In this past Sunday's L.A. Times Op-Ed section, Bruce Bartlett said:
AS A LIFELONG conservative, I have to be honest: George W. Bush is not one of us and has never been. ...
...liberal Democrat Bill Clinton's administration is looking more and more like the "good old days."
...
Bush's greatest sin, in my book, was ramming the Medicare drug benefit through Congress by covering up its true cost and strong-arming principled conservatives into voting for it. According to the Medicare trustees' latest report, the program has an unfunded liability of $18 trillion in current value terms. That means we would need that much in a mutual fund today, earning a return, to pay its unfunded liability.
...
I and a growing number of other budget analysts now think the only way of avoiding a financial Katrina when the baby boom generation starts to retire is a massive tax increase. Future presidents may be the ones to enact it. But Bush's policies will have caused it.
How dare Mr. Bartlett criticize President Bush! He can't possibly be a true conservative... can he?
According to The Economist:
Bruce Bartlett is a card-carrying Reaganite libertarian. He truly believes in free markets, small government and low taxes. His 1981 book “Reaganomics” was a manifesto for its era. He worked in the Reagan White House and the Treasury Department of Mr Bush's father. Until he was sacked last autumn (for writing this book), Mr Bartlett was attached to the National Centre for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think-tank which propounds free-market solutions for everything from health care to pension reform. His conservative credentials, in short, are beyond question.
Now, I disagree that misleading Congress on the cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit was Bush's greatest sin, but here are the details of President Bush's sinful behavior.
The chief Medicare actuary, Richard S. Foster, told Congress on Wednesday that last June he provided the White House with data indicating that prescription drug legislation would cost 25 percent to 50 percent more than the Bush administration's public estimates. That information did not make its way to Congress for six more months.
Mr. Foster said he had shared his cost estimates with Doug Badger, the president's special assistant for health policy, and with James C. Capretta, associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. But he said that Thomas A. Scully, who was then administrator of the Medicare program, directed him to withhold the information from Congress, citing orders from the White House in one instance.
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