So now that the earmarks are going to Democratic districts instead of Republican districts, Bush has suddenly gotten religion on earmarks and balanced budgets. We need to impose fiscal discipline but the sentiment I hear around DC is that we have had 6 years of pork barrel politics to “buy off America” and have left Democrats with the tab.
The Republicans just won’t abandon their ludicrous attempts to make the tax cuts to the rich permanent. I don’t have a problem with ALL the Bush tax cuts, just the ones on capital gains and qualified dividends (and perhaps a few others).
Bush made some comments about reform of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA. This could REALLY help our current financial crisis. Its a good idea, I wonder if he has any idea of what he means by this.
Bush has no idea how to reform health care. It would cost us about $66 TRILLION to fully fund medicare, medicaid and social security. The Medicare/medicaid portion represents the vast majority of that amount. Making medical costs deductible (an idea which has some merit) and privitization isn’t going to fix that.
Pell grants for kids? I’d like to hear more, Kennedy normally stands up whenever we spend more money on education so I wonder what Bush isn’t telling us.
Bush finally got religion on global warming, which kinda blew my mind.
It was also good to hear him ackowledge that the enemy is al Qaeda.
It was also good to hear him acknowledge that there are a LOT of problem that can be addressed (Burma, Sudan, malaria, AIDS, etc.) without calling anyone an axis of evil or trying to invade anyone.
