White House won't let adviser testify on Medicare drug costs

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/8323159.htm

WASHINGTON - Citing executive privilege, the White House refused to allow President Bush's chief health-policy adviser, Douglas Badger, to testify Thursday before the House Ways and Means Committee about early administration estimates that the new Medicare prescription-drug benefit would be far more costly than many lawmakers believed when they voted for it.

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the decision not to let Badger testify was justified by the longstanding principle that exempts assistants to the president from testifying before Congress.

Executive privilege, while not mentioned specifically in the Constitution, has been recognized by the Supreme Court as necessary to, as Duffy put it, "preserve the White House's ability to get the best information possible and to speak candidly."

Until Bush yielded on Tuesday, his administration used the same argument to keep National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice from testifying publicly before the commission investigating the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

more

[KissMyAsscroft]

1. Pfffft...

If I had a quarter for every time this corrupt administration cited executive priviledge...

[0007]

2. Is Trent Duffy, Daffy Duck's Trent Lott or Scalia's duck hunting

partner Dick Cheney?

A Fire Storm is brewing.

[Cocoa]

3. Operation Muzzle Badger

[boobooday]

4. It's always some kind of privilege

With this privileged BOZO.

It's what he lives on.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[leesa]

5. The King has spoken. Long live the fascist thug.

In jail that is. Now the assistants to the assistants have executive privilege too. When are stupid Americans going to wake up???

[IndianaGreen]

6. Who is that Medicare actuarial that was threatened if he went public?

Knight Ridder reported on March 11 that former Medicare administrator Thomas Scully threatened to fire his chief actuary, Richard Foster, if Foster shared the far higher estimate with members of Congress. The alleged firing threat, which Scully contends was not serious, sparked sharp bipartisan criticism from lawmakers, editorial writers and interest groups, as did the administration's effort to keep the higher cost figure out of the congressional debate. Lawmakers in prior years had free access to Foster's estimates.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/8323159.htm

It was Richard Foster, a civil servant, who said Medicare was going to cost up to $600B, about 200B more than the CBO's estimates.

I now hear rumors that Foster's boss, Tom Scully, is going to the private sector to work for a big health care provider that will be a big beneficiary of the new Medicare bill.

This is the sort of sordid business that is so common to the Bush/Cheney Administration. Congress should bring this sleaze bag to the carpet and, if any laws were broken, he should be prosecuted.

[snippy]

16. Scully is particularly sleazy, even for somone in the Bush administration.

On May 12, 2003 Thomas Scully, chief administrator for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) obtained an ethics waiver from Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson allowing him to ignore ethics laws barring him from negotiating employment with anyone financially affected by his official duties or authority. Scully subsequently acted as the White House's head negotiator on the Medicare prescription drug bill, a bill that significantly affected the financial interests of five firms he was in employment talks with. On December 18, 2003 Scully announced that he was joining two of the firms affected by the bill.

http://www.citizen.org/congress/govt_reform/ethics/scully/index.cfm

The basis of the ethics waiver and Scully's new employers are described here.

. . . The waiver gives the self-serving justification that it is "neither practicable, nor in the interest of the Department, for Mr. Scully to remain disqualified," ignoring clear guidelines set out in federal regulations and law that list specific criteria for such waivers.

Those criteria specify that a waiver from conflicts of interest laws are justified primarily on the grounds that the private benefit to the public employee and the employee’s potential employers and their clients or subsidiaries are so insubstantial as not "to affect the integrity of the employee’s services."

The three lobby firms with which Scully negotiated possible employment lobby for at least 30 companies or associations that are affected by the new Medicare law. The two investment firms own substantial stakes in at least 11 companies that are affected by the Medicare changes. Among those 41 entities are 12 pharmaceutical companies and the trade association for the pharmaceutical industry.

. . .

Scully resigned from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on December 16. On December 18 he announced that he would be joining two of the five firms he had been negotiating with while CMS administrator. They are: Alston & Bird, a firm with many health care industry clients, and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, an investment firm with investments in health care companies.

http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=1613

[IndianaGreen]

23. What a sleaze ball this Thomas Scully has turned out to be, snippy!

Scully resigned from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on December 16. On December 18 he announced that he would be joining two of the five firms he had been negotiating with while CMS administrator. They are: Alston & Bird, a firm with many health care industry clients, and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, an investment firm with investments in health care companies.

