President Bush’s legacy has received renewed attention as the result of the opening of his presidential library. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin uses a new poll showing Bush’s approval rating creeping up to 47 percent as a jumping off point for a full-throated defense of his time in office. This part jumped out at me: “He is responsible for one of the most popular and fiscally sober entitlement plans, Medicare Part D. He did not foist a grandiose unpopular and exorbitant program like Obamacare on the public.”

Saying that Medicare Part D is a “fiscally sober entitlement plan” is sort of like saying that somebody is quite temperate — for a heroine addict. In 2011, according to the Medicare Trustees, the federal government spent $53 billion on prescription drug subsidies through the program. None of that is paid for either through a revenue stream or cuts to existing government programs. However inadvisable or difficult to implement, Obamacare did include tax hikes and cuts to projected Medicare spending to pay for its new expenditures. With Medicare Part D, Bush didn’t even pretend that the law paid for itself on paper.