If Bush is hoping for political cover from his buddies on Capitol Hill over the Medicare scandal, he can forget it. Congressional Republicans are going out of their way to distance themselves from the controversy.
Republican lawmakers are distancing themselves from the still raging Medicare scoring controversy by chastising the Bush administration for withholding information from Congress.
So far, GOP legislators have dodged the spotlight on accusations regarding the suppression of Medicare projections to Congress.
As the White House continues to attempt to downplay the significance of what Democrats have dubbed “Medigate,” congressional Republicans generally have not come to the defense of the administration.
Hill Republicans have defended President Bush fiercely in the wake of serious allegations made by Richard Clarke, the president’s former top counterterrorism aide. But on the Medicare scoring controversy, GOP legislators have been relatively quiet.
Good. Aside from blind loyalty, congressional Republicans have no reason to help Bush out of this jam. After all, when the administration withheld information about the Medicare plan’s true cost from lawmakers, it wasn’t just Democrats who were lied to.
Still, several recent developments have prompted fresh questions.
* Were congressional Republicans complicit in the cover-up?
While some Republicans are expressing public disappointment with the White House, there are hints that GOP leaders knew the administration’s stated cost estimates were false, but went along with the lie anyway so the bill could pass and they could reap the political rewards.
Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.) was quoted in The New York Times March 17 as saying she “absolutely” had been aware of Foster’s Medicare numbers last year. GOP aides winced when they read her quote, and the next day, Johnson issued a press release that said, “No specific estimate was provided to me by [Foster] on the House bill.”
That’s quite a reversal, isn’t it?
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said yesterday, “It is absolutely inconceivable that [congressional Republicans] didn’t have the numbers.”
Other healthcare experts agree, noting that the White House coordinated its every step on Medicare reform with Hill Republicans, and speculate that the administration probably shared Foster’s numbers with top GOP legislators.
* Will the administration crack down on testimony?
We’d all have more answers about this scandal — including what the White House knew about the cover-up — if the administration would talk about it. Not surprisingly, they’ve grown awfully shy lately.
House Ways and Means Committee Democrats, trying to blame the White House for withholding Medicare cost estimates last year, have persuaded the panel’s chairman to convene a hearing tomorrow and invite President Bush’s senior health policy adviser and former Medicare administrator to testify.
But the White House is balking. Doug Badger, the health policy adviser, “will not be testifying,” said a Bush spokesman, Trent Duffy. Duffy called it a “separation of powers” question, invoking the same rationale the White House had used until yesterday to oppose the public testimony of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice before a commission investigating the Sept. 11., 2001, terrorist attacks.
In a perfect world, the House wouldn’t take no for an answer and subpoenas would start going out. Of course, in a perfect world, there wouldn’t be a Republican majority in the House.