and is now spending our money to create and broadcast ads to offer a political response to the criticisms. Oh yeah, and did I mention that the ads lie as well? As CAP explained:
The new Medicare ads urge citizens to call 1-800-MEDICARE to hear more about the new law. And in “Big Brother” style, when you call that number you have to actually say out loud “Medicare improvement” in order to get information. The information you then receive is filled with distortions. The hotline claims the new Medicare “is the same Medicare you have always counted on” – failing to disclose that the law includes provisions which try to force more seniors into private HMOs. The hotline claims that seniors will be able to find “immediate savings between 10% to 15% from a new drug discount card program.” But the cards, which were written into the bill by one of President Bush’s closest business associates, actually do not guarantee any savings at all. The hotline also says the new prescription drug program under Medicare “will provide significant savings for seniors.” But as the Center for Economic and Policy Research notes, “seniors in the middle income quintile will pay an average of $1,650 a year in out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs in 2006 – a figure nearly 60% more than they paid in 2000.”
And then, just to add insult to injury, we learn that the White House has given the $9.5 million advertising contract — that’s our money — to National Media, Inc. Who’s that? The Bush-Cheney campaign’s media firm.
Sometimes I wonder if White House political aides wake up every morning trying to think up insane schemes, just to see if they’ll get away with it. If I understand the full context of this story correctly:
* Lawmakers were offered bribes in order to pass the White House’s Medicare bill
* All the while, the White House was intentionally lying about the plan’s price tag
* To respond to criticism, they’re spending millions of our dollars on commercials
* The commercials lie, too
* And the money for the ads will line the pockets of the White House’s own media consultants
This from the man who promised to return “honor and dignity” to the presidency.