Pay Any Price

After selling us on a ten-year, $400 billion expansion of Medicare, the White House now tells us it’s going to cost a teensy bit more:

Instead of a $400 billion 10-year price tag, Bush’s 2005 budget will estimate the Medicare bill’s cost at about $540 billion, said aides who spoke on condition of anonymity. Bush will submit on Monday a federal budget for the fiscal year 2005, which starts next Oct. 1.

Bush just signed the Medicare measure into law last month. While it was moving through Congress, Bush, White House officials and congressional Republican leaders had assured doubting conservatives that the bill’s costs would stay within the $400 billion estimate.

Usuaully, a program has to be in actual existence for a year or two before it blows past estimates by that much. That means that you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This is gonna be a trillion-dollar sinkhole by 2016.

That’s trillion, with a T.