for
BUSH LIES
...www.bushwatch.com
for
BUSH LIES
...www.bushwatch.com
Some Bush backers claim he's not a liar, he's just not very bright and doesn't remember things very well. That may be true, but we're sure Bush would not allow such an excuse in his "responsibility era." We're sure Bush would agree that if he's that dumb, he shouldn't be President. Other Bush backers claim that some of his lies are "technically correct" or "tailored to fit the audience," or some such circumlocution. What they're talking about are lies of omission rather than lies of commission. In lies of ommission it's what they imply, not what they say. For example, the other evening Bush told Congress and the American people that he was putting a "lock box" on Social Security. Now, it's very clear that Bush wanted us to feel secure in the belief that he was protecting all of our Social Security funds for the future. No question, right? Yet, the very next day when his budget book was released, we learned that Bush told a lie of omission. What he didn't tell Congress and the American people is that he would later take from $.6 to $1 trillion out of that "lock box" to cover his tax cuts. No doubt, Bush lied. He wanted folks to believe something that he knew was not true. Of course, politicians do this all the time. It's second nature. In sum, the thing that really bothers us about Bush's lies is that he is also a hypocrite and pretends he's above lying. As a liar, he reinforces our assumptions about politicians. As a hypocrite, he reinforces our assumptions about his character. --Politex
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Last month Bush looked at Cheney's proposal to drill for oil in Montana's Lewis and Clark National Forest and decided that it was a good idea, since the desire to drill for oil was the wish of the people of Montana. However, the people of Montana have gone on record as being against the drilling, and the group that supports drilling consists of oil companies from outside the state. Here's how it went: "The 1.8 million acres of the Lewis and Clark National Forest, which includes some 380,000 acres of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, could be redesignated by the Bush administration for drilling without coming up before Congress. All it would take, according to Cheney’s task force, is repealing administrative protections that former controversial Lewis and Clark National Forest manager Gloria Flora spearheaded during the Clinton years. Such a change could be made by Norton. The rub, according to Jeff Juel of the Missoula-based Ecology Center, is that Flora’s moves to preserve the Front included an extensive public commentary period, one that provided...overwhelming public support. 'It’s a pretty big irony, really,' says Juel. 'The comments on this issue were divided among outside oil interests that wanted to keep [the Front] open to drilling, and Montana citizens, who said ‘No this should not happen.’ Now Bush is saying the federal government is the outside interest and that the oil companies represent local control.'" --Missoula Independent, 4/26/01
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"Thursday found the president in Houston, landing at Bush Intercontinental Airport and proceeding to an event of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. There, he was greeted by his proud parents, and his father called it "a special year for the Bush family." The two Presidents Bush and their wives took the stage, and the elder Bushes played a video about their post-power lives -- the former president complaining that his golfing buddies won't allow him "gimmes" anymore, and the former first lady forced to go through a security check at a restaurant.... A fact sheet for the event implausibly listed the president as one of 38 "author alumni." Bush, whose campaign book, "A Charge to Keep," was ghostwritten by an adviser, was listed along with Michael Crichton, Robert Ludlum, Frank McCourt and Scott Turow. The president mused aloud that "some people think my mom took up the cause of literacy out of a sense of guilt over my own upbringing," and he quipped that "we all make our contributions in the world, and I suppose mine will not be to the literary treasures of the Western civilization." --WP, 4/28/01
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"In defending the Bush administration's proposal to drill for oil in the wilderness of Alaska, [Cheney recently] maintained the "key fact to get across -- the ANWR -- the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 19 million acres, roughly the size of South Carolina. The amount of land that needs to be disturbed on the surface to develop that resource, 2000 acres, roughly half the size of Dulles Airport. The notion that somehow developing the resources in ANWR requires some sort of vast despoiling of the environment up there is just garbage. It’s not true." Cheney’s statement was not true. The 2000 acres are not contiguous -- as is the acreage at Dulles Airport. According to a 1999 report of the U.S. Geological Survey, the oil located in this region is in at least 35 discrete sites spread across a wide swath of coastal plain. To extract the oil, drillers would have to construct roads connecting the far-flung sites and a 20-inch pipeline across 135 miles of wildlife habitat and rivers. And the particular portion of ANWR eyed by the oil companies happens to be the biological center of wildlife activity for the refuge. Why would the Vice President -- an intelligent, civil and hard-working (look at his ticker!) fellow who is part of the team that wants to improve the tone of Washington -- purposefully misconvey this crucial fact in a vital public policy debate? Would beyond-the-Beltway bumpkins be wrong to wonder if it was because of his ties and those of the administration to the oil industry? --David Corn,4/13/01
