The Democrats may feel they’ve been steamrolled by the GOP on the ginormous Medicare prescription-drug bill, but the Republicans are the ones who are truly lost.

What a stunning role reversal — well, it would be stunning if weren’t so damned predictable. Senate Democrats overwhelmingly vote against the biggest expansion of the welfare state in nearly 40 years, while the GOP rams it through and Dubya twists every arm to make sure it goes his way.

Supposedly it will cost $400 billion over 10 years, but that’s a vast understatement of the actual costs, as Doug Bandow points out:

Any legislator who takes fiscal responsibility seriously should be particularly concerned about the latter. Pegged at a ten-year cost of $395 billion, the real increase in the government’s presently unfunded liability will be several trillion dollars: Estimates ranged from $6 trillion for the House bill to $12 trillion for the Senate measure, with the compromise likely falling somewhere in between. The latter number is 40 percent of Medicare’s current projected future red ink.

Nor does anyone take the $395 billion figure seriously; if a private company offered that estimate, its officers would be headed for jail. For one thing, that number stops before the baby-boomer wave starts retiring, after which costs will explode. Leonard Burman of the Urban Institute projects the second decade’s costs will run $1 trillion, and even that figure, given current cost trends, “is likely to be an underestimate,” he says. But why should today’s elected officials worry? Many will be out of office when Medicare’s fiscal house collapses.

It’s OK, though. The Republicans stand for “freedom,” so a victory for them must be a victory for liberty. I should get that through my thick head already.

I keep mistakenly thinking that in the end principles don’t amount to much compared to the lure of political power. Silly me.

The only bright spot that could be found in any of this is that, along with the good economic news, whoever the Democratic presidential nominee is will have to lean heavily on foreign affairs in attacking Bush. Right now, that’s where he seems to be most vulnerable, and that’s where the Democratic nominee is most likely to have something of value to say.

It’s a long shot, perhaps, but what else have we got?