Bush has a habit of just making shit up when it suits his needs. Just look at his selling of his Iraq war. Lies, lies and lies. More on that in a bit.
But while I consider the Iraq lies the worst of the lot (and are finally coming home to roost), the Medicare lie may be the one that causes the most damage.
Some background: the Bush Administration wanted to sell its Medicare prescription drug plan to a wary GOP. The budget was already out of control, and Republicans were wary of creating a new government entitlement.
Democrats opposed the bill as inadequate and a sop to insurance and drug interests. So Bush needed to keep his party in check. He needed their votes.
So he lied to them.
Bush administration officials had indications for months that the new Medicare prescription drug law might cost considerably more than the $400 billion advertised by the White House and Congress, according to internal documents and sources familiar with the issue.
The president's top health advisers gathered such evidence and shared it with select lawmakers, congressional and other sources said, long before the White House disclosed Thursday that it believes the program will cost $534 billion over the next decade -- one-third more than the estimate widely used when Congress enacted the measure in November.
The higher forecast, coming less than two months after President Bush signed the landmark bill into law, has fueled conservative criticism of White House spending policies and prompted accusations that the administration deliberately withheld financial information as it pushed the bill through a divided Congress.
Now the GOP leadership faces the prospects of shepperding Bush's budget monstrosity through an
increasingly hostile congress.
With conservatives in his own party angry over what they see as excessive overall spending by the Bush administration, and those frustrations exacerbated by a large uptick in the estimated cost of a new Medicare overhaul, Bush spent most of his brief remarks to the lawmakers on fiscal restraint. He even singled out health care costs as an area in need of discipline.
As Bush talks of "fiscal restraint", the budget will destroy this year's record deficit of $375 billion, rising to an obscene $521 billion. And that's before additional spending requests for Iraq and unforseen contingencies.
Republicans suddenly face the unpopular prospect of facing the voters while responsible for the nation's worst deficits and the prospect of cuts to over 60 "unspecified" programs. They should thank their lucky stars for their gerrymandered districts. But it won't be long before the Democrats can finally claim, in the eyes of electorate, the mantle of fiscal responsibility.
