The Washington Post reported today former Bush Medicare and Medicaid administrator Thomas Scully agreed to pay back $10,000 for personal job-hunting trips he had charged to the government during his tenure. But while the Post piece provided a breezy overview of Scully's ethical indiscretions during his time at HHS, it completely omitted any mention of what should be his enduring legacy: threatening truth-telling subordinates with dismissal during the selling of President Bush's Medicare prescription plan.
To fully appreciate Scully's sinister role in the snookering of Congress over the Medicare drug plan, we need to jump back to late 2003. With his 2004 reelection looming, President Bush was desperate to pass a Medicare prescription plan, a benefit it had earlier opposed. Facing opposition from his own party over the staggering cost of the new entitlement, the President needed to reassure key Republicans in Congress that the package was affordable. Which is where Scully comes in.
Scully simply ensured that Congress would hear nothing of the mushrooming budgets forecasts for the Medicare drug plan. Congressional committees had been told that the 10-year tab would reach $400 billion. But two months before the December 2003 vote, Medicare and Medicaid chief actuary Richard Foster was already estimating the true price tag at $551 billion. The solution was simple: Scully threatened to fire Foster if he went to Congress with the real budget figures.
The rest, as they say, is history. The Medicare RX bill squeaked by in the House, helped in no small part by shenanigans from then House Majority Leader Tom Delay, who browbeat GOP holdouts during an unprecedented extension of voting on the floor. (This later became the focus of one of Delay's many reprimands by the House Ethics Committee.) After a cursory probe by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, Scully got a clean bill of health.
Which brings us back to today's wrist slap. By 2004, Scully was out of HHS altogether, an exit made easier by travel for job interviews he charged to the government.