From Jessalee at the Stakeholder:
Posted by DeLong at May 3, 2004 06:40 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postBush administration officials were wrong to prevent a budget expert from giving Congress estimates of the cost of Medicare legislation, congressional researchers have concluded. In a report made public Monday, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said efforts to keep Richard Foster, the chief Medicare actuary, from giving Democratic lawmakers his projections of the bill's cost - $100 billion more than the president and other officials were acknowledging - probably violated federal law.
Foster testified in March that he was prevented by then-Medicare administrator Thomas Scully from turning over information over to lawmakers. Scully, in a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee, said he had told Foster "that I, as his supervisor, would decide when he would communicate with Congress." Congressional researchers chided the move. "Such 'gag orders' have been expressly prohibited by federal law since 1912," Jack Maskell, a CRS attorney, wrote in the report. Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., the committee chairman, said he would be willing to issue subpoenas if laws had been broken. A spokesman for Thomas did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Time to pay the piper.
Update: I see that Atrios not only picked up the story but beat us to it (Dang that guy's good), but his lone comment is this:
Something tells me that Bill Thomas isn't going to make good on his promise.
I am happy to report that Atrios is far too despondent here. The GOPers who voted against issuing subpoenas for Badger and Scully were not the least bit happy to do so, and it was a nailbiter whether they would go through with it. The only thing they could cling to was the argument that no law was broken so subpoenas didn't make sense, and as we see that is now utterly debunked. The thing to realize is that this bill was always a gift to Bush. Most GOPers have conservative constituencies that care more about the deficit than getting a sham "entitlement" expansion; it was Bush that had to worry about "swing voters." That's also why the bill almost certainly wouldn't have passed if the true figures were known. But this has been a White House scandal from the get-go, and GOP Reps. worked hard to distance themselves from it until that subpoena vote. We shall see, but I think this might be a lethal blow to Bush, and I don't see any way out of it.
I wish I could share your optimism, Brad. Republican members of the House will do exactly as Bush and DeLay tell them.
You don't see any way out of it? You must be wearing ultra-dark sunglass indoors. The way out is simple: Don't issue subpoenas. That's all. The independent counsel law lapsed, right? If Democrats complain (no House Republicans will dare complain), DeLay, Bush and Rush Limbaugh will take care of that problem. "It's all partisan sniping," "Let's move forward and stop dwelling on mistakes of the past," etc.
Posted by: Holden Lewis on May 3, 2004 07:03 PMI hate to admit it, but Lewis is right. The whole reason the independent counsel law was put into place was that the initial problem was that the government turned out to be incapable of investigating itself - politics trumped law. If they just ignore this, it might not go away, but they won't be able to get an investigation off the ground either.
I'm not saying we should have the same independent counsel law as before, but it's clear that the problem that spawned it still remains.
Posted by: Oldman on May 3, 2004 07:53 PMA lethal blow to Bush? Get serious. Phoney arithmetic isn't going to cost him three votes. All we're going to hear is how these are uncertain projections, varying assumptions, partisanship, etc., and it will all be reported with a straight face. The press can't add either.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov on May 3, 2004 08:38 PMMy own congresscritter, David Vitter, has not even attempted to explain why he abandoned a lifetime of fiscal conservatism to change his vote in the middle of the night to support the Pharmaco-HMO welfare bill; he and others like him aren't now going to jump ship and call for an investigation. Like white blood cells, the repugs, real conservatives and theocrats, are all going to rush to the wound andkill the attacking germs to preserve deus-W.
Posted by: Brian Boru on May 3, 2004 09:13 PM"I look forward to answering all the committee's questions. So far, they have asked none. (Shrug). When they ask, I'll have my staff put together answers in a timely manner, but we won't rush to give just any answer. The American people deserve to know the truth, so we will not rush to tell them. Our behavior was correct and above boards in all regardless. The Medicaid drug benificents is a policy...a policy that Congress passed and I signed. Next question."
Posted by: K Harris on May 4, 2004 04:07 AMNothing will happen. R representatives need re-election funds. DeLay and Rove control the faucet. They will do as they are told.
Posted by: Chuck Nolan on May 4, 2004 05:04 AMOy, I see Brad has been taking a beating for what are actually my words, my apologies to Brad. The reason I think this could be different if it blows up into a criminal inquiry is that, for once, they do not have the Congress, and perhaps more importantly, the right wing media on their side. Consider as just one example this quote from Deroy Murdoch, contributing editor to NRO:
"The Medicare drug benefit has metastasized from bad policy to bad politics and now to scandal and possible criminality. This law begs to be euthanized. The GOP should pulls its plug. As for the perpetrators of this colossal public fraud, the Justice Department should fit them for orange jumpsuits."
Jumpsuits indeed.
http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock200404011013.asp
Another occasion to propose my new litmus for right and left in the US: the right spends on the old, the left invests in the young, i.e. it was Correct of AARP to forget its New Deal roots and swing over to the Bushies.
Yes, I'm still hung up on the fact that when I first heard of the Grey Panthers I thought, wrongly it turned out, that it was going to be a bunch of old folks who exposed Social Security for the inter-class rip-off it is.
Thanks for setting the record straight, jesselee.
By the way, here's today's NYT:
William A. Pierce, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said on Monday that the propriety of Mr. Scully's action was being investigated by the agency's inspector general. In any event, Mr. Pierce said, "we are looking to the future, not the past."
All well and good for medicare beneficiaries to have a drug benefit, but who will prescribe the drugs? Primary care docs are heading for the exits due to low reimbursement. It is common knowledge that MDs must minimize "medicare-welfare" patients to survive financially. Medicare pays me $40 for a standard 15 minute visit, plus an $8 copay from the beneficiary, which I might or might not get. Insurance pays $72, welfare (Oregon Health Plan) pays $36. My overhead is $15000 per month. Econ 101 question: What are my incentives?
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