Editorial: A perfect example of stonewalling

Thursday, July 8, 2004 | 8:43 a.m.

Several months ago Democrats and Republicans in Congress discovered that last year the White House had withheld from them reliable estimates of the cost for the new prescription drug benefit for seniors. While President Bush was publicly claiming that the new program would cost no more than $400 billion over 10 years, Medicare's chief actuary, Richard Foster, privately estimated that it would cost much more, from $500 billion to $600 billion. Moreover, the chief actuary subsequently alleged that Medicare Administrator Thomas Scully, who now is a lobbyist for drug companies, had threatened to fire him last year if he provided Congress with realistic estimates.

This week the Health and Human Services Department's deputy inspector general, Dara Corrigan, who had been investigating the matter, confirmed the allegations. Nonetheless, she said Scully's threat to fire Foster and his decision to withhold information from Congress didn't break any laws. The New York Times reports that the Health and Human Services Department, relying on the Justice Department's advice, believed that Medicare's administrator could refuse to turn over documents sought by Congress. The Justice Department, the Times adds, cited arguments made by President Nixon in asserting executive privilege made before the Supreme Court in the Watergate tapes case.

It's fitting that the Bush White House, with its obsession for secrecy, would fall back on Nixonian arguments to make its case for stonewalling. This also is the same White House that refused to make public the records from Vice President Cheney's energy task force and the same one that dragged its feet in granting the 9/11 commission access to administration records in its investigation. And let's not forget how the White House misled the public and Congress in the run-up to the war in Iraq, relying on dubious sources to claim that Saddam Hussein had a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration is making an excellent case on its own, without any help from Democrats, as to why it's so difficult to trust this White House any longer.