Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Time with his family? I think he gets a Xmas bonus for that one.

"Time with his family" really is a euphemism in his case. He and his wife haven't lived in the same city much less the same house for years.

What bakho said. It should be obvious enough that mere mendacity won't get anyone fired from this administration. It is pretty silly for Thompson to be playing the Hack from Elroy (can't control his staff, etc.) in this case, though.

I'd just add that, from here in Madison, there are those of us who don't want Sec'y Thompson back. Not prematurely, anyway.

lets hope they all get to spend lots of time with their families real soon.

CalDem, agreed -- just not before the WI Republican Senate primary.

After running the State of Wisconsin as King Tommy for 16 years, Thompson left for Washington, leaving a legacy of billions in structural budget deficits (despite squandering $6 billion of tobacco settlement money), corrupt highway bidding practices, scandal in the legislature, and the dictatorship of the corporate boardroom. This scandal a-brewing in HHS is no surprise to those of us who survived his reign in Wisconsin.

The big fun will start if/when the administration actually tries to pin everything on Scully. He certainly does NOT seem to be the type to happily take one for the team. Especially since he's already out of the administration.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64605-2004Mar16.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/16/opinion/16TUE2.html

The Actuary and the Actor

An Orwellian taint is emerging in the Bush administration's big victory last year in wringing the Medicare prescription drug subsidy from a balky Congress. The plan is being sold to the public through propagandistic ads disguised as TV news reports, and it turns out the government's top Medicare actuary was muzzled by superiors during the debate about the program's price tag.

Richard Foster, one of the government's foremost Medicare experts, says he was ordered not to provide requested information to Congress last fall when doubts were being raised about the drug benefit's cost. The administration denies this, but a ranking former official has confirmed Mr. Foster's story. As the bill was being considered, Mr. Foster privately cautioned that its cost could amount to as much as $600 billion, while the White House publicly stuck to the Congressional Budget Office figure of $400 billion over 10 years. The administration eventually conceded a cost of $534 billion, but only after the bill was safely signed into law.

With program in hand, the administration then attempted to rally support — and take political credit — with government-produced TV ads masquerading as news reports. Actors were hired by the Department of Health and Human Services to pose as television journalists purveying faux upbeat "news" segments about the expanded Medicare coverage. The hope is that TV stations will air them as their own. In one version, anchors are offered a script in which they promise that "reporter Karen Ryan" — an actress — will explain the details of the new drug plan....

Ah, yes--another prominent member of the "party of personal responsibility" moonwalks backwards while reciting the mantra "Hey, it's not my fault!"

http://www.cbpp.org/3-17-04bud.htm

House Budget Committee Pay-As-You-Go Proposal Would Exempt All Tax Cuts and Make a Mockery of Efforts to Restore Fiscal Discipline - 3/17/04

The House Budget Committee adopted a version of the pay-as-you-go rules that would apply only to entitlement programs and that would exempt all tax cuts from the pay-as-you-go requirements, including the $1.2 trillion cost over ten years of making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent.

My worse fear is about how succesful they have been so far with this Orwelian strategy. According to the latest poll, a very large share of Americans believe that the war in Iraq has helped with terrorism. I conclude that, assuming most Americans have a brain, people are still clueless about the fact that there was no demonstrable link between Saddam (a secular Arab) and OBL (a fanatical islamist.) On right blogistan, though, I am sure some Bush-lovers are writing that it was very "honest" to come forward and say that he acknowledges there was no clear link... at a time when Americans were not paying attention any more. Similarly, not so long ago, a majority of Americans believed (and many probably still do) that Saddam was "behind" September 11.

The thing is that the war is a highly publicized debate. When it comes to health care costs, I am not so sure people are paying as much "attention", let alone following the arguments. But I hope I am wrong and I may well be. In the same poll, an amazingly large majority of Americans think the budget is a very serious issue. That is not something I would have expected. So, there is hope that informing citizens does make them understand what's at stake. The only thing is that the Bushies have a lot of money to spend on disinformation. Let's hope good information drives out bad information, for a change...

People pay attention to health care because it impacts immediately on their pocketbook. The cost of the war is bundled up with everything else.

Thompson is Secretary, he is in charge, it IS his fault.

I shuddered when Reagan announced that HE was responsible when the Marines were blown up in Beruit because I knew that it meant that no one would actually be held responsible. If Reagan was responsible, he should have resigned, and he obviously had no intention of doing so. Personal responsibility and Republican politicians are antinyms.

"And they are now pretending that it was all Scully's idea."

And isn't it just so damn convenient Mr. Scully's moved on to his private sector gig and is no longer an administration official who can be called before Congress to answer questions.