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush told an intimate audience in Washington Thursday that he stands behind his campaign pledge to give parents more ability to remove their children from unsafe or academically inadequate public schools. Such ability, he said, could be in the form of school vouchers, a hot-button issue among Democrats and some educators. Bush told those assembled in an Eisenhower Executive Office Building auditorium he was "strongly committed" to shifting federal money directly to parents if the schools their children attend cannot meet the standards set by local officials. "I campaigned vigorously on this idea, and I think it is right," he said. That was somewhat more direct than what he said Wednesday as he launched a reinvigorated push to persuade Congress to support his agenda to overhaul the nation's public school systems. He told a middle school audience in Concord, North Carolina, that he wanted to avoid some of the so-called choice issues, saying that choices such as vouchers would prompt an extended, spirited debate in Congress. --CNN, 4/12/01
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"On Feb. 21, President Bush told teachers and students at Townsend Elementary School in Tennessee that
'in the budget I submit, the largest increase of any department will be for the Department of Education.'
Six days later, Bush told Congress that
'[t]he highest percentage increase in our budget should go to our children's education.'
"In both instances, Bush's apparently sincere pledge prompted spontaneous applause. But when Bush's budget was released this week, the Education Department did not get the biggest proposed increase, even though CNN and the Associated Press both reported that it did. In truth, calculated by percentage, the biggest proposed budget increase (13.6 percent) went to the State Department. (This is actually quite difficult to find in the OMB's budget documents, but if you go to this page on the State Department Web site and scroll down to Page 6, you'll find a "Summary of Funds." On that chart, scroll down to "State Appropriations Act" and compare FY 2001 to FY 2002.) Calculated by dollars, the biggest proposed budget increase ($14.2 billion) went to the Defense Department.
"So, how big is the proposed Education Department increase? The Bush administration is claiming it's 11.5 percent, or $4.6 billion. But if you read on, you'll see this puzzling language:
'Corrects for the distortion of advance appropriations, provides a $2.5 billion, or 5.9 percent increase, for Education Department programs, the highest percentage increase of any Cabinet agency, consistent with the priority the President has placed on education.'
"Ignore, for a moment, the erroneous claim that the Education Department is getting "the highest percentage increase of any Cabinet agency." (We've just established that it isn't.) What "distortion of advance appropriations" is the White House budget office talking about? Well, back in December, before George W. Bush became president, Congress appropriated about $2 billion for the Education Department, to be disbursed the following year. It did this as an accounting gimmick, in order to stay under a spending cap for the current year that was imposed by a 1997 balanced budget agreement. Gimmick or no, though, the money was spent before Dubya moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, making it entirely ludicrous for Bush to take credit for it. The real budget increase Bush is proposing for the Education Department is $2.5 billion, a 5.9 percent increase. (Or $2.4 billion, a 5.7 percent increase, according to the Democratic staff of the House Education and Workforce committee, which used slightly different numbers from Congress' own budget office.) "The bureaucratic gobbledygook quoted above therefore translates to 'Our claim to increase the Education Department budget by 11.5 percent is laughably wrong, but we're doing our best to make sure no one will notice.' It seems to be working on Bush. Here he is on April 11 speaking at North Carolina's Concord Middle School:
'In the budget I submitted to the Congress--one which one body of the House listened to pretty carefully, and one body of the Congress listened to carefully, and the other decided, well, they're going to listen to some of it, but they decided to increase the size and scope of the federal government--we put a lot of money in for public education. The biggest increase of any department was for public education.'" --Slate, 4/13/01
