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quote:Originally posted by rocky:
Here are a broken promises by George Bush and the Republicans:
WHITE HOUSE CLAIM: Leading the Fight Against HIV/AIDS: In his State of the Union Address in 2003, President Bush announced the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief an historic 5-year, $15 billion effort to turn the tide of the AIDS pandemic. Only 4 months later, Congress passed legislation authorizing the Emergency Plan based on the President's proposal.
FACT: President Bush's budget introduced four days after his State of the Union only sought $2 billion for the year" for AIDS - 33% less than the $3 billion needed to keep his $15-billion-over-5-year pledge. When the Senate voted to increase the President's budget, the White House "repeated its strong opposition to any funding beyond $2 billion." (here)
WHITE HOUSE CLAIM: "The U.S. Congress passed the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act which authorizes $3.47 billion for Afghanistan over fiscal years 2003-2006."
FACT: While President Bush declared a "Marshall Plan for Afghanistan" in April 2002, the nation has "received only a fraction of the $10.2 billion" that the World Bank said was necessary over the first five years. (pdf here)
Bush Guts AmeriCorps
Breaking the promises he made to encourage volunteerism in America, President Bush made huge cuts to the AmeriCorps program. AmeriCorps, created by President Bill Clinton, organizes thousands of volunteers across the country to work in education, public safety, health, and the environment.
AmeriCorps is cutting the largest group of volunteers, those from the "state competitive programs," from 16,000 to 3,000. AmeriCorps director Rosie Mauk described the cuts as "devastating to our program."
The cuts stand in stark contrast to President Bush's repeated promises to expand programs that help Americans volunteer his time. He proposed expanding AmeriCorps from 50,000 to 75,000 volunteers, and then gutted the program.
In his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush said, "My call tonight is for every American to commit at least two years -- 4,000 hours over the rest of your lifetime -- to the service of your neighbors and your nation. Many are already serving, and I thank you."
And in his 2003 State of the Union, Bush reiterated his promise: "Tonight I ask Congress and the American people to focus the spirit of service and the resources of government on the needs of some of our most vulnerable citizens -- boys and girls trying to grow up without guidance and attention, and children who have to go through a prison gate to be hugged by their mom or dad."
But in spite of those promises, Bush's top fiscal priority has been massive, irresponsible tax cuts that have created record budget deficits. Those deficits have forced cuts like those to AmeriCorps and other vital programs working families rely upon. [Washington Post, 6/17/03; Boston Globe editorial, 6/14/03; Bush State of the Union addresses, 1/28/03, 1/29/02] (here) Dave Eggers' excellent article here)
Bush Guts Aids Funding
The House approved a measure July 24 that would bring spending on global AIDS to $2 billion in 2004, rejecting complaints by Democrats who noted that the amount was $1 billion short of what was promised in a bill President Bush signed in May.
Democrats were not permitted to introduce an emergency measure that would have increased AIDS spending by $1 billion. Instead, they offered two amendments that would have increased financing to combat the epidemic by a total of $375 million. Both were defeated. (here)
Bush Promises Full Funding, Then Allows Funding Cut in Half for Conservation Trust Fund
Environmental Carnage NY Times
Three years ago, in a rare moment of harmony, a coalition of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans in Congress approved what it hoped would be a guaranteed stream of revenue for a range of environmental purposes. The Conservation Trust Fund, as it was called, would increase spending in increments over six years, from $1.6 billion in 2001 to $2.4 billion in 2006, and would be used, among other things, to buy open space, protect endangered species and restore damaged coastlines and estuaries. No new taxes would be needed — the program would rely on the same offshore oil royalties that had long underwritten federal land acquisition.
President Bill Clinton eagerly signed on to what was hailed as the most important conservation bill in years.
That was then. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives cut the program almost in half, to $1.2 billion from the $2.1 billion originally authorized for the 2004 fiscal year. The major land acquisition programs suffered most of the damage, in particular the venerable Land and Water Conservation Fund, which President Bush had grandly promised during his 2000 campaign to "fully fund" at $900 million. The House, in full nose-thumbing mode, cut that figure to a measly $198 million.
