As you may or may not have heard, the Bush administration deliberately deceived Congress when it came to their recent Medicare law, a law that Bush has been touting as an example of his leadership in domestic issues. Accurate figures as to the cost of the law were kept from our elected representatives - and the man responsible may have to forfeit a big chunk of his salary as penalty.

The New York Times explains:

[I]nvestigators from the Government Accountability Office said that [the former head of the Medicare agency, Thomas A. Scully] had threatened to fire the chief Medicare actuary in violation of an explicit provision of federal appropriations law. Accordingly, they said, federal money could not be used to pay Mr. Scully's salary after he began making the threats to the actuary in May 2003. The conclusion was reached in a formal legal opinion by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress formerly known as the General Accounting Office.

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey, one of 18 Democratic senators who had requested the legal opinion, reflected partisan reaction in his remarks about the finding. "The Bush administration went so far as to break the law in order to hide information about its flawed Medicare plan," he asserted today. "This was a corruption of the process at the highest levels." ... Lawmakers of both parties said the law would not have passed in its current form if Congress had known of the higher cost estimate, prepared by the chief actuary, Richard S. Foster, a career civil servant.

It's entirely possible that the government won't even try to collect the money owed by Scully because collection is a task assigned to the executive branch — and since Scully's actions benefited the administration that runs the executive branch, it would not be in their best political interest to act on the above recommendation.

First, it would deter administration officials from breaking the law to benefit Bush in the future and, second, it would amount to a public admission that the administration used lies and deceit to pass the law. Since political considerations have been consistently more important than legal, ethical, and scientific considerations for the Bush administration, I wouldn't count on Scully having to pay one cent of his salary.

The Beat Bush Blog comments:

This is yet another example of the Bush administration arguing that the president is above the law -- as with the torture memos, in which administration lawyers argued that the Constitution entitled the president to authorize torture even though the Geneva Conventions and federal statutes forbid it. Actually, this may even go farther -- as the Times describes it (I have not read the legal briefs), the Bush administration contended that "the executive branch" (not even the president himself) has a constitutional right to withhold information that Congress has requested bearing on the cost of proposed legislation. You will search the Constitution in vain for that principle.

As with so many things the Bush administration does, I don't see why this isn't an enormous scandal. Scully, the top Medicare official in the Bush administration, forbade his subordinate to tell Congress the truth, on pain of firing if he disobeyed. It is very hard to believe that Scully did this on his own -- the prescription drug bill was a key piece of legislation for the Bush administration, and heavily pushed by it. Congress, misled due to Scully's threats into thinking that a controversial program would cost $134 billion less than the actual projection, passed the bill by an extremely narrow margin (and that only after an unprecedented, rule-flouting three-hour-long roll-call vote in the House, during which time the Bush administration twisted legislators' arms, and someone even offered a bribe to Rep. Nick Smith -- a huge non-scandal within a huge non-scandal). Shortly after Bush signed the bill into law, Scully resigned to take a highly paid job as a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry, the chief beneficiary of the law. The administration apparently then argued to the GAO that the executive branch has some sort of constitutional right to lie to Congress. What the hell?

Scandal? What scandal? It's just business as usual for the Bush regime. But what do I know? My view is just "partisan reaction," as the Times would have it. And $134 billion stolen from American taxpayers is way less interesting than a stained blue dress. Could someone please wake me up from this nightmare?

Until conservatives who believe more in ethical and philosophical principles rather than slash-and-burn politics and theocratic visions are able to take control of the Republican Party, I don't think that anyone will be able to wake him up out of his nightmare — even if Bush loses the election. So long as the Republican Party continues on its current course, it will have a toxic effect on politics in America. Republicans like McCain need to find a way to get rid of Republicans like DeLay. Then, perhaps, there will be some significant improvement.

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