The Real State of the Union

On January 20, the president will present his State of the Union address. This speech is a form of presidential performance art, designed to dress up current realities and package new initiatives in bright phrases. But before we fall for the patter, it would be a good idea to take a look under the wrapping. This administration is simply failing to meet the challenges facing this country.

Over the past three years, America has experienced a stunning reversal of fortune. We have gone from peace and prosperity to war, recession and a jobless recovery. We were hit by the worst terrorist attack on US soil in history. We suffered the most costly stock market bust ever. The worst corporate scandals in a century. The most extreme inequality since the Gilded Age. We have gone from record budget surpluses to record deficits. We struggle with the worst state and local fiscal crisis in fifty years. We face unsustainable and record trade deficits and are the world's largest debtor, even as the dollar sinks in value. Climate change poses a real and present danger to our security and our economy.

America's families are paying the price. Unemployment is up and wages are down. Health care is broken. Millions have had their retirement dreams shattered. Children are facing larger classes, overcrowded schools, cuts in vital preschool and after-school programs. College is getting priced out of reach for more deserving young people.

The president claims that this is not his fault, that he is simply a hapless victim of events. In his State of the Union address, he will claim that his policies have met the challenges and put us back on the right track, and that we should stay the course.

But reality confounds the rhetoric. In the major challenges facing the country and the concerns worrying Americans, the president's policies are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.

Challenges to American Families Consider first the concerns that Americans worry about over their kitchen tables at night.

JOBS: Jobs are still scarce and increasingly insecure. The few that are being created too often have lower pay and the benefits than the ones that have been lost. Despite the much-advertised economic recovery, Bush will have the worst jobs record of any president since the Great Depression. We're hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs, and now high tech and service jobs are headed overseas too.

Bush claims that his tax cuts are "working." This year, he'll offer up a new round, and ask that we make the old ones permanent. But since his tax cuts have passed, we've witnessed s the worst job performance for a recovery on record. His tax cuts don't require companies or the wealthy to invest here. With the dollar falling, and companies rushing to move jobs abroad, Bush's tax cuts only fuel the exodus. Bush's economic policies are producing more jobs in Shanghai than in Saginaw.

WAGES: Hourly wages are down since Bush came to office, and incomes aren't keeping up with costs. Homelessness is up among full time workers, and more working people are in poverty. But Bush not only opposes any increase in the minimum wage, he pushed regulations that will strip millions of workers of vital overtime pay, despite the opposition of both the House and the Senate. He continues an unrelenting war on unions, weakening the vital champion of higher wages and better benefits for workers.

HEALTH CARE: Health care costs are soaring, with businesses forcing workers to pick up more of the tab or dropping coverage altogether. 43.6 million Americans now have no health care insurance, up 3.4 million on Mr. Bush's watch. Americans now pay the highest prescription drug prices in the world.

President Bush will offer once more a package of tax credits to aid Americans who don't have health insurance. Yet his package will do nothing about the soaring costs that make health insurance unaffordable. Worse, they will encourage businesses to discontinue employee health plans. Not only has the president refused to do anything to bring the costs of HMOs and insurance companies under control, his prescription drug bill actually prohibits Medicare from negotiating a better price for seniors. To add insult to injury, the bill outlaws buying cheaper drugs from Canada. He turned a $400 billion benefit for the elderly into a $400 billion subsidy to the drug companies.

SCHOOLS: The largest number of children ever entered our public schools this fall. But schools across the country are being forced to cut back, laying off teachers, doubling up classes, putting off needed construction and repair projects. Over one of every three public schools now use trailers as classrooms.

President Bush will tout his education reforms. But his reforms don't deal with the growing number of students flooding the schools  or with the need for preschool, for after school programs, for quality teachers. He broke his promise on funding his school reforms. Worse, with the states facing the worst fiscal crisis in fifty years, he fought against aid for the states targeted to protect schools from debilitating cuts. Then he froze funding for domestic school construction in the federal budget, while allocating millions to build schools in Iraq.

COLLEGE COSTS: College tuitions are going up at nearly 15% a year. Federal grants for deserving students have not kept up. The maximum Pell grant now covers 39 percent of public school tuition, down from 84% in 1975-76. Students now graduate with debt burdens 35% higher than those of students graduating a decade ago. And more and more simply are priced out of four year colleges altogether.

