A Speech Bordering On Criminal

Isaiah J. Poole

January 23, 2007

There ought to be a law against presidents delivering State of the Union addresses that contain the number of fallacies, inconsistencies and duplicitous statements that President Bush’s address to Congress contained last night.

President Bush’s address started on a gracious note, paying tribute to the first female speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and offering conciliatory words to the new Democratic majority. “We can work through our differences and achieve big things for the American people,” Bush said.

Great start. But then he offered precious little that would enable him to work with Democrats to accomplish anything truly big and meaningful.

Start with the “economic reforms” that President Bush said needed to be priorities for the 11oth Congress.

He called for balancing the federal budget within the next five years, but offered no details about how he would do that, except to say that “we can do so without raising taxes.” That is, of course, if you don’t count a plan that he brought up a few moments later to offer a health insurance tax deduction of $7,5000 for individuals and $15,000 for families – and to tax the value of health insurance workers receive from their employers above those limits. Read his lips: a new tax, and one that does not change the paradigm of a broken health care system.

Especially given the cost of the war in Iraq, almost $361 billion since 2003, and the tax giveaways to the wealthy that have taken place on the president’s watch, it is incomprehensible how Bush would balance the budget without severe cuts in federal programs. If that is what he intends, there needs to be a serious discussion about what federal programs are to be on the chopping block. Instead, Bush gave the matter a brief paragraph.

His rant against earmarks, what he described as special-interest provisions slipped into bills “when not even C-Span is watching” brought to mind his own version of earmarking: presidential signing statements that, even more so than the earmarks he denounced, were not voted into law by Congress and yet “are treated as if they have the force of law.” Perhaps the Democratic response from Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., should have added, “We will end the earmarks when you stop the signing statements.”

The president’s statements on energy independence appeared to be bold, but quickly lost their shine on close examination. For in the midst of the grab bag of energy proposals he tossed out – from great ideas such as plug-in hybrid vehicles and biofuels made from grasses to an at best highly questionable pursuit of clean coal and nuclear power expansion – was a call to step up domestic oil production. He had an opportunity to call for an historic effort to move away from a fossil-fuel based economy, and, being a man as addicted to oil as the country he presides over, he passed.

The spinmeisters proved wrong when they said that Bush’s speech would spend little time on Iraq and the global war on terror; in fact, it took up nearly half of the speech. He used his familiar, dangerous rhetoric, referring to “a decisive ideological struggle” against Sunni and Shia Muslim extremists. He went on to not only defend an increase in U.S. forces in Iraq by more than 21,000, but a larger increase in the size of the Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 over the next five years, plus a new “civilian reserve corps” of undetermined size “to serve on missions abroad when America needs them.” Will these new troops be fighting in the World War III the neocons are anxious to launch in the Middle East?

Webb’s response to Bush’s speech was sharp and to the point, attacking both the economic disparties that have grown under Bush’s watch and the war that he said Bush took the nation into “recklessly.” He called by recalling the actions of two presidents, both Republicans: Theodore Roosevelt, who railed against the robber barons of the early 20th century, and Dwight Eisenhower, who ended the Korean War rather than pour more lives into a quagmire.

“These Presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world,” Webb said. “Tonight we are calling on this President to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way.”

I hope that the robust ending of Webb’s speech is a sign that Democrats will stand firm against a president whose words continue to be both disingenuous and dangerous.