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Out of Touch and Almost Out of Office. Bush and the State of the Union |
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Not surprisingly last night, President Bush painted a far prettier picture of the state of the union than most American families see and live everyday. From the economy to trade to health care to war, the words of Bush’s last State of the Union address collided with reality. Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
President Bush’s rose-colored glasses need a new prescription—he is blind to Americans’ day-to-day economic realities and the truth about our nation’s standing in the world.
How out of touch is Bush? A recent Harris Poll finds that 81 percent of Americans think the current state of the country is fair or poor while just 19 percent think it is excellent or good.
In his speech, Bush admitted that the economy “going though period of uncertainty” and that there is “real concern.” Yet he claimed great economic progress during his time in the White House, citing job and wage growth. However, analysis and fact check of Bush’s speech by the Drum Major Institute (DMI) found for most of America’s current and aspiring middle class,
there was no economic recovery during the Bush years: even during the economic peak stagnant wages barely kept up with the rising cost of living.
Says Sweeney:
The fact is that under President Bush, our nation’s economy has not been working for working people for years. As our nation worries about a recession, for the first time ever, working people still haven’t recovered from the last one. Since 2000, the median household lost $1,000 in inflation-adjusted income. Families are losing good jobs, homes and hope in the future.
Job creation? In each year of the Bush administration, only 369,000 jobs were created nationally in the private sector, compared with 1.76 million jobs per year in the 1990s.
Higher wages? Median household income (in inflation adjusted dollars) in the United States has dropped from $49,163 in 2001 to $48,023 today. The DMI analysis notes that in the past 12 months, real hourly and weekly wages have dropped by 1 percent.
Since Bush took office, the number of Americans in poverty has jumped from 31.6 million in 2001 to 36.5 million today. Yet as Huffington Post political columnist Sam Stein points out:
The word “poverty” was mentioned just once in the president’s address, and that was in the context of global humanitarian assistance.
Bush claimed “we share a common goal: “making health care more affordable and accessible to all Americans.” Keep in mind this is the same president who twice vetoed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that covers millions of American children.
Bush’s health care goals rely on the same private health insurance and pharmaceutical giants that have fueled the health care cost crisis and left more than 47 million Americans without health insurance—9 million more than when Bush took office. Bush proposals threaten employer-provided coverage that millions of American workers depend on. (Click here to fill out the AFL-CIO/Working American 2008 Health Care for America Survey and tell your health care story. You can vote here on the stories you think make the most impact.)
A National Public Radio (NPR) fact check on the speech says Bush plans would end the current tax exemption for employer-provided health coverage and force workers to pay taxes on the cost of the coverage. Also according to NPR:
Because the majority of the uninsured have low enough incomes that they pay little or no taxes, a tax deduction will not make insurance that much more affordable.
DMI notes that Bush’s proposals share three common themes:
(1) they shift the cost and risk of health care from employers and the public sector on to individuals and families; (2) they threaten the existing health benefits middle-class Americans get through their jobs; and (3) they pressure ordinary Americans to second-guess their doctors’ advice and to cut back on needed care. Together, these ‘market-based’ proposals favor the wealthy and healthy to the detriment of the sick, poor, and anyone who suffers a medical emergency.
Bush used his speech to again push for a free trade agreement with Colombia, a nation with a long record of human and workers’ rights abuses and the most dangerous and deadly country in the world for trade unionists. Says Sweeney:
He is blind to the gross human rights abuses against workers in Colombia and the continuing violence and threats that union activists face. Passing the FTA will not make life safer for Colombian working people, but it will reward a government that has done too little to protect them and bring their killers to justice.
Trade issues that Bush ignored last night included the loss of millions of good jobs because of his flawed trade policies; the massive and growing trade imbalance with China and our nation’s growing international debt and trade deficit. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) told The Wall Street Journal that passing Bush’s free trade schemes would be like
throwing gasoline on a fire. Job-killing trade agreements shut down our factories, hurt our communities and send toxic toys into our children’s bedrooms,
Sweeney said that Bush’s failure to mention trade with China
is not too surprising—because in seven years in office, he has simply failed to put forward a viable economic strategy to confront the Chinese government’s unfair trade policies and repression of workers’ rights.
Bush also threatened that any attempts to improve the economic stimulus package proposed by the Bush White House and congressional leaders last week, could “derail” the bill. But, says Sweeney, improvements need be made in the stimulus package because Bush
chipped out the unemployment benefits of the economic stimulus package, along with food stamps and much needed state fiscal relief.
The DMI analysis says the provisions Bush insisted on including in the stimulus package
promote ideological pet projects that drain needed resources. Although the temporary tax rebates are likely to be successful at stimulating consumer demand, research shows that tax cuts for business investment are not a very effective means of economic stimulus. A host of other policies, including extending and expanding unemployment benefits, are priorities that far from ‘loading up the bill’ would have provided much greater ‘bang for the buck’ and done far more to help those in need than the business tax cuts.
Bush claimed that progress was being made in war in Iraq, “results few of us could have imagined just one year ago.” But in response, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) had a much different take on the war.
