Carol: You appear to be a good researcher. Sometime when you have nothing to do, take a look at the track record of the Congressional Budget Office. Compare it's projections for new programs, regardless of administration, and see how close their projections for costs relate to actual figures incurred. You can save some time by merely researching Wall Street Journal editorials for the past two weeks or so. They presented a graph of projections versus actual cost for several programs including Medicare. As I recall, Medicare was projected to cost 10 Billion over ten years or so. It actually cost some ten times that amount.

I know you abhor the WSJ so pick another source and see what you come up with.

They even were wrong when they projected the cost of the prescription drug program for Seniors passed by the Bush administration. The program didn't cost anything near that projected by the CBO.

DougR