Thursday, May 20, 2004
How they passed the Medicare bill
Also from the Center for American Progress:
REPORT ALLEGES CONSERVATIVE HOUSE LEADERS BRIBED MEMBERS FOR VOTES: This week, Common Cause released a report chronicling all of the improprieties that occurred before and after the passage of the Bush administration's Medicare bill. Perhaps most disturbing: conservative leaders in the House held the vote on the Medicare bill open for 3 hours in the middle of the night while they pressured Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI) and others to switch their votes. Normally, votes in the House are open for 15 minutes. In a 11/23/03 column on his website Rep. Smith wrote, "members and groups made extensive financial campaign supports and endorsements for my son Brad who is running for my seat. They also made threats of working against Brad if I voted no." The following month on a radio interview, Smith said "the first offer was to give [my son Brad] $100,000-plus for his campaign and endorsement by national leadership." While Smith stuck to his principles, others did not, and the bill passed by one vote.
CONSERVATIVE HOUSE LEADERS CENSORED C-SPAN: The House leadership controls the C-SPAN cameras in the chamber. Normally, during a vote, the camera constantly pans side to side monitoring floor activity. But during the three hours the conservative leadership was harassing members to switch their votes, the camera was locked on the Democratic side of the chamber. As a result "there is no visual record of who was talking to whom that night while votes were sought by the leadership."
ADMINISTRATION THREATENED GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES TO HIDE TRUE COST: Chief Medicare actuary Richard Foster "was threatened with dismissal if he released his official estimate of the cost of the prescription drug bill," which was $156 billion higher than the administration promised. The White House was well aware of the higher estimate because Foster gave the estimates to them in June 2003. According to Foster, that same month Medicare administrator Tom Scully "decided to restrict the practice of our responding directly to provide responses to him so he could decide what to do with them." An April 26, 2004 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report found that Scully's behavior was likely illegal. According to the CRS, a federal government employee who issues a "'gag order' on subordinate employees, to expressly prevent and prohibit those employees from communicating directly with Members or committees of Congress, would appear to violate a specific and express prohibition of federal law."
EMPLOYEE WHO ISSUED GAG ORDER CASHES IN: In December 2003, just after the president signed the Medicare bill, chief Medicare administrator Tom Scully joined a law firm that represents drug manufacturers and other major players in the health care industry who benefited from the law. The Bush administration granted Scully an ethics waiver "so that he could negotiate with potential employers while he helped write the Medicare law."
posted by chris at 5:52 PM
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