Republicans distorting the facts...again

Various news agencies are reporting that Republican's intentionally withheld information from Members of Congress that would have significantly altered the outcome of the recent vote regarding Medicare. According to Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, after his office estimated the cost for the Bill to be upward of 550 Billions dollars, he was threatened with the loss of his job.

"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."

Foster wrote this in an email just before the first congressional vote:

"This whole episode which has now gone on for three weeks has been pretty nightmarish, 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."

13 Republican representatives vowed to vote against the Medicare Bill if it cost more then 400 Billion dollars. If you recall, the bill passed my a margin of five votes.

Maybe John Kerry is on to something, "the most crooked, lying........"