Bush Still Burying Outsourcing Report

Back in October, I wrote about a little-noticed story detailing how the Bush administration deliberately doctored a congressionally-mandated report on outsourcing and then buried it until after the 2004 election. Now, in an update to its original piece, Manufacturing & Technology News notes that the administration is STILL delaying the release of the report.

Here is the key excerpt of the story (the full story is only available to subscribers):

Democratic members of the House Science Committee, told by a Commerce Department official they could expect a response by December 14 to questions they had submitted in October regarding a recent Technology Administration (TA) report on the ffshoring of high-skilled jobs, were nonetheless informed on December 15 that their wait would continue for an unspecified time. In a letter dated November 22 and addressed to the Science Committee’s ranking minority member, Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee, then-Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology Michelle O’Neill had written that: 'We expect to issue a response to you no later than December 14.' In her letter, O’Neill, who has since left TA for the position of Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, attributed the length of TA’s response time to the 'thorough and exhaustive search for records' required by department regulations applying to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. TA did not meet its December 14 deadline, citing similar reasons, according to Science Committee staff."

This is just brazen stonewalling. I know we've all come to expect it - but this is really over the line.

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