Bush will no doubt claim that federal support for students has gone up. But he broke his campaign promise to raise the maximum grant, and under his new budget, grant levels will fall even further behind costs.

RETIREMENT SECURITY: Many older workers saw their retirement dreams shattered when the stock market collapsed. Only one in five workers in the private sector has a guaranteed pension at work. And the Enron scandals showed how corporate executives were abusing worker savings accounts.

Bush will launch his "ownership society," recycling his proposals to set up individual accounts that will allow tax free savings of several thousand dollars. But only the wealthiest 5% of Americans have the excess income to save the maximum in the tax free accounts we now have. Worse, Bush wants to create private accounts in Social Security to mask deep cuts in guaranteed benefits. And his post Enron pension reform legislation will make it easier for corporations to provide pensions for the few on the top floor and do nothing for the workers on the shop floor.

SAFE FOOD: Mothers sensibly worry about what their children are eating, as more of our food is imported and less of it is inspected. Food borne diseases have caused some 228 million illnesses and over 15,000 deaths since Bush took office. And now there's a Mad Cow threat.

Bush is likely to promise some increased funding for federal inspection programs. But he and the Republican Congress blocked legislation to impose stronger penalties for food safety violations, and opposed measures that would have made it easier to trace the source of contaminated meat.

SAFE WORKPLACES: Over 4.7 million workers were injured on the job last year. Violation of workplace safety laws has grown as companies seek to cut costs. Federal inspectors are unable to keep up.

Bush isn't likely to mention these harsh realities, nor that his budget for the Office of Safety and Health Administration will afford inspection of companies once every 63 years

CLEAN AIR AND CLEAN WATER: Our air and water supplies are being flooded with harmful pollutants. Last year, over 7 million Americans became sick from drinking contaminated tap water, and at any given time, about one quarter of the nation's largest power plants and water treatment facilities are in serious violation of pollution standards.

Bush is likely to tout his commitment to the environment, citing his "improvements" environmental legislation, but the reality is he sold out our environment to big business. He pushed for loopholes in environmental regulations that permit the nations oldest and dirtiest power plants from installing modern pollution controls when they upgrade and expand their facilities. He pushed polices that relaxed clean water protections for millions of acres of wetlands and waterways, and eliminated corporate liability for "factory farm" pollution. Under the guise of protecting against forest fires, Bush pushed the Healthy Forest Initiative, which is essentially a give-away to the timber industry.

PERSONAL DEBT: Personal debt is at record heights, as are personal bankruptcies. Interest rates are at near record lows, but credit card companies continue to impose obscene interest and penalty charges.

Again, Bush is likely to say little about this reality except to urge Americans to save, even as their incomes aren't keeping up with prices. Worse, Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress blocked efforts to provide consumers with clear warning about credit card charges, and pushed to make it easier for credit card companies to collect against families forced into bankruptcy.

Challenges to the Nation Even as he has failed Americans on basic kitchen table concerns, he has failed the nation in addressing its real security challenges. Consider:

RECORD TRADE DEFICITS AND FOREIGN DEBT: America's trade deficits are at new records, and this nation is already the world's largest debtor. Everyone from Alan Greenspan to the IMF agree the deficits cannot be sustained and are the source of global economic instability. The dollar has already started to sink. Investors like Warren Buffett warns that we are selling off our national assets at a rate that will leave our children to work much of the year paying off foreign debts.

Mr. Bush will not address this staggering threat to our prosperity in his speech nor in his policies. Instead he will celebrate more of the same trade policies that helped to get us in this hole.

RECORD BUDGET DEFICITS AND NATIONAL DEBT: America has gone from record surpluses to record deficits, with sober observers projecting deficits that will leave us $5 trillion in publicly held debt by 2006.

Mr. Bush will pledge, no doubt, to reduce the deficits over the next years, even as he calls for making his tax cuts permanent, adding new ones, and adding new spending programs. His gall is exceeded only by his irresponsibility. His tax cuts have been the major source of the deficits while failing to generate jobs. His program will do nothing to redress the long-term deficits that will make financing the retirement of the baby boomers more difficult.

