When Bush’s Medicare bill was working its way through Congress, the cost of the bill was a major sticking point. Don’t worry, the White House said, we know exactly what it will cost and the nation can afford it.
At the time, Bush insisted that the overall price tag for the legislation would be no more than $400 billion over the next decade. Reluctantly, Congress went along with the scheme and the bill became law. A few weeks later — surprise, surprise — the White House “revised” the budget costs and said the Medicare plan would actually cost $551 billion, almost 38% more than the administration had told Congress and the public.
In January, the Washington Post reported that White House knew the truth but hid it until the bill passed.
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 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.
And now, as Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum have noted, Knight Ridder’s Tony Pugh has discovered that a Medicare official who knew the truth was threatened with dismissal if he came forward.
The government’s top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan.
This story has real potential. The administration knowingly withheld information from lawmakers and the general public to deceive everyone about the costs of its Medicare plan. For an administration known for its cover-ups, this one could be a political disaster if the national media bothers to pick up on it.
The Knight Ridder article explains that analysts in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of the Bush administration’s HHS, knew that the cost of the program was going to cost at least $100 billion more than the advertised price. Simultaneously, the White House knew they couldn’t get the bill through Congress unless lawmakers believed it was going to cost $400 billion. So the administration simply withheld the truth and threatened others to do the same.
Five months before the November House vote, the government’s chief Medicare actuary had estimated that a similar plan the Senate was considering would cost $551 billion over 10 years. Two months after Congress approved the new benefit, White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten disclosed that he expected it to cost $534 billion.
Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which produced the $551 billion estimate, told colleagues last June that he would be fired if he revealed numbers relating to the higher estimate to lawmakers.
“This whole episode which has now gone on for three weeks has been pretty nightmarish,” Foster wrote in an e-mail to some of his colleagues June 26, just before the first congressional vote on the drug bill. “I’m perhaps no longer in grave danger of being fired, but there remains a strong likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the withholding of important technical information from key policy makers for political reasons.”
As much as we’d like to know what Foster has to say about all this:
Health and Human Services Department officials turned down repeated requests to interview Foster.
Of course they did.
I know people get tired of hearing this, but just imagine for a moment if this happened under Clinton. Imagine the outrage from Republicans if there was proof that the Clinton White House intentionally lied about the cost of a bill, went to great lengths to hide the truth, and ultimately threatened government officials with dismissal if they dared to tell Congress and the public accurate information.
Hearings? Cries of a cover-up? Independent investigator? Demands for resignations? You better believe it.
The funny thing about the controversy surrounding John Kerry calling the GOP “the most crooked … lying group I’ve ever seen”? He was telling the truth.