The W administration has disappointed me yet again.

Boy, it's getting tougher and tougher to be a conservative these days.

I'm for lower taxes and smaller government, but this administration, while doing OK on the tax side, is really starting to freak me out when it comes to spending.

Smaller government?

Au contraire.

First we got Homeland Security, an enormous expansion of government.

Now we get the Medicare prescription drug benefit, an enormous entitlement.

And this when we are looking at a single-year deficit of $500 million next year.

I just don't get it. Well, I take that back. I do get it and that's what bothers me.

On the face of it, the administration would have us believe they are out to help people with this prescription drug benefit.

You know, senior citizens forced into poverty because of the cost of their medications.

But I think it's more about looking good to senior citizens and winning votes than it is about helping people.

And while there certainly are some good ideas in the new Medicare bill - experimental competition with private health plans, means testing, higher premiums for the wealthy, health savings accounts - taken as a whole it truly is outrageous.

When you think about it, it calls for a huge new entitlement that threatens to bankrupt Medicare and wreak havoc on the economy to fix a problem that really doesn't exist in the first place.

Certainly there are legions of Medicare recipients who would dearly love for somebody else to pay for part of their prescriptions. But in lots of cases the people paying are only half as wealthy as the recipients.

The legislation seems to ignore the well-documented evidence that only a tiny percentage of Medicare recipients are truly in dire need and makes the handout available to everybody.

And frankly, the linchpin of the bill, the prescription drug benefit, seems a little goofy.

A senior with $2,500 in annual medication costs could save $1,080 by participating in the optional program, which will be run by private firms. That's after a $420 annual premium and $250 deductible.

But because of cost-control efforts by proponents, there will be no coverage for charges ranging from $2,250 to $5,100 a year.

And those with small annual bills - less than $810 - could end up losing money through their participation.

The cost will range from $400 to $800 billion over the next 10 years, depending on who's doing the estimating. (That, in and of itself, should throw up some red flags. I mean, whose estimate do you believe? And isn't an accurate estimate important?)

I really believe there is the potential for disaster in this legislation.

I simply am not sure Medicare, already teetering on the verge of insolvency as more and more baby boomers hit retirement age, can shoulder the load.

I'm afraid the government is going to have to go further into debt or raise taxes beyond belief to fund it.

In any case, it risks starving economic growth or bankrupting Medicare, or both.

And the bizarre thing is that the Democrats who were opposing it wanted more. Their bill would have been even worse.

We are all part of the problem here. It seems we have politicians believing the only way we will vote for them is if they hand over some ridiculously expensive entitlement.

Politicians believe - and rightly so - that we want something for nothing.

Politicians also believe - and rightly so - that we don't seem to care who in the future will end upÊhaving to pay for the overindulgence of our government. [[In-content Ad]]