So where's the moral courage?

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.

  Knight Ridder article

I understand the need to have a job. But I also understand that life hands you opportunities to show your character.

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'd vowed to vote against the Medicare drug bill if it cost more than $400 billion. ... Richard S. 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 three 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 policy makers for political reasons."

But you didn't, did you Richard? I wouldn't call losing a job "grave danger", but losing your soul....

Perhaps you never had one.

Foster didn't quit, but congressional staffers and lawmakers who worked on the bill said he no longer was permitted to answer important questions about the bill's cost.

So he shouldn't cry. He conducted himself like a lackey whore. They're treating him like one.

[Foster's boss Tom Scully, a former health-industry lobbyist,] left the administration and in January took a job with Alston & Bird, an Atlanta-based law firm that represents numerous hospitals and health insurers. He was exploring jobs in the private sector while he was pushing for passage of the prescription drug bill, thanks to a waiver from Thompson that allowed him to conduct job interviews while he was still a federal employee. In February, the White House announced that President Bush's appointees no longer would be permitted to job-hunt while on the federal payroll. Members of Congress and congressional staffers complained that Scully's handling of Foster has deepened congressional mistrust of the Bush administration and that withholding information makes it harder for Congress to draft good legislation.

Oh, gee. Everybody's a patsy. The Bush crooks lie and lie, and everybody gets "misled" over and over.

What a bunch of cowpatties.

They all play the same games for the same benefits. That's the reason they allow themselves to be misled. Wouldn't want to upset the game and expose themselves or hinder their future possibilities.

And what the hell good does it do anybody to whine about fault when you never do anything to fix the problem?

Anybody but the crooks, that is.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.