AMAZING! Bush: legal to lie to congress re Medicare costs

House Republicans Stop Medicare Inquiry
House Republicans Stop Medicare Inquiry
By Vicki Kemper
Los sAngeles Times Staff Writer
3:23 PM PST, April 1, 2004

WASHINGTON ?- House Republicans today shut down an inquiry by Democrats into whether the Bush administration acted illegally or inappropriately last year when it withheld from Congress its estimates of the cost of the Medicare prescription drug bill. Democratic lawmakers had requested civil and criminal probes of allegations that the then-Medicare administrator threatened to fire his top actuary if he shared certain analyses with lawmakers.

The Health and Human Services Department is conducting an internal investigation of the matter.

But today's conclusion of a Ways and Means Committee hearing all but ensured that two individuals central to the controversy - then-Medicare administrator Thomas A. Scully and White House aide Doug Badger - will not testify before Congress.

Democrats had asked the men to appear before the committee to say when President Bush and other top-ranking administration officials were told that internal estimates of the Medicare reform bill's cost were more than one-third higher than the $400 billion Bush had set aside, and why those analyses had not been shared with lawmakers.

But White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, in a letter to committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield), cited "long-standing White House policy" against having White House staff testify before Congress to justify Badger's absence. And Scully, now a private consultant, said in a letter that he was unable to appear before the committee because "unfortunately, for the past 10 days I have been traveling."

Committee Democrats rejected both explanations, saying that at least 45 high-ranking Clinton administration officials had testified before Congress, and offered to let Scully appear at another time. But Republicans squashed the Democrats' attempts to subpoena the men.

Republican committee members accused the Democrats of trying to capitalize on the controversy for political gain. The dispute erupted last month when Medicare actuary Richard S. Foster told reporters that Scully had threatened to fire him if he responded to Democratic requests for analyses of the pending legislation.

Thomas said that while he was willing to use "whatever tools are necessary to get to the bottom of a violation of law," he was not willing to issue subpoenas to Badger and Scully "to satisfy someone's whim or curiosity."

As for preliminary estimates by Foster indicating that the Medicare bill could cost as much as $551 billion over 10 years, Thomas, who chaired the House-Senate conference committee that finalized the legislation, said the information "probably would not have enlightened Congress as much as confused Congress,"

But Democrats, who noted that the original Medicare bill passed the House in June by just one vote, charged that a broader, constitutional issue was at stake: How far can the executive branch go in withholding information from Congress that could affect the outcome of a watershed vote?

In November, a narrowly divided Congress passed the Medicare bill, which creates a new prescription drug benefit and gives private insurers and drug companies billions of dollars to lure seniors and the disabled into managed care plans.

Several conservative Republicans, who were concerned about the bill's projected $400-billion cost, voted for the legislation only after being subjected to hours of high-pressure lobbying by Bush and HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson.

In January, as part of its budgeting process, the administration said it had predicted that the Medicare reform law would cost $534 billion.

"The main issue is who knew about the actuarial figure, and why wasn't it disclosed in a timely fashion?" asked Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.). "There was a cover-up of this information and we want to know how high the cover-up went."

Procedural maneuvering and partisan wrangling dominated much of the hearing.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) called Badger the "Condoleezza Rice of healthcare policy," and suggested that since Scully's letter "simply says he's tired today," the committee could invite him to testify at another time "when he is well rested."

Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.) railed against "the extraordinary hypocrisy of what is happening."

No-shows at hearing on Medicare costs stir fury
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/167448_medicare02.html

No-shows at hearing on Medicare costs stir fury
Key figures in debate over prescription drugs snub House

Friday, April 2, 2004
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON -- A senior White House official and the former Medicare administrator, central figures in a controversy over the cost of the new prescription drug law, declined to appear before a House committee yesterday, defying Democrats who had sought their testimony.

Citing executive privilege, the White House refused to send Doug Badger, the special assistant to the president for health policy, to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee. The former Medicare administrator, Thomas Scully, who no longer works for the government, wrote the committee a letter saying he had been busy traveling and would be unable to appear.

Democrats then tried to persuade the committee to subpoena them, but those motions failed along party lines, by votes of 23-16. When Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, suggested that the panel invite Scully to appear on a more convenient date, the committee's chairman, Rep. Bill Thomas of California, dismissed the idea.

"The chair's reading of Mr. Scully's letter is, he ain't coming," Thomas declared.

The development infuriated Democrats, who are trying to investigate accusations by the chief Medicare actuary, Richard Foster, that Scully, as administrator, threatened to fire him if he shared his prescription-cost estimates with Congress last year, before the legislation was enacted. Foster has suggested that Scully was acting on orders from the White House, possibly from Badger.

Doggett called Badger "the Condoleezza Rice for health care." In refusing to send Badger, the administration invoked the same principle it had cited until Tuesday in refusing to send Rice to testify before the Sept. 11 commission: a "longstanding White House policy," in the words of Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, that aides who are exempt from Senate confirmation are also exempt from being required to testify before Congress, so that they may feel free to give the president unfettered advice.

Gonzales cited this principle in a letter to the Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday in which he said that on behalf of Badger, he would "respectfully decline the invitation."

As for Scully, he wrote the panel a two-page letter in which he said he dealt with Foster "openly and fairly during my entire tenure." He did not address the accusation that he had threatened to fire Foster, but he did say that when he was administrator, Foster was not free to communicate directly with lawmakers.

"There is no question whatsoever," he wrote, "that I made it very clear to Foster, both directly and indirectly, that I, as his supervisor, would decide when he would communicate with Congress."

Foster's figures are important because he calculated that the cost of the prescription drug bill would far exceed the $400 billion estimated by Congress. Had his calculations been widely known at the time the bill was considered last year, the measure might have failed, or been significantly altered.