Mar. 10 comment by John Kerry, Dem Presidential Candidate: “These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group I’ve ever seen.”
Mar. 10 response by Mark Racicot, Bush Campaign Chairman: Kerry’s comments are “unbecoming of a candidate for the presidency.”
Mar. 11 Knight-Ridder Report: The government’s top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan.
Mar. 12 Knight-Ridder Report: “Estimates that were supportive of the [Medicare] legislation were generally released and estimates that could be used to criticize the legislation were generally not released,” Foster said.
Mar. 12 Washington Post Report: Bush is correct that Kerry on Sept. 29, 1995, proposed a five-year, $1.5 billion cut to the intelligence budget. But Bush appears to be wrong when he said the proposed Kerry cut – about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget for those years – would have “gutted” intelligence. In fact, the Republican-led Congress that year approved legislation that resulted in $3.8 billion being cut over five years from the budget of the National Reconnaissance Office – the same program Kerry said he was targeting. The $1.5 billion cut Kerry proposed represented about the same amount Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), then chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told the Senate that same day he wanted cut from the intelligence spending bill based on unspent, secret funds that had been accumulated by one intelligence agency ‘without informing the Pentagon, CIA or Congress.’ The NRO, which designs, builds and operates spy satellites, had accumulated that amount of excess funds.
