Surprise! *yawn*

Yeah, big surprise - Bush is a liar. Who knew?

The White House released budget figures yesterday indicating that the new Medicare prescription drug benefit will cost more than $1.2 trillion in the coming decade, a much higher price tag than President Bush suggested when he narrowly won passage of the law in late 2003.

And it's a crappy program to boot! Oh yeah, and those evil, terrorist-loving Democrats predicted that, didn't they? One man's obstructionist is another man's truth-teller, I guess.

Beginning with his January 2003 State of the Union address, Bush pledged to keep the total cost of the drug benefit to $400 billion over 10 years. An estimate by the Congressional Budget Office was close to Bush's figure.

But shortly after Bush signed the program into law in December 2003, the White House revised its projection to $534 billion, but it never offered a detailed breakdown of that estimate.

Last March, Richard S. Foster, Medicare's chief actuary for nearly a decade, said administration officials threatened to fire him if he disclosed his belief in 2003 that the drug package would cost $500 billion to $600 billion. Lawmakers in both parties accused the administration of concealing important information that could have derailed passage of the bill.

Does anyone remember those quaint times when a "pledge" meant something? Remember how it used to be a requirement that the president not lie? They've got it down to a science - only lie if no one will care for longer than a day. Lucky for Bush, no one cares about anything for more than a day, unless there's a dead, white pregnant girl involved. And even then, she'd better be cute.