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Did GOP Break
Law
Republicans Won't Answer About Hiding
Medicare Cost
April 2, 2004 - Republicans on
Thursday shut down efforts to learn if the Bush administration
acted illegally last year when it withheld its estimate of the "real"
cost of the Medicare prescription drug bill from Congress.
At issue are allegations that
then-Medicare administrator Thomas A. Scully threatened to fire his top
actuary if he gave lawmakers his analyses showing the costs would be
higher than administration officials were saying publicly. Thursday's
conclusion of a Ways and Means Committee hearing all but ensured that
two individuals central to the controversy -- Scully and White House
aide Doug Badger -- will not testify before Congress, according to
Vicki Kemper, writing for the Los Angeles Times.
Bush administration officials said they
acted legally in ordering the nation's top Medicare cost analyst to keep
from lawmakers his estimate that the new Medicare prescription drug
benefit might cost more than $100 billion over what Congress was willing
to pay, according to Tony Pugh, reporting for Knight-Ridder Newspapers.
Former Medicare administrator Thomas
Scully, now a health-care lobbyist, declined to appear before the House
Ways and Means Committee to defend himself, but did release a written
statement, reported by Pugh.
Richard Foster, chief actuary at the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, believed, according to
Scully, that "he was free to make decisions about when or how to respond
to congressional inquiries relating to cost estimates generally, and, in
particular, the Medicare Reform bill."
"Simply put, I disagreed," Scully
wrote, "and there is no question whatsoever that I made it very clear to
Mr. Foster, both directly and indirectly, that I, as his supervisor,
would decide when he would communicate with Congress."
Scully did not address Foster's
assertion that he threatened to fire the actuary if Foster shared his
data with lawmakers, which Knight Ridder first reported March 11.
The Health and Human Services
Department is also conducting an internal investigation into the matter
and Democratic lawmakers have requested civil and criminal probes.
Ways and Means committee
Democrats had asked Scully and Badger to answer questions about when
President Bush and other top-ranking officials were told that internal
estimates of the Medicare 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-Calif.,
cited "long-standing White House policy" against having White House
staff testify before Congress as the reason Badger would not appear.
And Scully, now a private
consultant, said in a letter to Thomas that he was unable to appear
before the committee because "unfortunately, for the past ten days I
have been traveling."
Committee Democrats rejected
both explanations. In the case of Badger, they said that at least 45
high-ranking Clinton administration officials had testified before
Congress; in the case of Scully, they offered to let him appear at a
later time. But Republicans squashed the Democrats' attempts to subpoena
the men.
Republican committee members
accused the Democrats of trying to capitalize on the controversy, which
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.
As for preliminary estimates by
Foster indicating that the Medicare bill could cost as much as $551
billion over 10 years, Thomas said the information "probably would not
have enlightened Congress as much as confused Congress." Thomas chaired
the House-Senate conference committee that finalized the legislation.
In January, the Bush
administration revised the estimated cost of Medicare overhaul to $534
billion.
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 vote?
Information from
Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times was
used in this report.
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