In just a few weeks, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. Five years later, the political and economic situation on the ground has changed little, while the rest of the world, including the United States, has changed significantly. The president continues to ignore the bigger picture in Iraq.
Bush started out his State of the Union address last night by saying that in the past seven years,
our country has been tested in ways none of us could have imagined.
He finally got something right.
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“The strength — the secret of our strength, the miracle of America, is that our greatness lies not in our government, but in the spirit and determination of our people. (Applause.) When the Federal Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787, our nation was bound by the Articles of Confederation, which began with the words, “We the undersigned delegates.” When Gouverneur Morris was asked to draft a preamble to our new Constitution, he offered an important revision and opened with words that changed the course of our nation and the history of the world: “We the people.”
By trusting the people, our Founders wagered that a great and noble nation could be built on the liberty that resides in the hearts of all men and women. By trusting the people, succeeding generations transformed our fragile young democracy into the most powerful nation on Earth and a beacon of hope for millions. And so long as we continue to trust the people, our nation will prosper, our liberty will be secure, and the state of our Union will remain strong”.
Sounded good, but what a crock of garbage coming from the perpetual liar in chief. He has no trust in the people, it is his way or the highway thinking that has brought this great nation down.
In 2006, the majority of voters in the US voted a new Congress expecting change, yet the song remains the same.
I am glad this was his last SOTU speech. Too bad he wasn;t impeached, and save the networks 2 hours of BS from the worst president in history.
I was amazed how someone who has given us a 8 or 9 trillion dollar debt could even ask the american people to continue to agree with his policys. I think we need a little bump in the economy but we also need to extend the unemployment benefits for workers who have lost their jobs to other country’s. How about those poor people who will be left out of the so called Stimulus Package. I would like to see President Bush not only loose his job in 2008 but donate his $400,000 salary to those 200,000 veterans sleeping out on the street or to those young people who have been wounded and to the families of those whose sons and daughters gave their life for our country. Go back to Texas Mr. Bush, you are a loser.
I actually think Bush means well. It is just that he is incredibly naive or devastatingly stupid. He has no idea of what is actually going on regarding the welfare of the American people; he is only concerned with the welfare of foreign countries’ citizens.
The man is delusional; he’ll read any speech prepared for him that’s ok’d first by Cheney. It’s going to take a dedicated, humble and progressive leadership in America many generations to recover from this outlandishly corrupt and incompetent administration. Any working man who votes Republican in November is voting against himself and his family.
to Cynical:
Bush means well?
He spends his 8 yrs. in an illegal war so he doesn’t have to deal with domestic issues! Millions of Americans are starving, without health care, without jobs, losing their homes and he means well? the country is in debt that our next president wil inherit. He will go home to Crawford, with that smirk and not a care about the condition he left America,….and the war go on…..
He has been in bed with corporate America and insists his tax cuts to the wealthy improved the economy, look at what is going on. We are this close to a recession, something Republicans say Clinton left Bush to inherit. Gas prices are rising and lowering and rising, Bush is the worst president ever. Of course he really wasn’t elected, he was selected.
President Bush’s pushing for the FTA’s with Colombia and Korea is blatant disregard for the workers of the USA and support of a country who governmental ruling rich and elite have little regard for their workers. My home state of Michigan has suffered the loss of over 250,000 jobs under Bush’s FTA agreements. In the first 6 months of this year 75,000 people will loose their unemployment benefits there. The unemployment rate is one of the highest in the nation at 7.5% and Bush wants to pass an FTA with Korea that gives benefits to their car manufacturers over Americans.
Bush spoke of the FTA’s creating a market of 100 million customers for US products. Just consider that 46 million of them live in Colombia. But over 50% of the population lives below the poverty level, so they are not customers. The percentage of people working for minimum wage is far greater in Colombia then in the USA. Many municipal employees get just the minimum of $249 a month. On that money they will not be able to afford American goods. The disparity between rich and poor in the country is one of the largest in the world. So when all is said and done, basically the 20% who control well over half of the wealth of the country will be purchasing American products. And with the massive money they make (many related to the drug business) they already purchase what American goods they want. Basically the FTA with Colombia would just allow American manufacturers to take advantage of slave labor and cause a loss of more American jobs. One needs to look no further than Owens-Illinois who closed their Godfrey plants moving the production to a company in Colombia that they own 57% of.
Impunity from the law as mentioned by many Democrats against the FTA does not apply to just the murdered union members. Massive corruption in the Colombian government (something documented in a State Department report) causes safety violations in factories to not be corrected. And with government contracts instead of the work getting done correctly employing many workers and proper materials, it is sub-standard with sometimes as much as 80% going to the pockets of politicians.
Bush tried to convince America that passing the FTA would defeat “false populism” referring to President Chavez of Venezuela. But consider that the news in Colombia states that President Uribe enjoys a 70% popularity rating. Also consider that in the last elections the people in Bogota (1/6 the population of the country) elected the candidate that Uribe told them to specifically not vote for. Consider also that the news media reporting the high approval rating of Uribe is owned by the family of the Vice-president of the country. In reality, not passing the FTA would defeat, “false populism”