HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt has offered the most childish, as well as the most mendacious, explanation of his double-cross on Plan B that one could imagine, even in an administration characterized by pathological lying. Senators Patty Murray and Hillary Clinton had blocked the confirmation of Lester Crawford as FDA Director until the Agency promised to issue the ruling on Plan B certification that it was legally required to make, and which had been in limbo for 2 years. They removed their holds on the confirmation hearings when Leavitt personally assured them that HHS would “act on” Plan B by September 1st.

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt on Monday defended FDA’s action of indefinitely deferring a decision on Barr Laboratories’ application for nonprescription sales of its emergency contraceptive Plan B, saying that he promised senators that the agency would act by Sept. 1 but never guaranteed a “yes or no” decision . . . .

“FDA made their commitment to me, and I made my commitment to the senators. The commitment was they would act. They did.” He added, “Sometimes action isn’t always yes and no.”

Prior to the Bush Administration, it would have been unthinkable for a Cabinet-level officer to say something like this with a straight face. The Senators had specifically said, many times, that they did not demand a particular resolution to the problem but that they insisted on a final decision. Murray’s Web site contains a press release almost 3 months old, making this point clearly enough that even a Bush Cabinet member should have been able to grasp it:

For Immediate Release: Wednesday, June 15, 2005

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), members of the Senate Health Education and Labor Committee (HELP), today voted against the nomination of Dr. Lester Crawford to head the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and placed a hold on his nomination, delaying consideration by the full Senate.

The Senators’ hold will remain in effect until FDA issues a yes or no decision on the over-the-counter application of Plan B emergency contraceptives.

“We are asking FDA to explain why they are delaying an over-the-counter application for Plan B that even their own Advisory Panel overwhelmingly recommended for approval. We are not asking for a specific outcome, but for some final outcome,” Senator Murray said.

Apparently there’s some part of “yes or no decision” and “final outcome” that Mike Leavitt doesn’t understand. But it was in this context that Leavitt promised “action”. He now claims he really only meant that they would do something, not anything useful or definitive. Somehow he never got around to mentioning that at the time, or to explaining that what he was promising was clearly incompatible with what the senators had demanded.

He deliberately issued a vague statement in response to an unambiguous request, and allowed the senators to assume he was dealing honestly with them. I tried that once (”Have you brushed your teeth?” “Yes.” “Have you brushed your teeth today?” “No.”), but even at 10 years old I knew I was lying. To think not only that the agency responsible for the most basic and vital needs of the American public is deliberately obstructing access to an important medication, but that the Cabinet officer overseeing it engages in this kind of childish duplicity, is disheartening. To think that our government has now taken to dealing with its own citizens in this manner is both dismaying and frightening.

What we surely know - though have known it for years already - is that nothing, not the most basic statement or claim of fact, not the most seemingly-ingenuous promise, from anyone in this administration, can be relied upon. Politically-motivated lying, manipulation, and distortion is inbred in them - all of them, apparently, including ones you might hope would have some vestigial feeling of responsibility for the public welfare. None of them is worth anything, and nothing they say is worth listening to.

I’ve said it many, many times already, but: I really, really want the adults to be back in charge.

Hat tip: AJOB/bioethics.net

[First quote above from CQ.com - paid subscription required]