[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 4300-4301]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THE MEDICARE DRUG BILL

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I wanted to call attention to another 
matter that just came to our attention this morning. There was a story 
filed

[[Page 4301]]

by the Knight Ridder news organization in the Miami Herald, by Tony 
Pugh. The Miami Herald and other papers have had this story now on the 
Internet. I wanted to read a piece of it:

       The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned 
     that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a 
     series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have 
     torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed 
     Medicare prescription drug plan.

  The Senator from North Dakota was just addressing this issue. 
Obviously, the reimportation plan was part of the Medicare legislation, 
and had we been able to pass a meaningful reimportation provision, we 
could have brought down costs.
  Again, quoting from a report copyrighted by the Miami Herald:

       When the House of Representatives passed the controversial 
     benefit by five votes last November, the White House was 
     embracing an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that 
     it would cost $395 billion in the first 10 years. But for 
     months the administration's own analysts in the Centers for 
     Medicare and Medicaid Services had concluded repeatedly that 
     the drug benefit could cost upward of $100 billion more than 
     that.
       Withholding the higher cost projections was important 
     because the White House was facing a revolt from 13 
     conservative House Republicans who had vowed to vote against 
     the bill if it cost more than $400 billion.
       Representative Sue Myrick of North Carolina, one of the 13 
     Republicans, said she was ``very upset'' when she learned of 
     the higher estimate.
       ``I think a lot of people probably would have reconsidered 
     [voting for the bill] because we said that $400 billion was 
     our top of the line,'' Myrick said.
       Five months before the November House vote, the 
     government's chief Medicare actuary had estimated that a 
     similar plan the Senate was considering would cost $551 
     billion over 10 years. Two months after Congress approved the 
     new benefit, White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten 
     disclosed that he expected it to cost $534 billion.
       Richard Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for 
     Medicare and Medicaid Services, which produced the $551 
     billion estimate, told colleagues last June that he would be 
     fired if he revealed numbers relating to the higher estimate 
     to lawmakers.
       ``This whole episode, which has now gone on for 3 weeks, 
     has been pretty nightmarish,'' Foster wrote in an e-mail to 
     some of his colleagues June 26, just before the first 
     congressional vote on the drug bill. ``I'm perhaps no longer 
     in grave danger of being fired, but there remains a strong 
     likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the 
     withholding of important technical information from key 
     policymakers for political reasons.''
       Cybele Bjorklund, the Democratic staff director for the 
     House Ways and Means health subcommittee, which worked on the 
     drug benefit, said Thomas Scully--then the director of the 
     Medicare office--told her that he ordered Foster to withhold 
     information and that Foster would be fired for 
     insubordination if he disobeyed.
  The vote on this Medicare legislation was one of the most critical 
decisions Congress had made in 40 years on Medicare. We are talking 
about a difference of more than $150 billion. What this article states 
is that key members of the administration were told they would be fired 
if they told Congress the truth. I think this is one of the most 
reprehensible actions that I have seen since coming to Congress.
  For the life of me, I cannot understand how such irresponsible 
behavior could be condoned, could be allowed. We will get to the bottom 
of this. But I think it calls into question how laws are made. It 
certainly calls into question what efforts may now be made by the 
administration to keep information on other issues from Congress, 
before we make critical decisions.
  I think we ought to bring this bill back for another vote. I think 
the House and the Senate deserve to have a vote based on all of the 
information, not just part of it. If this and perhaps other information 
was withheld, Members of Congress were called to vote under false 
pretenses. They were called to vote without having the truth. On an 
issue with these repercussions, we have no other choice but to revote 
this issue.
  Already, the Congress has tried to offer corrections to the bill. 
Bills have been offered and amendments suggested to try to correct many 
of the problems created by this bill. But now we know, based on the 
information provided in this article, that not only are there 
significant policy questions, but the very issues provided to Congress 
as fact before were, in fact, untruthful misrepresentations upon which 
Congress voted mistakenly.
  So we are going to have to review the available options that we have, 
with regard to how this happened and what ought to be done. I think an 
investigation of some kind is certainly warranted. Whether this is 
criminal or not is a matter that we will certainly want to clarify. But 
if not criminal, it is certainly unethical.
  I think we need to know the facts. How did this happen? Why did it 
happen? Are there precedents for things like this happening for which 
the situation called for another vote? As close as that vote was, in 
the dead of night, I think we owe it to the American people, we owe it 
to seniors, to reconsider these votes and question whether or not we 
can put in place some absolute guarantee that this will never happen 
again.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, following the comments of my colleague, 
this is a shameful thing to have had happen and to read about. It 
breaks the bonds of trust that exist in this town. This is a political 
town, so we expect politics, but not in the context of information 
given us by agencies that are inherently nonpolitical and are supposed 
to give us good information with which to make public judgments and 
policy. I agree fully with my colleague. This not only breaks the bonds 
of trust, but it is a shameful and disgusting thing to read in a paper 
this morning. My hope is that it is fully investigated.

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