January 24, 2007 at 18:30:06

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BUSH'S STATE OF THE UNION / SPIN AND FACTS

By Allen L Roland (about the author)     Page 4 of 4 page(s)

opednews.com     Permalink

ESCALATION HAS BEEN TRIED AND FAILED: During the last six months, the United States has increased -- or "surged" -- the number of American troops in Baghdad by 12,000, yet the violence and deaths of Americans and Iraqis has climbed alarmingly, averaging 960 a week since the latest troop increase.

This past summer, Bush announced a major effort to secure Baghdad, stating at a news conference that thousands of U.S.-led coalition troops would be moved into the city. As a result, violence intensified throughout the country, and U.S. deaths in Iraq spiked. Bush later acknowledged "our operations to secure Baghdad have encountered greater resistance. ... I'm not satisfied." House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) said, "This last summer there was a troop increase that really did no good in my opinion whatsoever."

BUSH STANDS IN ISOLATION: Sen. John Warner (R-VA), an influential conservative on military affairs, offered a resolution that opposes President Bush's escalation plan. "Combined with near-unanimous Democratic opposition to Bush's war policy, the Republican stands show a broad bipartisan lack of confidence in the president's course." Nearly seventy percent of Americans say they oppose Bush's escalation.

Top military leaders, including former Gen. Colin Powell, the current Joint Chiefs, and Gen. John Abizaid, have expressed their opposition to putting more U.S. troops on the ground.

Bush's key international ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has said he will not join the escalation. The president's strategy goes against the recommendations of the recently-released Iraq Study Group. One Bush administration official admitted that the escalation plan is "more of a political decision than a military one."

AN ALTERNATIVE PLAN EXISTS -- STRATEGIC REDEPLOYMENT: Despite Bush's claim that progressives don't have their own plan, the Center for American Progress has had a responsible Iraq strategy for over a year that calls for comprehensive strategic redeployment.

The strategy calls for reducing U.S. troops to 60,000 in six months and to zero in eighteen months, while redeploying troops to Afghanistan, Kuwait, and the Persian Gulf to contain the threat of global terror networks. The plan also calls for engaging in diplomacy to resolve the conflict within Iraq by convening a Geneva Peace Conference, establishing a Gulf Security initiative to deal with the aftermath of U.S. redeployment from Iraq, and putting Iraq's reconstruction back on track with targeted international funds. The American public and the Iraqi public supports phased withdrawal.


Economy

What Bush said: "It is also a fact that our tax cuts have fueled robust economic growth and record revenues. ... By continuing these policies, we can balance the federal budget by 2012 while funding our priorities and making the tax cuts permanent." [1/3/07]

What You Need to Know: Continuing Bush's economic policies would do little to stimulate growth and would worsen the country's fiscal health.

BUSH'S TAX CUTS THE LARGEST CONTRIBUTOR TO BUDGET DEFICITS: Tax cuts "have been the single largest contributor to the reemergence of substantial budget deficits." The Congressional Budget Office reports that tax cuts enacted from 2001 to 2006 were responsible for 51 percent of the deterioration in the budget. "Between 2001 and 2006, the passage of the Bush tax cuts without the offsetting savings have cost $1.2 trillion in lost revenues, or more than 80 percent of the cumulative deficit during this period."

Only a third was due to increases in security spending, and about a sixth to increases in domestic spending.

DEFICITS HAVE MUSHROOMED UNDER BUSH: Bush has "never proposed a balanced budget since it went into deficit, never vetoed a spending bill when Republicans controlled Congress and offered little sustained objection to earmarks until the issue gained political traction last year." Bush and Congress took an inherited surplus and have transformed it into a mountain of debt -- the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) reports that legislation enacted over the last six years increased the national debt by $2.3 trillion, including $633 billion in interest payments alone. "The budget outlook for the period 2002 to 2011 deteriorated by $8.5 trillion from 2001 to 2006 and for 2006, it decreased by $753 billion."

ECONOMIC GROWTH HAS BEEN RELATIVELY SLOW UNDER BUSH: President's bloated budgets have reflected skewed priorities and have not stimulated economic growth. Economic growth fell to 2 percent in the third quarter of last year, following 2.6 percent growth in the second quarter and a surprisingly strong first quarter growth of 5.6 percent. "This was the first time in more than three years that the economy registered two consecutive quarters of growth below three percent." "For six of the seven indicators," the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found, "the growth rate over the current period is below the average growth rate for the comparable periods of other post-World War II economic recoveries."

The economy has underperformed relative to other expansions "with respect to both overall economic growth and growth in fixed non-residential investment."

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