GILDED AGE INEQUALITY AMID GROWING POVERTY: The wealthy few are pocketing the rewards of rising growth and productivity. For middle income families, incomes aren't keeping up with costs. And poverty is rising, during the first two years of Bush's term, 580,000 more children lived in poverty and 5% more families were homeless.

Mr. Bush may make gestures about compassion in his speech, but his polices are adding to this obscene inequality. His tax policies have lavished benefits on the few, while increasing burdens on middle income taxpayers in rising property taxes and fees. And vital programs for the poor  from housing to nutrition to training and education  suffer the deepest cuts in Mr. Bush's budgets.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENVIRONMENTAL DESPOLIATION: Evidence of the cataclysmic threat posed by global warming is overwhelming. Increases in the global temperature will cause un-quantifiable damage to people, eco systems, farms and business

Mr. Bush is not likely to mention this in his speech, for he has simply abandoned any US leadership in this area. His policy is to ignore the reality, question the scientific consensus, and loosen even the weak regulations we now have. His big oil energy policy only increases our dependence on foreign oil and on unsustainable fossil fuels. This is an historic default which our children will find hard to forgive.

CORPORATE CORRUPTION: The corporate scandals have shaken global faith in America's markets. Systematic cooking of the books, routine fleecing of small investors, cynical insider dealing make investors more cautious about US markets.

Mr. Bush has been absent without leave in cleaning up this mess. The one piece of reform legislation had to be passed over the objections of his administration. Nothing has been done to increase shareholders' ability to hold corporate directors accountable for misreporting. Nothing has been done to curb short-term executive stock options that create an incentive to cook the books.

HOMELAND SECURITY: After September 11, the need for protective measures on homeland security was apparent. Yet even here, Bush has fallen short. He opposed setting up a Homeland Security Agency until it was apparent Congress would pass it over his objections. He then has failed to provide the funding needed to modernize our frontline defenses  from first responders to public health systems. Worse, he has joined corporate lobbies to block vital, common sense protective measures. The EPA reports that there are 123 plants where release of chemicals would threaten over 1 million people, and over 700 that would threaten the lives of over 100,000. Yet after the oil and chemical lobby mobilized against it, Bush opposed legislation to create minimum standards for security and reduction of potential hazards in such plants.

GLOBAL TERRORISM: Mr. Bush will take credit for bold action against terror, for toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq. In reality, his policies are not making Americans safer. His policy of pre-emptive war and unilateral intervention, abandoning fifty years of bipartisan US policy, squandered the global support we enjoyed after September 11. America is more feared and suspect now than ever across the world. All this for an invasion against a wretched dictator who had no weapons of mass destruction and posed no threat to the US. Worse, Iraq, as scholars at the US Army War College report, has been a diversion from the war on terror. And by acting alone, the president has left Americans to bear the financial burden of Iraqi reconstruction, and committed the military to an occupation that taxes its troops, its equipment, and exhausts its reserves. And that occupation has already made the US an even greater target of terrorist rage.

In addition, Bush has failed to take common sense proactive measures for US security. Bush's energy policy only adds to our dependence on Persian Gulf oil. He has spurned calls for an Apollo Project on Energy Independence  a 10 year investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy that would generate jobs and free us of dependence on Persian Gulf oil. Mr. Bush has failed to challenge the mercantilist trading policies of China and Japan that are running up US trade deficits while capturing US industries. Worse, he has no global economic policy that would begin to address the global stagnation that is generating greater poverty and desperation, and a growing divide between rich and poor nations across the world. By abandoning multilateral accords on nuclear weapons testing, chemical and biological weapons, and scorning global institutions generally, the administration has undermined the development of international law, alliance and global institutions in which the US, as a global power with global interests, has a vital security stake.

Mr. Bush will sound good in his State of the Union; presidents always do. His approval ratings will rise, as they always do after a dramatic address. But on jobs, wages, health care, retirement security, schools, national security and the rest  the administration's policies are part of the problem, not part of the solution. It is hard to recall an administration more out of tune with the needs of the time. And that is the real state of the union.