Bush’s final “State of the Union” address
by Srdja http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2697
Mr. Bush’s last State of the Union address last Monday was the most forgettable of the lot. A tax cut here, an education program there, a few healthcare benefits here and some global warming platitudes there—it was all pretty small stuff, especially compared to Mr. Bush’s world-historical grandiloquence of the early years. It looks like he won’t be doing much for the next 11 months and three weeks, which is just fine. An exit with a whimper by this troubled and inadequate man is preferable to yet another doomed attempt to make history.
Mr. Bush urged Congress to pass the $150 billion stimulus package quickly and to make the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent. His wish may well be granted, but it may not be enough to affect the economy: tax rebates arriving in mail boxes next May or June won’t have an impact on the next three critical months.
More seriously, however, Mr. Bush’s statement on the economy failed to address the deeper malaise that this country faces, more acutely now than when he came to the helm in January 2001. Under his predecessor millions of Americans sought to maintain effortless prosperity by investing in dot.coms that produced no profits, and then using them to generate spending cash. Instead of helping America sober up, however, Mr. Bush presided over the similar misuse of the housing stock. The underlying financial malaise that he neither understands nor cares about is still there. The tab has ballooned under Mr. Bush to nine trillion dollars—that’s a 9 followed by a dozen zeros—and it keeps growing. When mere servicing of the ever-growing tab leaves nothing for further consumption, the end will be nigh; but by that time Mr. Bush will be spending his golden years at his Texas ranch.
The President went from behemoths to peanuts by asking Congress to support a $300 million “Pell Grant for Kids” that would give low-income children in underperforming public schools a chance to attend a private, religious or out-of-district public school. If approved, the scheme would be worth one-hundredth of one percent (one 10,000th) of the 2008 Federal budget submitted by Mr. Bush (3 trillion). The President devoted two minutes to this program; if he were to devote equal attention to each and every expenditure worth $300 million, his speech would have lasted 333 hours, or two weeks flat. Furthermore, Mr. Bush knows he is getting nowhere with this one: he has proposed a federally funded private-school voucher each year since coming to the White House, and all he got—in 2004—was a five-year pilot program serving fewer than two thousand students in the nation’s capital.
Mr. Bush’s pinch of incense on the altar of Global Warming was embarrassing. Sounding earnest, he called for an international agreement to “slow, stop and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases” and proposed “a new international clean technology fund.” It’s all worthy stuff that would play well in http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3100, but Mr. Bush has stopped short of endorsing mandatory limits on gas emissions—and U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases are still growing.
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=501#more-501