This massacre was largely the handiwork of a House subcommittee led by Charles Taylor of North Carolina and dominated by people who share his belief that far too much of the country is already in public hands. Democrats labored in vain to honor Congress's original promises and to defend the environment. They tried to block the administration from gutting a Clinton-era rule protecting 58 million acres of national forest from development. They tried to prevent state roads across pristine federal land. They tried to ban snowmobile use in Yellowstone, which the administration supports. In all these efforts they were no more successful than they were in their fight to replenish the trust fund.
One would at least have expected some annoyance from Mr. Bush at the contempt with which Mr. Taylor and the Republicans treated his campaign pledge on open space. So far, however, there has not been a murmur from the White House. (here)
Deficits
Promise
During a speech at Western Michigan University advocating tax cuts, Bush promised that his plan would not lead to deficits. "Tax relief is central to my plan to encourage economic growth, and we can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens," Bush promised. [Bush Remarks at Western Michigan University, 3/27/01 (here)]
Broken
In February 2002, Bush released his budget for fiscal year 2003, which included the first federal deficit since 1997. Bush's proposed budget would result in a $106 billion in deficit in FY 2002 and $80 billion in FY 2003. According to Bush administration estimates, the budget will not return to balance until FY 2005. Worse, an analysis of the Bush budget by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted the deficits between FY 2002 and 2005 would be $62 billion larger than White House figures. Current projections put the deficit at 500 billion.
[Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2003, Table S-1; Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2003, Historical Tables, Table 1.1; CBO, An Analysis of the President's Budgetary Proposals for 2003, Table 1, 3/6/02 and (here)]
National Debt
Promise
In March 2001, Bush said, "And after we fund important priorities in the ongoing operations of our Government, I believe we ought to pay down national debt. And so my budget pays down a record $2 trillion in debt over the next 10 years." [Bush Remarks to the American College of Cardiology, 3/21/01 here]
Broken (Debt clock here--scary!)
In December 2001, the Bush administration announced that it would be forced to ask Congress to increase the $5.95 trillion federal debt ceiling in order to avoid a breach. The Bush administration asked Congress to raise the debt limit by $750 billion. The debt ceiling has now been raised 984 billion to over 9 trillion. [Associated Press, 3/12/02; Washington Post, 12/4/01] (here)
Energy Assistance
Promise
During the presidential debates Bush outlined his energy strategy for the United States and made a commitment to fund Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps low-income Americans with their heating and cooling needs. "First and foremost, we got to make sure we fully fund LIHEAP, which is a way to help low-income folks, particularly here in the East, to pay for their high fuel bills," Bush said. [Presidential Debate in Boston, MA, 10/3/00 (here)]
Broken
In Bush's FY 2003 budget proposal, LIHEAP funding was reduced by $300 million, from $1.7 billion in FY 2002 to $1.4 billion, a decrease of 18 percent. According to the Bush administration, LIHEAP provides heating and cooling services to 4.3 million households each year, one-third of which include seniors and one-half of which include children under age 18. [HHS, FY2003 Budget in Brief; LIHEAP here]
The National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA) said the Bush LIHEAP cut comes at a time of increased need due to the recession. "The Administration proposal comes at precisely the wrong time," NEADA Executive Director Mark Wolfe said. "We should help poor people keep the heat on — especially during periods of high unemployment." [National Energy Assistance Directors' Association press release, 2/20/02 (here)]
Education
Promise
At the bill signing ceremony for the bipartisan "No Child Left Behind" education law, Bush pledged to increase funding for education. "And so the new role of the Federal Government is to set high standards, provide resources, hold people accountable, and liberate school districts to meet the standards. ... We're going to spend more on our schools, and we're going to spend it more wisely," Bush said. [Remarks on Signing the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, 1/8/02 here]
Broken
Bush Budget Cut $90 Million From "No Child Left Behind" Education Reform Law. According to an analysis of the Bush education budget by the House Education and the Workforce Committee, "Just one month ago, Congress and the President enacted the most important education reform legislation in 30 years. This bipartisan law is based on the principle that, with adequate resources, real reform is possible. But rather than building on this progress, the President's budget cuts initiatives in The No Child Left Behind Act by a net total of $90 million." [House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Democratic staff, The Bush Budget: Shortchanging School Reform, 2/12/02 here]
