With his April 24 speech to workers of the Timken Company in Canton, Ohio, President Bush hit a political grand slam, one that soared over the nosebleed seats and still is rolling through the parking lot. Not only were his words well-chosen and his wit sharp, but the President’s choice to lace the address with stories of hard-working, average Americans could be held up as a model for excellent political speech-i-fying.
Sadly, the segments of the speech with any substance had more holes than my ratty, orange flip-flops. It was a grim microcosm of the administration’s ongoing routine to gain favor through deception of the public, manipulation of statistics, spouting half-truths or outright lies and even disagreeing with itself when initial projections turn sour.
President Bush’s issue-de-jour is, of course, his “itty bitty” $350 billion tax-cut package. Consequently, most of his domestic addresses, including the one in Canton, have focused on convincing a skeptical American public that he’s right on this one, too.
Unfortunately for him, Americans have access to books, computers and other resources — many of which we actually use. Even a cursory glance at competent tax-cut analyses reveals the foolishness of our leader’s recent remarks.
My favorite nice-and-tidy quote from the address, and one that reflects widespread conventional wisdom among the American public, was “I’m concerned about deficits. But this nation has got a deficit because we have been through a war.” This, as we shall see, is nonsense.
It goes hand-in-hand with nonsensical statement No. 2 — this one could, for you syntax sticklers out there, even be deemed a “lie.” Bush said, “the minute I got sworn in, we were in a recession. And that’s why I went to Congress for a tax package.”
With me so far? According to Bush, he came to office, there was a recession, he called for tax cuts to stimulate the sagging economy. Then, we had to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and increase homeland security as part of our “War on Terror,” so the recession got worse. Naturally, we now need cuts to stimulate the economy again.
If this haggling over tax cuts and policies has left you bored, here comes the fun — in this section, we leave Bushland (hope you enjoyed your visit) and reconnect with reality.
When President Bush was sworn in, the economy was booming at unprecedented rates. There was no recession and he was not predicting one — which is evidenced by his proposed 2001-2002 budget calling for tax cuts and the Congressional Budget Office’s projections that there would be an AVERAGE of a $380 billion surplus in 2003-2004. The tax-cut plan proposed then was the same one he campaigned with, telling the American public that we could afford it because there was no deficit and no sign of recession.
In other words, Bush needs to modify his quote if it is to have any legitimacy whatsoever. He could have said, “the minute I got sworn in, we were NOT in a recession, nor were we predicting one.”
The assertion that war costs are causing our budget deficit also is dismissed easily — all that’s needed is a basic knowledge of addition and subtraction. A few facts to chew on:
The costs associated with war, terrorism, etc. include, among others: military operations and post-war reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, post-Sept. 11 homeland security spending, ground-zero cleanup and repair, compensation to victims of Sept. 11 and subsidies to the airline industries. An excellent, in-depth analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows the total for all of these activities comes to approximately $200 billion.
I’m out of space and out of time, but even without further analysis it seems without this latest round of tax cuts, we could pay to defend our freedoms and still have $150 billion left over. It also seems as though our President is telling us a $200 billion dollar, war-related spending hole is worsening our deficit more than the $350 billion loss of tax revenue.
Bush’s current arguments, like his numbers, just don’t add up.