Leave it to the wonks over at CQ Weekly to report on the real fact that President Bush doesn't want the American people to know: Medicare is much less fiscally sound than Social Security. In this week's issue, David Nather and Rebecca Adams have the story entitled "The Real Crisis Waits Its Turn":

Fifteen months ago, President Bush and Congress fixed Medicare, or at least that is what they told the public. Enacting the new prescription drug benefit and some modest measures to stimulate private competition was so exhausting that both parties declared victory and moved on. Bush and congressional Republicans are tackling Social Security and Medicaid this year.

The reality, though, is that Medicare has not been fixed. The program that 41 million senior citizens rely on for health care is in worse financial shape than Social Security, the retirement program Bush says he wants to rescue from a coming fiscal crunch. Far from trimming Medicare’s spending, the legislation that Congress passed in 2003 may have made the program better for seniors, but it piled on billions of dollars in new spending and trillions of dollars in long-term liabilities.

[...]

Medicare faces a larger long-term crisis than any other program in the social safety net, yet it is off the table for this year, and for reasons that speak volumes about the inability of the nation’s leaders to solve the biggest problems. Medicare’s fixes will be more painful than Social Security’s: not just tax increases or payment cuts, but possibly even a halt to certain kinds of care. The repairs will not appeal to younger voters, the way Republicans think Social Security private savings accounts will. The prospect of more changes to the program upsets the powerful health care industry, which is just getting used to the last ones. And a “sweetener” — the one time-honored trick that might make painful changes go down more easily — is no longer available. For Medicare, adding the drug benefit was the sweetener.

Indeed.