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WASHINGTON - Breaking his second campaign promise on the environment, President Bush has abandoned a pledge to invest $100 million a year in a program for rain forest conservation, according to the budget he released yesterday. Bush announced in a foreign policy speech last August that he planned to greatly expand the Tropical Forest Conservation Act, which allows poor countries to restructure their debt in exchange for protecting the disappearing forests. ''Expanding the aims of the Tropical Forest Conservation Act, I will ask Congress to provide $100 million to support the exchange of debt relief for the protection of tropical forests,'' Bush said in the speech, delivered in Miami on Aug. 25. But in the new federal budget, Bush has arranged for just $13 million for the program. Even that sum isn't new funding; instead, it is diverted from the Agency for International Development. ''They've zeroed it out,'' said Debbie Reed, legislative affairs director for the National Environmental Trust.... The broken pledge has an extra sting for US Representative Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio and a close ally of Bush throughout the campaign. Portman was a chief sponsor of the bill that established the program in 1998, along with Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana. According to sources familiar with the program, both Portman and Lugar have for months been asking the White House for full funding for the rain-forest program. Bush introduced his expansion of the program at a critical time in the campaign, one week after the Democratic convention, as Vice President Al Gore's numbers were sharply on the rise. Attacking Gore for what he described as a weak commitment to the issue, Bush presented himself as the more practical and compassionate steward of the environment. --Boston Globe, 4/10/01
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"ELLSBURG, Iowa — Harlyn Riekena worried that his success would cost him when he died. Thirty-seven years ago he quit teaching to farm and over the years bought more and more of the rich black soil here in central Iowa. Now he and his wife, Karen, own 950 gently rolling acres planted in soybeans and corn. The farmland alone is worth more than $2.5 million, and so Mr. Riekena, 61, fretted that estate taxes would take a big chunk of his three grown daughters' inheritance. That might seem a reasonable assumption, what with all the talk in Washington about the need to repeal the estate tax to save the family farm. "To keep farms in the family, we are going to get rid of the death tax," President Bush vowed a month ago; he and many others have made the point repeatedly. But in fact the Riekenas will owe nothing in estate taxes. Almost no working farmers do, according to data from an Internal Revenue Service analysis of 1999 returns that has not yet been published. Neil Harl, an Iowa State University economist whose tax advice has made him a household name among Midwest farmers, said he had searched far and wide but had never found a farm lost because of estate taxes. "It's a myth," he said. Even one of the leading advocates for repeal of estate taxes, the American Farm Bureau Federation, said it could not cite a single example of a farm lost because of estate taxes. The estate tax does, of course, have a bite. But the reality of that bite is different from the mythology, in which family farmers have become icons for the campaign to abolish the tax. In fact, the overwhelming majority of beneficiaries are the heirs of people who made their fortunes through their businesses and investments in securities and real estate....While 17 percent of Americans in a recent Gallup survey think they will owe estate taxes, in fact only the richest 2 percent of Americans do. That amounted to 49,870 Americans in 1999. And nearly half the estate tax is paid by the 3,000 or so people who each year leave taxable estates of more than $5 million. In fact, the primary beneficiaries of the move to abolish the estate tax look less like the Riekenas and more like Frank A. Blethen, a Seattle newspaper publisher whose family owns eight newspapers worth perhaps a billion dollars." --NYT, 4/8/01
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"Jonathan Chait pointed out recently in the New Republic that the press maintains a bizarre double standard about factual assertions by public figures. When the subject is someone's personal life, reporters will go to great lengths to establish that he or she is lying. But on matters of public policy, journalists become radical agnostics who refuse to classify any statement as untrue. If some politician declares that two plus two is five, reporters might note that this position is not without controversy. Indeed there are critics, including politicians of the opposite party, who contend that two plus two may actually be four. Then perhaps they'll wind up the discussion by citing yet another pol who is confident that a compromise can be struck when the bill goes to conference. Or they will quote an anonymous aide who says that the differences are still too great. "Or sometimes the lie is permitted to lie completely unmolested. There was a nice example of this phenomenon this week. Wednesday's Washington Post and New York Times had carried an ad from a group of black businessmen supporting repeal of the estate tax. The group was organized by Robert L. Johnson, chairman of Black Entertainment Television. The ad declared: "The estate tax is unfair double taxation since taxpayers are taxed twice -- once when the money is earned and again when you die." A Times article yesterday about the ad noted correctly that this "repeats one of President Bush's familiar themes." Indeed it is probably the most tediously repeated sound bite of the estate tax debate. It is also false. Not "controversial" or "disputed" or "misleading" but out-and-out false. Most of the accumulated wealth that is subject to the estate tax was never subject to the income tax.
