Medicare plan will create record deficit

? 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 by spending and budget deficits that they say have grown too high on Bush’s watch.

“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 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 were “meaningless.”

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.