orginally written Feb. 2, 2006

by Christine Gates

State of the Union: How will we pay for it all? 

    Where do I start?  I see the idea of a “focused and smaller government” is lost on this President.  In his one hour, address he proposed $264,181,000,000 in increased spending for the fiscal year (FY) 2007 alone.  That’s 264 BILLION DOLLARS for his three little ideas, not for the entire federal budget or just one department or the war, but three ideas!

    President Bush proposed three little ideas: an American Competitiveness Initiative (education spending) $166,650,000; Affordable and Accessible Health Care Initiative $97,710,000,000; an Advanced Energy Initiative $821,000,000.  All totaling $264.181 billion only for FY2007, but if you run the numbers out over 15 years (and ending limited programs as scheduled) he is proposing that we spend $2,518,121,000,000 or $2.5 trillion just on these three ideas of education, health care, alternative energy.  Wow!  How will we pay for this?    

    While laying out his ideas of the American Competitive Initiative, he called No Child Left Behind (NCLB) a “success” and he wants all of us, including Congress, to support him in building on it.  I do not know what country Bush is doing his education research on, but it is not America, because as far as I know, No Child Left Behind is an abysmal failure.  While its intentions were good, it is doing almost the exactly opposite of its stated goals.  I’ve heard NCLB sarcastically called No Child Gets Ahead.  And now… he wants to dump an additional $445,500,000,000 into it over the next 15 years.  That is an insane policy.     

         NCLB is the obstacle for any complaint in school.  Everyone within the bureaucracy of public schools points to NCLB as the scapegoat, they pass the buck, and say their hands are tied because of NCLB legislation.  I do not know if it is true, but that is the excuse from everyone. 

     Since NCLB, there is no accountability in schools, the schools teach to the EOC or EOG tests, and the schools are not teaching kids to think only how to take standardized tests.  Too much time is spent on how to guess which multiple-choice answer is the best when preparing for the tests. 

     No thanks!  I’ll pass on building on that kind of success and hope that the government can find something better to do with my hard-earned tax dollars.  We cannot afford this one.

    Next, he wants us to develop energy alternatives in his Advanced Energy Initiative.  Well, his proposed cost for that is only $2.621 billion over the next 10 years.  I applaud that and hope he can get that legislation passed this year. 

    He stated bravely, “We have a serious problem:  America is addicted to oil, which is imported from unstable parts of the world.”  He wants to cut oil importation by 75% and spend a lot of money on R&D for alternative fuels for our homes, offices, and cars.  Great!  Git’R done.

    I do have some advice to go along with it though.  Open Anwar in Alaska, drill off the coasts of Florida and California because we, too, are an oil rich country.  Allow more refineries to be built to handle our own petroleum needs domestically or develop new alternatives.  Either one is better than buying from countries who are unfriendly, to say the least, to America (i.e., Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Mexico).

     The use, or threat of use, of domestic oil or alternative fuels will produce an intermestic policy (a domestic policy that has international ramifications) that will do one of two things:

1)      “Help” those countries behave better towards the U.S. because they will lose billions of dollars in revenue if we stop buying their “unfriendly” oil.  (Leverage)

2)       Their economies will collapse and they will become irrelevant like the USSR if they are not in line with our hegemony (philosophy).

Both are great foreign policy tools and better than war.

     The Affordable and Accessible Health Care Initiative was thrown around, too.  (I am so tired of perpetual health care whining.)  He had some simple sounding solutions for that, too.

      Electronic medical records scares the bejeebers out of me!  First, everyone will have to be micro-chipped for it to work most efficiently.  Can you say Big Brother?  If you are worried about identity theft regarding your financial records, now, hang on.  How much would someone pay to get your clean bill of health?  How hard would it be to get it back?

      Bush proposes a nice little $3,000 tax credit for families earning $25,000 or less to set up a medical savings account and/or buy a low cost insurance plan.  I spent some time researching this gem.  It turns out there are 32 million households who earn less than $25,000, multiply it by $3000 (because it will come to them in the form of a payment from the government since families at this income level don’t usually pay very much, if anything at all) you arrive at an astonishing figure of $96,000,000,000 for FY2007 alone.  $2,070,000,000,000 over 15 years just to fund this one tax credit program, a government hand out.  

     “Dole for the proles” brought the Great Roman Empire down.  Look it up.  $2.07 trillion for one little program because the proles are clamoring for more and more!  How will we afford this?  How will our grandchildren afford this?  The only way this could possibly be affordable is by eliminating Medicaid all together and replacing it with this proposal.

    At length, he discussed the War on Terror, which he called A Strong American Leading the World but gave no estimates of costs.  We must afford this at any price, it is our children’s freedom.  Remember, the terrorists want us all dead because we are the Great Satan, the Infidel.  They have no desire to peacefully co-exist with us, if we are to believe their own rhetoric, and we should. 

     Bush reminded Congress eloquently that “Hindsight is not Wisdom.”

      The topic in the speech called A Strong America Leading the World made me think of how America is the beacon of the light for the rest of the world.  A Strong America Leading the World is similar to Ronald Regan’s vision of American as “A shining city upon a hill.”  We were the light for the oppressed people of the Soviet Union whom we led out of communism.

     Lastly, the President asked Congress specifically for the power of the pen, the Line Item Veto.  Other presidents made use of such a tool, but it is granted to the president by Congress for only short periods of time.

      With such a power, a president can cut out riders, or port-barrel-spending, in any bill he signs into law.  Sometimes riders, or pork, is added or heaped onto a really important bill that Congress knows the President is going to sign no matter what.  There can be dozens or hundreds of riders tacked onto a bill that cost all of us billions and billions of dollars each year in waste like the Hickory Tea Pot Museum.  I believe any president should have this power.  It is the only way to afford these more important programs.

 
Contact your Congressman about all of these issues.  Let them know what you think.  Everyone’s opinion matters.  America is a representative democracy – tell your representative what matters to you.  Get involved, even if you don’t agree with me.

www.senate.gov

www.house.gov

www.whitehouse.gov