Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a high-ranking Bush administration official is involved in a massive mistake, gets caught, and finds himself promoted. I’ve lost count on how many times this scenario has played out with the Bush gang, but the latest example is Doug Badger.
President Bush has named his top health care adviser, Doug Badger, to complete the team of deputies serving under his new legislative affairs director, Candi Wolff.
A one-time chief of staff to former Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles (R-Okla.), Badger will be the lobbying operation’s “inside” deputy, playing traffic cop in the policy give-and-take between the White House and Capitol Hill.
So, who’s Doug Badger? Well, you might recall about a year ago when the White House intentionally misled Congress over the cost of the president’s Medicare boondoggle. The Bush gang assured lawmakers the massive giveaway to the insurance and pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t cost a dime more than $400 billion, though we later learned that the administration knew all along that the plan to cost at least $534 billion, which soon after became a revised $576 billion.
Who helped pull the wool over Congress’ eyes? That would be the president’s new congressional lobbyist, Doug Badger.
There’s always been some question over exactly what the White House knew and when they knew it when it came to telling Congress the wrong information, but the key official at the heart of the scandal said Badger helped perpetrate the fraud.
Richard S. Foster, the government’s chief analyst of Medicare costs who was threatened with firing last year if he disclosed too much information to Congress, said last night that he believes the White House participated in the decision to withhold analyses that Medicare legislation President Bush sought would be far more expensive than lawmakers knew.
Foster has said publicly in recent days that he was warned repeatedly by his former boss, Thomas A. Scully, the Medicare administrator for three years, that he would be dismissed if he replied directly to legislative requests for information about prescription drug bills pending in Congress. In an interview last night, Foster went further, saying that he understood Scully to be acting at times on White House instructions, probably coming from Bush’s senior health policy adviser [Badger].
When Congress started asking questions about the fiasco, the White House announced that Badger would not cooperate and refused to answer questions, even when his public defense didn’t make a lot of sense.
Ultimately, the issue faded when House Republicans denied Dem requests for hearings on the scandal. And now Badger gets his reward — a promotion. Typical.