"This is so obviously, overwhelmingly true that anyone with the slightest business or financial experience surely knows it. Even George W. Bush. Well, probably even Bush. [No, even George W. Bush. --Politex] Yet he keeps on repeating the lie. Bob Johnson -- a real businessman -- must surely know it, since he is a walking example of wealth accumulated without the handicap of taxation. I don't mean to suggest that Johnson has done anything wrong or even sneaky. The point is the opposite: The rules are such that Johnson would have had to go out of his way -- way, way out of his way -- if he'd wanted his wealth to be taxed as he accumulated it. The same is true of almost every fortune large enough to qualify for the estate tax, probably including that of every other signer of that ad. If they read what they were signing, they knew they were signing a public lie." --Michael Kingsley, 4/6/01
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"'If you count every vote, Gore wins.' So says Doug Hattaway, a former Gore campaign spokesman. So where did Hattaway get his facts? Amazingly, they came from the Miami Herald/USA Today recount. Read carefully from the Herald's lead story: 'Had all canvassing boards in all counties examined all undervotes, thousands of votes would have been salvaged in Broward County, Palm Beach County and elsewhere long before the election dispute landed in court -- and the outcome might have been different,' The Herald found. 'In that scenario, under the most inclusive standard, Gore might have won Florida's election -- and the White House -- by 393 votes, The Herald found. If dimples were counted as votes only when other races were dimpled, Gore would have won by 299 votes. But if ballots were counted as votes only when a chad was detached by at least two corners (the standard most commonly used nationally), Bush would have won by 352 votes.' Under two out of three scenarious - depending on exactly how you count hanging chads - Gore wins. So why did the Miami Herald's headline read: "Florida Results: Ballot Review Shows Bush Retaining Lead" And why did USA Today declare: 'Newspapers' Recount Shows Bush Prevailed In Fla. Vote And why did the New York Times report: 'An Analysis of Florida Balloting Favors Bush' Why? Because after they counted ALL of the dimpled and hanging chads, the Herald and USA Today decided to highlight only SOME of the results. Which results did they highlight? The ones that favored Bush. Which did they bury? The ones that favored Gore. In journalism, there's a four-letter word for that kind of reporting: BIAS. On the street, it's a three-letter word: LIE. Once again, the media has rushed to declare Bush the winner - regardless of the will of the American people, as expressed through their votes." [And if folks don't know how members of the Bush administration are paid big bucks to spend their days pressuring reporters and editors they're either not reading the papers or they're smoking funny stuff. --Politex] --Bob Fertik, 4/4/01
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"Again and again, the new president has argued his policy is based on "sound science" and common sense presumably the same common sense that once considered the burning of witches to be a good idea and thought the sun revolved around the earth. On the emissions issue, for example, he wrote to the Republican Senator Chuck Hagel last week arguing that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant and was not considered as such by the Clean Air Act. Not only does this fly in the face of received scientific wisdom, it is untrue. In a barbed response to the Hagel letter, the National Resources Defense Council a respected environmental lobby group cited two passages in the Clean Air Act that specifically mention carbon dioxide." --Independent, 3/30/01. Thanks to Ted.
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I strongly believe we need to drop the top rate from 39.6 to 33 percent. (Applause.) I've heard all the rhetoric about what that means, and so have you. But overlooked in the political hyperbole that tends to take place in our process is the fact that dropping the top rate from 39.6 to 33 percent serves as a stimulus to small business growth in America.
"The Treasury Department released a report earlier today on small business owners who pay personal income taxes and small businesses which pay at the highest rate of 39.6. According to the Treasury Department, nationwide there are more than 17.4 million small business owners and entrepreneurs who stand to benefit from dropping the top rate from 39.6 to 33 percent."
--President George W. Bush, in a March 16 speech to small business owners.
"Most small businesses pay at the 39.6 percent rate."
