Editorial: Deception perfected

Monday, March 22, 2004 | 8:33 a.m.

Last year, as Congress debated President Bush's prescription drug plan for seniors, doubts were raised about the White House's assertion that the program's costs could be held to $400 billion over the next decade. But the administration insisted its estimate was right, persuading just enough fence-sitting conservative lawmakers in November to vote for the president's program and secure its narrow approval in the House. A short time later, in January, many members of Congress were chagrined when the White House disclosed that the program would actually cost $534 billion.

Last week we discovered that this wasn't just some accounting error, but that it involved deception. Last spring the Medicare program's longtime actuary, Richard Foster, was estimating that the actual cost of the prescription drug benefit would be between $500 billion to $600 billion, but Foster says that his boss, Thomas Scully, the administrator of the Medicare program, told him he would be fired if that information was shared with Congress. Even Republicans are expressing outrage at this suppression of critical information. But should they really be surprised? Withholding information from the public has become routine for this administration. Two of the more notable examples include Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal to turn over records regarding secret meetings of his energy task force and the administration stonewalling the 9-11 commission regardin g information the independent panel wanted. In a perverse way, this penchant for secrecy and deception appears to have beco! me a badge of honor for this White House.