Bush Rejects FOIA Request & Buries Outsourcing Report

A while back, I noted a little-seen story about how the Bush administration refused to publish or release a congressionally mandated report on outsourcing before the 2004 election. You may recall that the Bush White House formally endorsed outsourcing, and was embarassed for doing so, and thus had every reason to want the outsourcing issue to go away before the election. Now, incredibly, we see the administration is still stalling on releasing that report.

Here is the excerpt from Manufacturing & Technology News:

"The Commerce Department has refused to provide Democratic members of Congress with information they requested concerning a controversial report on outsourcing of jobs in the high tech sector. In a letter to ranking minority member of the House Science Committee, the Commerce Department says it does not have to comply with the request due to provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). But citing the FOIA as a means to deny information to members of Congress, as Commerce does, is rare and its wisdom may be questionable, according to lawyers familiar with the statute."

Remember, the Bush administration issued a memo in 2001 ordering agencies to reject or stall FOIA requests as much as possible. But still, this is really pushing the limits. The White House is literally ignoring the federal law that ordered this study done and released before the 2004 election. Now, more than a year later, they are still refusing to do what Congress demanded.


COMMENTS: Go to Sirota's Working Assets site to comment on this entry