Bush Words and Bush Deeds

Bush Promises	Bush Reality
Homeland Security	War on Terrorism "[We are] taking every possible step to protect our country from danger." Bush said that a month after 9/11, and he has repeated that vow several times since then, including at the start of his recent month-long vacation at his Texas ranch. Every possible step? A reassuring line, but it is not true. Two years after the attacks, there still is no plan for enhanced security at the nation's thousands of chemical plants. (Over a hundred of them handle chemicals that if released could threaten a million or so Americans.) According to the General Accounting Office, the Bush administration has not even "comprehensively assessed the chemical industry's vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks." In October 2002, Tom Ridge, Bush's chief homeland security official, said that voluntary regulations for the chemical industry would not suffice, but that is the policy the administration has been slowly pursuing. Quote from The Lies of George Bush by David Corn, Crown Publishing Group; 1st edition (September 30, 2003)
Scientific Evidence	Bush Distorts Science Several prestigious scientific journals have editorialized about the Bush administration's dealings in science in recent months, including Science, Nature and the New England Journal of Medicine. An editor at Science, for example, recently said in print that the administration was injecting politics into arenas of science "once immune to this kind of manipulation." And the editors of the Lancet noted "growing evidence of explicit vetting of appointees to influential [scientific] panels on the basis of their political or religious opinions" and warned against "any further right-wing incursions" on those panels Rick Weiss, Washington Post 8/8/03
Responsible Government	When George W. Bush ran for president, one of his big selling points was responsibility. Americans were tired of Bill Clinton’s fudges and legalisms. They were tired of hearing that the latest falsehood was part of a larger truth, or that it was OK because the president had attributed it to somebody else, or that the country should “move on.” Bush promised to end all that. William Saletan, Slate, 7/14/03
$15 Billion for African AIDS Relief	Since his State of the Union address in January, the president has repeatedly promised to spend $15 billion on the international AIDS battle over the next five years, an average of $3 billion annually. However, the president's 2004 budget requested only $2 billion . . ."I have to tell you quite candidly that the president compounds the problem by continuing to talk about $3 billion while he's in Africa," said Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), Dan Morgan, Washington Post 7/11/03
Tax Cuts for Everyone
No Child Left Behind	American Association of School Administrators (AASA) Supports NEA’s Legal Challenge to Unfunded Mandates in NCLB Law: "AASA regrets that the administration and the Department of Education have chosen to use polarizing rhetoric rather than dollars to support this law. States and local school districts need sufficient funds to ensure the successful implementation of NCLB. Washington politicians claim that they are spending more money than ever on education, but the numbers don’t lie. At a time when states are facing their worst fiscal crisis in recent history, Congress is offering its smallest increase in education appropriations in eight years. AASA, July 03