White House knew Medicare costs too low, sources say
Apparently, the administration has played hide the ball on their cost estimate for the Medicare prescription drug bill. Their failure to provide information that was available to them has done a serious disservice to Congress and the American people.
- Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Wow, the Bush Administration lying and providing false information in an effort to obtain a policy objective? What a shock, eh? Yep, the Administration's victory on Medicare reform may turn out to be a hollow one, simply because they couldn't be bothered to be honest about the numbers (sound familiar??).
WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials had indications for months that the new Medicare prescription drug law might cost considerably more than the $400 billion advertised by the White House and Congress, according to internal documents and sources familiar with the issue.
The president's top health advisers gathered such evidence and shared it with select lawmakers, congressional and other sources said, long before the White House disclosed Thursday that it believes the program will cost $534 billion over the next decade -- one-third more than the estimate widely used when Congress enacted the measure in November.
The higher forecast, coming less than two months after President Bush signed the landmark bill into law, has fueled conservative criticism of White House spending policies and prompted accusations that the administration deliberately withheld financial information as it pushed the bill through a divided Congress....
A June 11 document indicates that Medicare administrators were preparing detailed fiscal analyses of at least some versions of the proposed legislation significantly in advance of its final passage. The document -- drafted by the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services -- says one Senate version of the Medicare drug bill would cost $551 billion over the next 10 years. That represents $151 billion more than the amount Congress cited upon passage in November, and $17 billion more than the estimate Bush will include in his 2005 budget blueprint Monday.
"There were whispers from the administration long before" Congress acted, said one source who worked on the legislation and, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity. Among a small group of lawmakers who negotiated the bill's final version, "it was an open secret" that administration officials believed "there is no way this is $400 billion," the source said.
The White House's new cost estimate, disclosed Thursday by Budget Director Josh Bolton at a briefing for GOP lawmakers, drew escalating complaints Friday from some Democrats and conservative Republicans who had opposed the law.
What continues to amaze me is that the majority of the American public seems quite willing to give Bush a free pass in the face of what appears to be some obvious dishonesty and prevarication. And guess who is going to pay for this dishonesty and prevarication? Ultimately, it will be our children, because you can bet that, as long as Bush and his minions are in the White House, there will be no effort made to deal with the burgeoning Bush-created deficit.
May I remind y'all that Bill Clinton, for all his imperfections, at least managed to balance the budget? George W. Bush seems to have no such desire, and the children of today's taxpayers will be the real losers.
Think about it. Think about it hard. You can help us make a change in November, or you can vote for the same type of dishonest, craven, fiscally irresponsible leadership that has been a hallmark of the past four years. What's it going to be??
