State of the Union...

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So, what do think are the most pressing challenges facing the world's most powerful ecconomy today? If you could slip a couple of sentences or paragraph's into the teleprompter tonight what might they say....

Just curious.

Member

Radio host Neal Boortz had some good ones. I completely agree about govt. spending and reforming SS:

Member

Another take on what Bush should discuss during State of the Union address.. sorry more than a couple of sentences.
Most of these were issues in 2004 and still are.

CLAIM: "If we failed to act in Iraq the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day."

STATUS: "The 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capability and, for the most part, Saddam Hussein did not try to rebuild it, according to an extensive report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq," Charles Duelfer. [Washington Post, 10/7/04]

STATUS: The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. A senior intelligence official said Duelfer's findings will stand as the Iraq Survey Group's final conclusions and will be published this spring. [Washington Post, 1/12/05]

CLAIM: "America is committed to keep dangerous weapons from dangerous regimes."

STATUS: Under Bush's watch, North Korea's nuclear arsenal is thought to have quadrupled. Charles Pritchard, formerly Colin Powell's top official dealing with North Korea, has warned for months that "the White House lacks an effective strategy to dissuade North Korea from building up its nuclear arms." And, according to Pritchard, the situation has deteriorated because "the administration has neither offered much of a carrot nor wielded a stick." [New York Times, 5/7/04]

STATUS: According to a recent Harvard University report titled "Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action," "less fissile materials were secured in the two years after Sept. 11 than in the two years before." [Harvard Report, 5/04]

CLAIM: "The American economy is growing stronger."

STATUS: Job growth over the last 18 months has fallen short of administration predictions by 1,703,000—more than one-third fewer jobs than the president's Council of Economic Advisers said would be created even without the tax cuts. [EPI, 1/05]

STATUS: The most recent data from the Census Bureau show that the average income for middle-class households has dropped by $1,525 since its peak in 2000. [American Progress, 10/29/04]

CLAIM: "The tax relief you passed is working."

STATUS: The tax cuts have drained resources from domestic programs utilized by middle-class families. The Bush tax cuts for the richest 1 percent of Americans this year alone will cost $148 billion. "That is twice as much as the government will spend on job training, $6.2 billion; college Pell grants, $12 billion; public housing, $6.3 billion; low-income rental subsidies, $19 billion; child care, $4.8 billion; insurance for low-income children, $5.2 billion; low-income energy assistance, $1.8 billion; meals for shut-ins, $180 million; and welfare, $16.9 billion." [UFE, 4/7/04; Detroit News, 9/29/04]

STATUS: Between June 2003 and December 2004, the economy produced 3.1 million fewer jobs than the administration predicted would result after the last round of tax cuts. [Jobwatch.org, 1/7/05]

CLAIM: "We are providing more funding for our schools."

STATUS: "The bipartisan National Governors Association voted unanimously in 2003 to name No Child Left Behind an 'unfunded mandate,' which means the federal government isn't supplying the money needed to make the law work." [Bloomberg, 1/12/05]

STATUS: For 2005, the administration has requested $9.4 billion less for No Child Left Behind than the bill supposedly ensures. Title I, the program to help poor kids, is underfunded by $7.2 billion, leaving nearly 5 million kids without academic help. [Star-Telegram, 2/26/04]

PROMISE: "I will increase support for community colleges."

STATUS: Last year, the Bush administration proposed cutting the largest direct aid initiative to community colleges, the Perkins program for technical and vocational training, from $1.3 billion to about $1 billion. Congress had to step in to save the funding. [Cincinnati Enquirer, 1/26/04]

PROMISE: "Millions of Americans will be able to save money tax-free for their medical expenses in a health savings account."

STATUS: "Approximately 440,000 Americans signed up for health savings accounts between December 2003 and September 2005.... [A] study released by the Commonwealth Fund concludes that people who used high-deductible insurance plans were more likely than those with traditional medical coverage to have difficulty paying their medical bills." [Fox News, 1/27/05]

STATUS: HSAs will likely drive up the annual deductibles paid by workers. Because of their adverse effects on employer-based coverage, HSAs could swell the ranks of the uninsured. [USA Today, 5/25/04; CBPP, 5/10/04]

PROMISE: "I will defend the sanctity of marriage."

STATUS: Efforts to pass a constitutional amendment that would effectively ban same-sex marriage failed in July. [CNN, 7/16/04]

PROMISE: "I will double the federal funding for abstinence programs."

