Medicare overhaul leaps over estimate

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's new budget projects the Medicare overhaul he just signed will be one-third more costly than estimated and this year's federal deficit will surge past a half trillion dollars for the first time, administration and congressional officials said Thursday.

The White House will estimate the cost of creating prescription drug benefits and revamping the mammoth health-care program for the elderly and disabled at $534 billion for the decade that ends in 2013, the officials said. The number will be in the 2005 budget Bush proposes Monday.

While muscling the Medicare package through Congress in November, Bush and Republican leaders won pivotal votes by reassuring conservatives that the cost over that period would track the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's estimate of $395 billion. The measure passed both chambers narrowly, giving the president one of his top legislative triumphs since taking office.

The new figures represent the first time the White House has released its projections of the bill's costs. They could deepen an election-year wedge between the White House and conservative Republicans upset over spending and budget deficits that they say have grown too high on Bush's watch.

The numbers raise questions about whether administration officials revealed everything they knew before the vote on Medicare, some conservatives complained privately. Bush signed the bill Dec. 8.

"No one vote has caused me more angst in my short political career," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas. "I hope this will embolden conservatives and others" to control spending.

Hensarling was among several conservatives who voted for the measure after being told by Bush, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and others that the costs should fall within the Congressional Budget Office estimate.

Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., a conservative who voted against the bill, said he never believed the $395 billion cost estimate because such long-term forecasts are "meaningless."

The White House is reluctant to antagonize conservatives, the base of the GOP, in an election year. Such internal party divisions could make it harder to push legislation through Congress, which Republicans control by narrow margins.

Nearly everyone expects the cost of the Medicare bill to increase over the years, as the huge baby boom generation retires and medical costs grow. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, director of the Congressional Budget Office, has said the measure's costs in its second decade could exceed $1.5 trillion.

Administration officials said their Medicare cost estimate was not ready until now. Bush included a less detailed 10-year, $400 billion estimate for the bill's price tag in his budget last February.

White House spokesman Trent Duffy and other administration officials said the estimating difference with the Congressional Budget Office was understandable and relatively close, considering the millions of beneficiaries, hundreds of billions of dollars and time period involved.

"The president made a commitment to seniors and he kept it, and part of that was providing prescription drug coverage," Duffy said. "The president is committed to making sure cost controls continue in Medicare."