Janice Schakowsky: “If I can go on for just a minute, when President Bush ran for office, he said our first priority will be to restore…”

“If I can go on for just a minute, when President Bush ran for office, he said our first priority will be to restore honor and dignity to the White House. But when you look at President Bush's top official in charge of Medicare getting issued a waiver to pursue employment in the health care industry while he continues to serve as administrator of Medicare, how can we call that honor and dignity? This confirms the worst of what people think about the way government is run. When this first happened, I along with our colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Stark), wrote a letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson. A part of the letter says, ``For 7 months Members of Congress who relied on Mr. Scully for information were kept in the dark about the fact that he was actively engaged in looking for employment with firms that have significant interests in the issues at stake. Financial conflicts of interest are designed to assure Members of Congress, entities with interests pending before CMS, and the public that Federal executive branch employees are independent and unbiased in their behavior. While we strongly believe that this waiver should never have been granted, at a bare minimum knowledge of it would have been valuable to us in weighing the advice provided by Mr. Scully.'' This is just shameful.…”