The Administration's Fudge Factory

Howard Kurtz - After months of getting hammered on the WMD issue, Bush is now on the defensive over Medicare -- and, more broadly, whether his administration is playing fast and loose with the facts.

Congress had a cliffhanger vote last year in passing Bush's prescription drug program, which conservatives found hard to swallow even at the administration's advertised cost of $395 billion. Then, once the dust settled, it was oops! The actual cost will be $534 billion.

Which would have been a one-day story if Knight Ridder reporter Tony Pugh hadn't discovered that one Richard S. Foster, Medicare's longtime actuary, had estimated the higher price tag all along.

And, according to Foster, he was threatened with firing by his boss, then-Medicare chief Thomas Scully, if he went public with the information. That is now the subject of an inspector general's investigation.

So the program is mired in controversy even before seniors see the real benefits in 2006.

Meanwhile, the tireless New York Timesman Robert Pear popped a story in which the Health and Human Services Department is peddling a propaganda video about the drug program -- complete with fake reporter -- to TV stations, about 40 of which have run it. Isn't this the administration's fantasy -- it gets to produce the news and script the bogus journalist's lines without having to deal with actual, sweaty, annoying correspondents?