It is too much to expect that an American government be honest about matters such as this, or going to war? I'm wondering what they WON'T do. And why conservatives, as good Americans, aren't outraged?

"It's something that's eating away at the credibility of the administration in an election year on a bill that he thought was a building block for his re-election," said Stephen Hess, a political analyst for the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank, and a former aide to President Eisenhower."

"Lawmakers got steamed after the nation's top Medicare actuary, Richard Foster, told Knight Ridder that he had projected the higher cost long before Congress voted in November. Lawmakers were never told about his higher estimates because he says he was ordered by his boss, former Medicare administrator Thomas Scully, to withhold them from Congress or be fired."

Arf