STATUS: Bush more or less made good on this promise, requesting $270 million for abstinence-only programs in 2005. Studies have showed the well-funded programs "teach adolescents false and misleading information about reproductive health" and fail to increase abstinence. [Waxman Report, 12/2/04; WP, 12/2/04; Advocates for Youth, 9/27/04]

PROPOSAL: "I propose series of measurements called Jobs for the 21st Century."

This initiative included increasing Pell grants…

STATUS: For three straight years, Bush has proposed freezing or cutting Pell grants. [Ed Workforce, 2/2/04]

STATUS: A spending bill the White House helped push through Congress last November allows the U.S. Department of Education to proceed with a new eligibility formula that will remove an estimated 90,000 qualified students from eligibility for Pell Grants. [St. Petersburg Times, 12/24/04]

…And Community-Based Job Training Grants

STATUS: Bush's 2005 budget proposed cutting job training and vocational education by 10 percent – that's $656 million – from what Congress pledged to those programs in 2002. [Workforce Alliance, 4/5/04]

STATUS: Two federal banking agencies headed by Bush appointees are trying to change laws that would cripple the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a civil rights law prohibiting discrimination by banks against low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. [AP, 10/21/04]

PROPOSAL: "Pass legislation to modernize our electricity system, promote conservation, and make America less dependent on foreign energy sources."

STATUS: The energy bill proposed by President Bush would allow power companies "to set up multiple subsidiaries and blur their financial reports, leading to market manipulation similar to that seen during the California energy crisis." [Sierra Club]

STATUS: The president's bill allows "automakers to sell more gas guzzlers by failing to raise fuel economy standards" and "fails to increase our use of clean, renewable energy by excluding a Renewable Energy Standard (RES) that would ensure that more of our electricity comes from clean, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power." [Sierra Club]

STATUS: President Bush's primary plan to reduce foreign energy dependence, drilling the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, would not reduce the price of oil and would produce only 3.2 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil (the United States consumes about 7 billion barrels each year). [Sierra Club]

PROPOSAL: "Reform in immigration laws and a new temporary worker program."

STATUS: President Bush blocked the Dream Act, which had bipartisan support and would have enabled 65,000 high school graduates who are undocumented immigrants to become citizens if they completed college, and allowed them to pay the in-state rate for tuition at public colleges and universities. [Washington Post, 7/21/04]

PROPOSAL: "New funding to continue our aggressive, community based strategy to reduce demand for illegal drugs."

STATUS: In his FY04 budget, the president proposed cutting funding for the Safe and Drug Free Schools program by $25 million. The 2005 budget proposes freezing funding for the program. [House Committee on Education and Workforce, 2/2/04]

PROPOSAL: "Grassroots campaign to help inform families about medical risks of STD's."

STATUS: Abstinence-only programs lavishly funded by the president have undermined this goal, increasing unsafe sex and encouraging hostility to contraception. [Advocates for Youth, 9/27/04]

Adjunct

Man that moment when W mentioned the family of the Marine Sgt and then the Iraqi woman hugged the mother was very moving. I was full of tears seeing that moment.

That moment spoke volumes.

Overall not a bad speech. He has had better SofU speeches but as far as impact this one made a huge impression on me.

Like him or not, no one can deny that moment with the Iraqi woman and soliders mom was not moving.

Member

Booing during the SOU address?!?!

It is amazing how low the left will go.

Sigh.

Master of Prissface

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My thoughts on the speech…

Just another media spectacle. These televised public addresses are really no more or no less than a well orchestrated media circus designed to distract the public from the fact that their government isn’t really representing their best interests. Am I saying anything revolutionary here? Unfortunately not.

What is the current state of the union in most western democracies? The average work week is getting longer, wage increases in the middle class are barely keeping up with inflation, consumable resources are being depleted at a faster and faster rate, crime rates are constantly increasing in urban centers and the cost of education is making it more and more out of reach to the common person. I don’t have time to find sources for everything I’ve just mentioned but if I can find the time I will quote some articles. These are major social problems that are not improving and have not been improving for a long time.

Can you blame the Republican party – not really. Can you blame the Democratic party – not really. We’ve all let our governments veer further and further away from representing the needs of the people they represent while we are busy watching reruns of Giligan’s Island and being convinced on the commercial breaks that we’d be happy if we drove a German sports car and lived in an impeccably decorated 5000 sq.ft home.

We need to become a society less influenced by booing Democrats and carefully staged displays of affection and start being more influenced by the realities of the unsustainable social order that we are all living in and voting for.

My thoughts after the speech – a waste of time. Then I turned off the TV.

Pyromaniac

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Pyromaniac

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Personally Steve, I think a lot of what you just spouted is "dead-on balls accurate", especially in the paragraph that robp bolded.

This is fun! Very Happy

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State of the Union...

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