Thompson is going down. He's already admitted he knew about this, yet he went around selling the $400 billion figure all summer long.

http://www.americanfootprint.com/wordpress//quotes.php?submit=1&categories=26&sort_order=date&ascdsc=+ASC

So Thompson is another governor whose people were happy to see the last of him when Bush plucked him up to Washington. The sighs of relief in Pennsylvania when Ridge left were enough to power wind farms. That was our one consolation for our understanding of how he'd perform in the homeland security slot. One of the best eye-rollers going here: "Relax. Tom Ridge is on the job."

More fun and games at HHS:

http://www.madison.com/captimes/news/stories/70379.php

Feds: Wis. Medicaid is overpaid by $936M

By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
March 17, 2004

WASHINGTON -Wisconsin is receiving $936 million more in federal Medicaid payments than it should under an arrangement with the Health and Human Services Department, run by former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, congressional investigators say.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a division of HHS, incorrectly gave the state eight years - instead of 16 months - to wean itself from extra Medicaid payments that the government has decided are unjustified, the General Accounting Office said Tuesday in a new report.

The Medicaid agency initially granted Wisconsin 16 months in September 2001, but extended the transition to eight years in February 2002, an action GAO termed "particularly troublesome."

At the time Scott McCallum, like Thompson a Republican, was governor of Wisconsin. He had served as Thompson's running mate in four statewide elections and had been lieutenant governor for 14 years.

Wisconsin never should have been approved to receive the payments at all, GAO had previously said. The state received $405 million in the first 16 months of the transition and is scheduled to receive $936 million before the payments end in 2009.

At issue is the way Wisconsin claims federal matching revenues for nursing home reimbursement, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Wisconsin began using the controversial method in the mid-1980s, according to the Fiscal Bureau. The federal government has been giving longer periods of transition to states that had long used the claiming process...

Wisconsin and CMS said the state had been using the financing mechanism, known as the upper payment limit, since 1985 for Medicaid payments to some county-run nursing homes.

GAO disagreed, saying Wisconsin's financing scheme was not established until 2001 - after the federal government announced it would close the loophole. GAO said the supplemental Medicaid payments to Wisconsin before then were relatively small and different in character from the questionable payments.

Those of us who survived Thompson are now faced with the struggle to survive Doyle and company.

An example, Peg Laudenschlager is - still - Wisconsin State Attorney. She drove off the road drunk enough to pass out, refused to take a breath test from a State Trooper at the crash site. What is going to happen to her? Nothing. Hey, she isn't the first Dem to drive off the road drunk and she didn't kill anybody, an improvement over past Dem performance.

Top. law. position. for. the. State. of. Wisconsin. drives. drunk.

Somehow it's not a problem. There are going to be a lot of non problems with Doyle and company.

Several hundred boxes of records from former Gov. Tommy Thompson's administration were mistakenly destroyed instead of going to the Wisconsin Historical Society archives this week. Or was that "mistakenly" destroyed? I don't know whether this is additional evidence that Tommy Thompson is shifty or that all governors' records have become dangerous and must be sealed or destroyed.

http://www.madison.com/captimes/news/stories/70304.php

An example, Peg Laudenschlager [sic] is - still - Wisconsin State Attorney. She drove off the road drunk enough to pass out, refused to take a breath test from a State Trooper at the crash site. What is going to happen to her? Nothing.

Posted by Lee at March 17, 2004 10:15 PM

While Lautenschlager did plead guilty to the drunk driving charge (a first offense), it's simply not true that she faced or will face no penalty. The driver's license revocation, forfeiture, and administrative sanctions are all typical for such offenses. Obviously, she will have to face the voters as well.

http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=wsj:2004:02:27:336825:FRONT

http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=tct:2004:03:11:350592:FRONT

Of course, to suggest that only Democratic politicians in Wisconsin have issues with alcohol is fanciful.

As for Jim Doyle, keep in mind that he inherited a financial disaster from Thompson and Scott McCallum, as mentioned by Joe R. early in the thread, and must deal with a Republican-dominated state legislature that is preoccupied with Base-pleasing diversions such as the dire threats posed by gay marriage and environmental regulation. Meanwhile, he promised not to raise taxes (a mistake IMO) and, apart from some stealth tax increases in which the legislature is fully complicit, has so far kept the promise.

Of course, to suggest that only Democratic politicians in Wisconsin have issues with alcohol is fanciful.

True. When I moved from Iowa to Wisconsin in 1992, I was amazed at how much more people drank *and* drove in Wisconsin. It was part of the culture, as I discovered when I found that the bicycle map of the state had taverns in the country marked on them.