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who worked closely with Bush crafting the education reform law, criticized Bush's education budget. "This budget is a severe blow to our nation's schools. Just four weeks after the President signed the education bill into law, the Administration's budget cuts funding for it," Kennedy said. [Kennedy Press Release, 2/12/02 here: under "archive" and "press releases"--2/12/02]
Bush Education Budget Provided Smallest Funding Increase In Seven Years. President Bush proposed a 2.8 percent increase, roughly $1.4 billion, in education funding, the smallest increase in seven years. [House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Democratic staff, The Bush Budget: Shortchanging School Reform, 2/12/02 (here)
Student Loans
Promise
During the campaign, Bush said, "Every year, U.S. colleges attract the best and the brightest students from all over the world. I want to make sure that higher education is affordable and accessible to every American. And therein lie our greatest weaknesses: college tuition and the burden of student indebtedness. I am committed to helping families prepare for the cost of higher education." [Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Higher Education, 10/1/00 (here)]
Broken
The Bush administration proposed a plan to help ease the $100 billion federal budget shortfall by tapping $1.3 billion from a federal student loan program. OMB Director Mitch Daniels and GOP budget negotiators proposed preventing college students and graduates from consolidating their education loans at federally subsidized, fixed interest rates. The GOP plan would allow the consolidated loans to be offered only at variable rates, making the loans less appealing. [New York Times, 4/28/02 (here)]
Bush's Budget Proposed Eliminating State Scholarship Program — Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnerships. President Bush's 2002 budget proposed freezing funding for the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnerships (LEAP). His 2003 budget proposed eliminating the $67 million LEAP program, potentially affecting 1.2 million recipients. By leveraging state dollars, LEAP provided $171 million to low-income students last year. [Associated Press, 2/11/02; House Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, 2/5/02 here ]
All the President's Lies (here)
The Education President
"Every single child in America must be educated, I mean every child. ... There's nothing more prejudiced than not educating a child." -- George W. Bush, presidential debate versus Vice President Al Gore, Oct. 11, 2000
Bush got his "No Child Left Behind" bill passed, a bill that combined greater accountability and testing with increased funding. Then, in what has become a trademark, he pulled the plug on the funding.
In his 2003 budget, Bush proposed funding levels far below what the legislation called for, requesting only $22.1 billion of the $29.2 billion that Congress authorized. For the largest program, Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provides support to students in impoverished school districts, Bush asked for $11 billion out of the $18.5 billion authorized. His 2004 budget was more than $6 billion short of what Congress authorized. Furious, Ted Kennedy called Bush's proposal a "tin cup budget" that "may provide the resources to test our children, but not enough to teach them."
The result: States already strapped by record deficits are being held responsible for the extra testing and administration mandated by law -- but aren't getting any enough money to pay for it. So the number of public schools likely to be labeled "failing" by the law is estimated to be as high as 85 percent. Failing triggers sanctions, from technical assistance to requiring public-school choice to "reconstitution" -- that is, firing the entire school's staff and hiring a new one. And Bush isn't doing much to help. The New Hampshire School Administrators Association calculated that Bush's plan imposed at least $575 per student in new obligations. His budget, however, provides just $77 per student. It's a revolution in education policy, all right, but No Child Left Behind was simply a lie.
Healthy Skepticism
"Our goal is a system in which all Americans have got a good insurance policy, in which all Americans can choose their own doctor, in which seniors and low-income citizens receive the help they need. ... Our Medicare system is a binding commitment of a caring society. We must renew that commitment by providing the seniors of today and tomorrow with preventive care and the new medicines that are transforming health care in our country." -- George W. Bush, Medicare address, March 4, 2003
His program does none of this. What it does, simply, is to make dramatic cuts in the benefits for both the poor and the elderly.
