Again, this is penny-ante stuff in the context of a $2.4 trillion federal budget. But the fact that Tommy Thompson seems to have a slush fund out of which he can draw $25 million at will for a redundant (not to mention constitutionally unauthorized) project does not inspire confidence in this administration's ability to fulfill the president's promise to cut the deficit in half by 2009.

The fiscal recklessness carries over to bigger-ticket items. Do multimillionaire retirees need help paying for their prescription drugs? It didn't matter. The president was determined to give it to them, and two months after his wish was realized, the official price tag for the first decade was already a third higher than we'd been told.

The administration doesn't even want to talk about the second decade, when the cost of the Medicare drug benefit could hit $2 trillion. A similar short-term focus is apparent in Bush's fiscal plan, which omits $50 billion or so for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, does not take account of expected changes in the alternative minimum tax, and dares not look past 2009, when deficits will balloon again even if Congress implements the president's proposal as is.

Clearly, that's not going to happen. Already Bush has felt compelled to threaten a veto -- his very first -- in response to a highway bill that would spend more than he proposed. The bill's supporters say the additional spending is necessary to boost the economy.

Where did they get the idea that the aim of transportation spending is not to build necessary infrastructure but to create make-work jobs? According to The New York Times, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta called the administration's spending proposal "an employment bill, with each $1 billion spent on highways generating 47,500 jobs."

I'm not worried that Congress won't follow the Bush administration's fiscal example. I'm worried that it will.