A Legacy Review: My Original 40 Know Bush Facts from 2004, Part I.

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One of every four Americans lives within 3 miles of a toxic waste site. Bush included in his 2004 budget a plan to generate money for the depleting EPA Superfund trust.

By 2002, the $3.3 billion that was left in 1995 was down to $100 million, because the tax collected for the Superfund clean ups from the chemical industry was stopped in 1995 as part of Newt Gingrich’s "Contract on America."

So that year, Bush’s appointee, Christine Whitman, de-funded 89 Superfund cites in 13 states, including a New Jersey site where a residential neighborhood had developed around a deserted plant where the herbicide Agent Orange was mixed and disposed, where the green-yellow watered drainage ditches empty into a brook that flows past a McDonalds hamburger bun bakery.

But now, Bush is willing to do something about it. He’s included it in his budget. The money will come from "general revenues" - that means the taxpayers. Not the polluters. Nor those who have benefitted by far the most from the tax cuts. Meanwhile, the chemical corporations have saved over $9 billion since 1995, or roughly $4 million per day.

In 1994, Monsanto, Dow, and Union Carbide wrote the checks that put Bush in the Texas Governor’s Mansion.

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