Sep 8, 2004
More on Medicare
Thomas Scully's attempt to quietly ride off into a sunset of lobbying for a K Street law firm appears to have hit a snag. Today federal investigators said that the Bush Administration broke the law when they withheld the true cost of the new prescription drug benefit program from the Congress. Its silly proposed penalty aside (that Scully repay his last seven month salary), the investigation leaves any objective observer with two possible scenarios.
First, it's possible that Scully was acting on behalf of his current employeers to push a bill that would benefit their clients. If this were so, it seems clear that a larger scale investigation into any linkages would be great red meat for some young federal prosecutor looking for television face time. However no one in Washington appears anxious, so far, to make much of this.
This leaves us with scenario number 2 - someone inside the White House told Scully to threaten his employees into lying to get this bill done. That raises a whole bunch of problems for this administration, and I for one hope that the media, and Democrats in Congress, keep digging until someone hangs for this.