--President George W. Bush, in a March 22 speech to the National Newspaper Association.
"In fact, fewer than five percent of these 17.4 million individual and business owners and entrepreneur pay the top rate. A total of only 691,000 taxpayers in the nation (including taxpayers who are not small business owners) paid the top rate in 1997, the latest year for which these data are available."
--March 20 press release by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
--Slate, 3/23/01
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I strongly believe we need to drop the top rate from 39.6 to 33 percent. (Applause.) I've heard all the rhetoric about what that means, and so have you. But overlooked in the political hyperbole that tends to take place in our process is the fact that dropping the top rate from 39.6 to 33 percent serves as a stimulus to small business growth in America.
"The Treasury Department released a report earlier today on small business owners who pay personal income taxes and small businesses which pay at the highest rate of 39.6. According to the Treasury Department, nationwide there are more than 17.4 million small business owners and entrepreneurs who stand to benefit from dropping the top rate from 39.6 to 33 percent."
--President George W. Bush, in a March 16 speech to small business owners.
"Most small businesses pay at the 39.6 percent rate."
--President George W. Bush, in a March 22 speech to the National Newspaper Association.
"In fact, fewer than five percent of these 17.4 million individual and business owners and entrepreneur pay the top rate. A total of only 691,000 taxpayers in the nation (including taxpayers who are not small business owners) paid the top rate in 1997, the latest year for which these data are available."
--March 20 press release by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
--Slate, 3/23/01
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"On March 12, The Washington Post reported that "the Bush administration will delay action on parts of its plan to channel more government money to religious charities," quoting Don Eberly of the office of faith-based initiatives as saying: "We're postponing." Two days later, President Bush said that "reports about our charitable choice legislation not going full steam ahead are just simply not true." But that day the Senate, with the White House's agreement, decided to postpone the financial aid plan for several months to a year." Washington Post, 3/26/01
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"Retreating from a campaign pledge, President Bush told Congress Tuesday that his administration would not impose mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide on the nation's power plants. In a letter to Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., the president made no mention of a campaign promise to require reductions in emissions of 'four main pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide.'...Last weekend, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman said the administration was moving ahead with plans for regulations in line with the Bush campaign pledge." --CNN, 3/13/01
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President Bush's position on how much of his tax cut would accrue to the very wealthy is "objectively untrue," Jonathan Chait writes in the New Republic. "And yet journalists have not exposed the lie. In some instances they have actively propagated it." That's because "the rules of newspaper 'objectivity' hold that on questions of policy there must always be two sides, and that both sides must be treated equally, regardless of their relative merits." The fact remains that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans "may pay a slightly higher share of income taxes under Bush's plan, but they would pay a significantly lower share of total taxes," including the estate tax and the payroll tax. Joshua Micah Marshall makes a similar point in his "Talking Points": It's "just hard to understate how profoundly dishonest a person House Majority Leader Dick Armey really is," Marshall writes. "Armey is the poster boy for a particularly troublesome Washington phenomenon: because of the canons of journalistic objectivity, it is generally okay to lie brazenly as long as it's about public policy. (If it's about your personal life, watch out!)" --Chris Suellentrop, 3/9/01
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"On most days, the political director of National Association of Manufacturers dons a suit and tie. But at a GOP tax cut rally outside the Capitol yesterday, Fred Nichols was sporting a faded blue "Farm Credit" hat, a striped rugby shirt and olive-green slacks. The sartorial switch was not accidental. Nichols's trade association, which pushed for yesterday's passage of President Bush's proposal to reduce income tax rates, circulated a memo among business groups this week urging lobbyists to show up in full force at the photo opportunity. And it urged them to be "dressed down" so that "a sea of hard hats" could flank Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and other House GOP leaders to help buttress Republican arguments that the plan helps blue-collar Americans. "The theme involves working Americans. Visually, this will involve a sea of hard hats, which our construction and contractor and building groups are working very hard to provide," said the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. "But the Speaker's office was very clear in saying that they do not need people in suits. If people want to participate -- AND WE DO NEED BODIES -- they must be DRESSED DOWN, appear to be REAL WORKER types, etc." --Wash. Post, 3/9/01