If this had happened during the Clinton Administration, I am certain that rightwingers from Rush Limbaugh to Newt Gingrigh would be demanding an investigation by Ken Starr.

What a sleaze ball this Thomas Scully has turned out to be, snippy!

Those articles are a great find!

:)

Time for Congress to go back and re-write the law before it takes effect.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. kick

[radfringe]

8. Time to ask that same question

What is hiding in the bushes?

Will there be a big enough stink made about this to force bush* to flip-flop?

Medicare Official Testifies on Cost Figures
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/politics/25MEDI.html
By ROBERT PEAR -- Published: March 25, 2004

Mr. Foster said he had been told to withhold information from lawmakers of both parties. Moreover, he said, Mr. Scully stated that he was "acting under direct White House orders" in telling the actuary not to respond to a request from the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Representative Bill Thomas, Republican of California. Mr. Thomas was a principal architect of the Medicare bill.

An aide to Mr. Scully sent an e-mail message to Mr. Foster on June 20 saying that the actuary would suffer "extremely severe" consequences if he provided Congress with information requested by Mr. Thomas and other lawmakers.

[DeepModem Mom]

9. "What is hiding in the Bushes?"

They should take that line on the campaign trail, radfringe --

[dbt]

10. Hey Mom! Hey, rad!

Here's similar one that was taken on the 2000 campaign trail by our African-American relatives:

Stay out the Bushes!

Pity we didn't listen then. Maybe we're a shade smarter this time?

:evilgrin:
dbt

[maddezmom]

11. "executive privilege"

wonder how many more times we'll hear this excuse?????

[underpants]

15. I think they realize that if they stop talking they will stop lying

That seems to be their only option.

[Jeff in Cincinnati]

18. How very...um...Nixonian

It didn't work in 1973 and it's not going to work this time either. Executive Privilege doesn't extend to suborning perjury. I'm pretty sure that's a felony. Can any lawyers out there confirm?

[snippy]

12. Badger appears to be an odious fuck.

From a November 2002 article:

Last month, the White House brought in Douglas Badger from the high-powered lobbying firm Washington Council Ernst & Young to serve as a senior health care adviser.

Badger had been chief of staff to Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles, R-Okla., for much of the 1990s and has served on the board of advisers of Pat Robertson's Regent University, which bills itself as the nation's premier Christian graduate university.

http://www.detnews.com/2002/politics/0211/07/a08-3934.htm

Working as a lobbyist and for Nickles, Roberson, and Bush tells me that it is extremely unlikely that Badger would testify truthfully about anything.

[DeepModem Mom]

14. Board of Advisers of Pat Robertson's University?

Oh, brother -- can you believe these people are running our country?

[bobbieinok]

22. I think the black woman in charge of govt hiring was dean of

law school at Robertson's univ

she's on record many times as saying govt needs to hire more 'real' christians

[Q]

13. The Bushies intentionally...

...'encouraged' their advisers to lie to congress. This is in and of itself a crime. There is no such thing as 'executive privilege' when it comes to covering up executive branch malfeasance. Nixon found out the hard way.

[snippy]

17. Another day, another felony. How very republican.

[DeepModem Mom]

19. kick

[Fridays Child]

20. Badger told Bush the cost, they both know it, and the only way out...

...of this mess is to cite executive privilege and hope it sticks. But to cite it for something like this is a huge red flag. Bush knows this is the issue that could spell his doom. And this is why there was so much discussion regarding whether allowing Rice to testify could have an impact on inquiries unrelated to the 9-11 Commission.

Without even going into the fr**per fascist echo chamber, I can just about guarantee that they're saying, "See? Now that they've gotten Condi, the liberal media will stop at nothing!"

[Malva Zebrina]

21. I am so sick of these fascists and their arrogance

I am sick of it! Who the hell do they think they are? :grr:
:argh:

[truthisfreedom]

24. the solution is easy... just admit that bush isn't really the president.

then they aren't the president's assistants. so there's no problem.