Under the current Medicaid program, the federal government matches, on a sliding scale, the money that states put up. The state is required to cover some beneficiaries and services, although others are "optional." But "optional" services include many essential and life-saving treatments. And "optional" beneficiaries are rarely able to pay for private insurance. Bush's plan would turn Medicaid into a block grant, capping the federal contribution. Because states are already hard-pressed to keep up with Medicaid costs, services to the poor will simply disappear. As Leighton Ku, a health-policy analyst at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, notes, if under the current plan "you wanted to save that much money, you would have to specify which cuts to make, how to make the cuts. But it's much easier to cut the block grant because it's invisible; someone else has to make the decisions."
Bush claims to bring flexibility to Medicaid, and, in a sense, he's right. Under his plan states would have, as Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson put it, "carte blanche" in dealing with optional benefits and optional recipients. In other words, a mother making more than $9,000 a year would be fair game, as would an 8-year-old child who lives in a family with an income just above the poverty line, or a senior citizen or disabled person living on $7,200 a year.
And there's a whiff of coercion to the way in which the states are offered the option of switching to the Medicaid block grant. The states, which have already started cutting Medicaid on their own, are literally begging for federal fiscal assistance, and none is forthcoming. But if they consent to Bush's Medicaid plan, they'll get not only $3 billion in new federal money next year (a loan they would have to repay) but the ability to save money by trimming their Medicaid rolls. In other words, the president is making them an offer they can't refuse.
Bush relentlessly invokes a rhetoric of choice on Medicare. But the Republican proposal pushes seniors toward heavily managed private plans that offer partial drug benefits but limit choice of treatment and doctor. If you stayed with traditional Medicare (which does offer free choice of doctor and hospital), you'd only get minimal prescription-drug benefits. The plan would spend some $400 billion over 10 years, a sum that provides coverage worth 40 percent less than that enjoyed by members of Congress under the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program, which Bush repeatedly invokes as a model.
And while the plan allows House Republicans to avoid making politically unpopular cuts to Medicare, it requires Congress to cut $169 billion over 10 years from programs they oversee. So in the end, Medicare cuts may end up paying for prescription-drug benefits.
Despite rhetoric promising to increase other health spending, a close reading of the House Republican budget proposal shows $2.4 billion in cuts for programs -- such as the National Institutes of Health, Community Health Centers and the Ryan White AIDS program -- that Bush has pledged to support. Even though Bush vowed in his State of the Union address to spend $15 billion over the next five years to provide AIDS relief to Africa, much of that money won't be available until at least 2006. [See Garance Franke-Ruta, "The Fakeout," TAP, April 2003.]
A Paler Shade of Green
"Clear Skies legislation, when passed by Congress, will significantly reduce smog and mercury emissions, as well as stop acid rain. It will put more money directly into programs to reduce pollution, so as to meet firm national air-quality goals. ..." -- George W. Bush, Earth Day speech, April 22, 2002
Actually, the Clear Skies law doesn't do any of this. The act, in fact, delays required emission cuts by as much as 10 years, usurps the states' power to address interstate pollution problems and allows outdated industrial facilities to skirt costly pollution-control upgrades. The Environmental Protection Agency ensured that few people would notice this last regulation by announcing the change on the Friday before Thanksgiving and publishing it in the Federal Register on New Year's Eve. Still, nine northeastern states immediately filed suit against the administration; their case is pending.
Meanwhile, Bush's commitment to clean water is just as murky. Despite saying last October that he wanted to "renew our commitment" to building on the Clean Water Act, he's instead decided to "update" it by removing protections for "isolated" waters and weakening sewage-overflow rules, which could significantly increase the potential for waterborne illnesses.
