| Bush's Broken Promises
Miscellaneous Lies
Americorps
Aids
Funding
Conservation Trust
Fund
Deficits
National Debt
Energy Assistance
Education
Student Loans
All The President's Lies
Miscellaneous Obfuscations
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.
(Top)
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