via
Josh Marshall...
Is this the straw that finally breaks the liars' backs?
The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan.
[...]
Five months before the November House vote, the government's chief Medicare actuary had estimated that a similar plan the Senate was considering would cost $551 billion over 10 years. Two months after Congress approved the new benefit, White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten disclosed that he expected it to cost $534 billion.
Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which produced the $551 billion estimate, told colleagues last June that he would be fired if he revealed numbers relating to the higher estimate to lawmakers.
"This whole episode which has now gone on for three weeks has been pretty nightmarish," Foster wrote in an e-mail to some of his colleagues June 26, just before the first congressional vote on the drug bill. "I'm perhaps no longer in grave danger of being fired, but there remains a strong likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the withholding of important technical information from key policy makers for political reasons."
Knight Ridder obtained a copy of the e-mail.
Foster didn't quit, but congressional staffers and lawmakers who worked on the bill said he no longer was permitted to answer important questions about the bill's cost.
Cybele Bjorklund, the Democratic staff director for the House Ways and Means health subcommittee, which worked on the drug benefit, said Thomas A. Scully - then the director of the Medicare office - told her he ordered Foster to withhold information and that Foster would be fired for insubordination if he disobeyed.
Health and Human Services Department officials turned down repeated requests to interview Foster. The Medicare office falls under the control of HHS.
In an interview with Knight Ridder, Scully, a former health-industry lobbyist deeply involved in the administration's campaign to pass the drug benefit, denied Bjorklund's assertion that he'd threatened to fire Foster. He said he curbed Foster on only one specific request, made by Democrats on the eve of the first House vote in June, because he felt they'd use the cost estimates to disrupt the debate.
"They were trying to be politically cute and get (Foster) to score (estimate the cost of the bill) and put something out publicly so they can walk out on the House floor and cause a political crisis, which is bogus," Scully said.
"I just said, `Look, (Foster) works for the executive branch; he's not going to do it, period,'" he said.
Otherwise, Scully said, Foster was available to lawmakers and their staffs.
" ... I don't think he ever felt - I don't think anybody (in the actuary's office) ever felt - that I restricted access. ... I think it's a very nice tradition that (the actuary) is perceived to be very nonpartisan and very accessible, and I continued that tradition."
Scully said Liz Fowler, the chief health lawyer for the Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, could confirm the actuary's independence. Fowler didn't.
"He's a liar," she said of Scully.
First of all, mad props to Tony Pugh of Knight-Ridder. This is a great piece of journalism--it appears that every attempt was made to let all sides air their views, and it's clear who's with the angels. Hint: it's not Scully. There are more goodies in the article, too.
Secondly, this is pretty damn embarassing for the Bush administration.
Third, it cuts against economic conservative Republicans already upset about the Medicare bill, while providing endless an endless attack vehicle for the Democrats.
This John Kerry quote is looking better by the hour:
"These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen."
I think he was referring to Citizens United, but, hey, if the shoe fits...