It's hardly surprising to learn that big business is behind a lot of these changes. The Washington Post recounted a meeting between Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator John Graham and industry lobbyists during which the latter were encouraged to identify particularly onerous rules -- and ultimately created a regulatory "hit list." "There is a stealth campaign that's going on behind closed doors to twist the anti-regulatory process into a pretzel so that the public will be unaware that they are bottling up these protections," says Wesley Warren, the National Resources Defense Council's senior fellow for environmental economics. A good chunk of the 57-item list fell under the EPA's jurisdiction. One by one these rules have been submitted to OIRA under the Paperwork Reduction Act for cost-benefit analysis, a regulatory accounting technique that often ends up justifying watered-down rules.
Even as former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman announced that global warming is a "real phenomenon," Bush refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. His decision weakened the treaty's effectiveness because the United States produces 25 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions.
The former Texas oilman, who made one environmental promise after another on the campaign trail, has slashed the EPA's budget by half a billion dollars over two years, cut 100 employees and rolled back regulations on a near-weekly basis. "There has never been anything to compare this to," says Greg Wetstone, director of advocacy at the National Resources Defense Council. "Even in the days of Reagan, there was never an administration so willfully and almost obsessively concerned with finding ways to really undermine the environmental infrastructure."
Although she said the administration was working to put in place a standard to "dramatically reduce" levels of arsenic in drinking water, Whitman later tried to lower the existing regulation, saying that even the 10-part-per-billion federal benchmark was too tough. The EPA rolled back the standard until a report warning of health risks (and public outcry) forced the agency to reinstate the old limit.
Here's another classic Bush whopper. In his State of the Union address, the president proposed $1.2 billion in research funding to develop hydrogen-powered cars, in part to make the United States less reliant on foreign oil. What he didn't say is that the technology and infrastructure needed to mass produce such cars won't be available until at least 2020. If Bush truly cared about immediate relief, he might start by acknowledging existing hybrid vehicles or supporting more stringent Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards for light trucks and SUVs. Neither is likely to be part of a Republican energy package this year.
"There is an absolute hostility toward any positive strengthening of environmental law," says Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. "It is a wholesale turning over to corporate America the governing of this country." (here)
Bush Pushes Plan to Curb Medicare Appeals
New York Times (here)
The Bush administration says it is planning major changes in the Medicare program that would make it more difficult for beneficiaries to appeal the denial of benefits like home health care and skilled nursing home care.
In thousands of recent cases, federal judges have ruled that frail elderly people with severe illnesses were improperly denied coverage for such services.
In the last year, Medicare beneficiaries and the providers who treated them won more than half the cases — 39,796 of the 77,388 Medicare cases decided by administrative law judges. In the last five years, claimants prevailed in 186,300 cases, for a success rate of 53 percent.
Under federal law, the judges are independent, impartial adjudicators who hold hearings and make decisions based on the facts. They must follow the Medicare law and rules, but are insulated from political pressures and sudden shifts in policy made by presidential appointees.
President Bush is proposing both legislation and rules that would limit the judges' independence and could replace them in many cases.
The administration's draft legislation says, "The secretary of health and human services may use alternate mechanisms in lieu of administrative law judge review" to resolve disputes over Medicare coverage.
quote:This thread is about the broken promises of your boy genius, the Village Idiot of Kenya. If you want to talk about your BDS, start another thread.
quote:Originally posted by rocky:quote:This thread is about the broken promises of your boy genius, the Village Idiot of Kenya. If you want to talk about your BDS, start another thread.
WHAT???? Have you ever heard of a "response"? mad.bum what a fitting screenname! Are you in any You Tube videos I have posted of tea party rallies?
quote:Originally posted by rocky:
Typical teabag ignorance, This thread touted the broken promises of the current president who do you want me to use Grover Cleveland? Bush was the LAST president! SHEESH!
quote:Sez juan:
So far, OBama has not gotten us into any more senseless, pointless, ceaseless military conflicts.
quote:Originally posted by CageTheElephant:quote:Sez juan:
So far, OBama has not gotten us into any more senseless, pointless, ceaseless military conflicts.
Hel l! Where would he get the money from? He's already spent up to 2075.
And the Unemployed MILLIONS certainly aren't adding to the "fund".
quote:Originally posted by mad.bum:
I notice that none of our resident libs have had the stones to reply protest on contradict these cold hard facts. Color me shocked!
