T-Paw blows question on Bush's unfunded prescription drug entitlement

ESQUIRE: Governor, you routinely refer to the president's health-care reform as a government takeover. If you had been president, would you have signed President Bush's Medicare Drug Benefit?

TP: Yes. A version of it. Medicare was started a long time ago, and medicine had changed, having gone from clinical practices and hospitalizations to treating more and more conditions with prescription medicines. So it makes sense to extend Medicare benefits to prescription medicines.

ESQUIRE: So that's a proper role of government? It was an unfunded half-trillion-dollar program. Okay. Do you think the Medicare Act of 1965 would have been consistent with your beliefs and something you would have signed had you been president? Or how about the Social Security Act? Is Social Security a proper role of government? How are those programs materially different from the health-care reform that has been the focus of the president's attention?

TP: Well, in 1965 I was only five years old. I think if you look at Medicare and Medicaid, the premise was that government needs to provide some assistance to people who aren't able to take care of themselves. I think we all share that goal, Republicans and Democrats. I don't think anybody's gonna go back now and say, Let's abolish, or reduce, Medicare and Medicaid. But as we confront the challenges and the responsibilities of our time — from here on — how do we serve more people or different people who are in need of financial assistance? Just forever having the government expand to address all of that seems unwise.

So I can't tell you what I would have thought in 1965. I can tell you I don't favor tearing down those programs, but I do think they can be reformed and improved.

On top of the existing $7 trillion accumulated deficit -- which translates into $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States -- this year’s current deficit is quickly approaching a half trillion dollars. Adding a new unfunded entitlement to a system that is already financially insolvent, is so grossly irresponsible that it ought to outrage every fiscal conservative.