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Call it a "Bush trillion." It's a sum that is either much more or much less than $1 trillion — whichever is convenient — but one that George W. Bush thinks he can get away with calling "a trillion dollars" in speeches. During the campaign Mr. Bush, to emphasize his moderation, claimed that he was matching a trillion dollars in tax cuts with a trillion dollars of new spending. In fact he proposed less than half a trillion in new programs, and now he proposes no real increase in spending at all. The tax cut, on the other hand, turns out to be $1.6 trillion, except that it's really $2 trillion once you count the interest costs. And it will be $2.5 trillion if it is accelerated, something Mr. Bush has urged but not factored into his numbers, and if a major wrinkle involving the alternative minimum tax is ironed out. Meanwhile Mr. Bush has come up with another trillion, this time his "trillion-dollar contingency fund." It comes as no surprise that the actual number in his budget is only a bit more than $800 billion. And more than half of that consists of funds that Medicare was supposed to be setting aside for the needs of an aging population. So maybe we also need to define a "Bush contingency," as in: "Gee, people might get older, and they might have medical expenses. We can't be sure — but it could happen." --Paul Krugman, 3/7/01
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"It's a nonsense set of statistics"
--Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, commenting on the Citizens for Tax Justice study showing that 43 percent of the proposed Bush tax cut (since revised upward to 45 percent) would go to the richest 1 percent, as quoted by Charles Babington in the March 1 Washington Post
"In truth, the number is neither difficult to obtain nor highly disputed. The richest 1 percent of Americans would get between 31.3 percent and 45 percent of Bush's tax cut. Without the estate tax cut--which is about a quarter of Bush's tax package--the haul for the richest 1 percent would be 31.3 percent, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. Even a conservative economist such as the Heritage Foundation's William Beach agrees with that. 'It's not a controversial number,' [O'Neill] said." --Dana Milbank, "Tax Cut Statistics Disputed," in the March 2 Washington Post
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Last week Bush called the U.S. air strikes in Iraq "routine" and so did his spinners, including Condi Rice. Now, as the Village Voice reports, the Bush air strikes were anything but "routine." "Pentagon officials revealed the recent air strikes in Iraq were designed to take out a fiber-optic network, being built by the Chinese, that would link the different parts of Saddam Hussein's air defense system. The military aid violates United Nations sanctions against Iraq. This bit of news raised ticklish questions for Bush, since his administration was just beginning to take up relations with the Chinese government. Things quickly took a chilly turn, as the president issued a stern statement. "Let me just tell you this," he said. 'It's risen to the level where we're going to send a message to the Chinese.'" Politex, 2/24/01
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Bush "still seeks to play to his right wing, and despite a stated desire to "move on," last week gave the go-ahead for a criminal investigation of the Marc Rich pardon." --Village Voice, 2/21/01
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"The administration pretends that it is offering broad tax relief for working families. Last week Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill declared that the plan "would focus on helping those people who are close to the low-income and middle-income brackets," adding that "it would affect every American that currently pays taxes." This statement isn't technically a lie [but it sure is a lie in its implications]: "close to" need not actually mean "in," and "affect" need not mean that a family's taxes are actually reduced. But one has to say that Mr. O'Neill, whom the press has portrayed as a straight talker, is learning his new trade very quickly. --Paul Krugman, 2/11/01
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Bush "said throughout the campaign [that] the huge surpluses forecast for the next 10 years make a massive tax cut only fair and proper. On the other hand, he warns now, the declining economy requires a massive tax cut to prop it up. Believing that the country faces, at the same time, a declining economy and huge unending surpluses is the trick that the Bushies manage effortlessly. It's a belief that while a recession is about to reduce our tax revenues now -- or might already be doing it -- we can confidently dispense the ones projected for 2010." --Oregon Live, 2/8/01
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"President Bush scrambled yesterday to defend his commitment to race relations after his chief of staff [not] mistakenly said the office devoted to that issue would be closed. White House officials insisted chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. had been misinformed when he told USA Today that the office created by President Bill Clinton, would be shuttered. The officials said Bush will...continue to focus on race relations with a Task Force on Uniting America that will not have its own office but will involve senior officials from several parts of the White House. The confusion marked the first significant stumble of a White House that has basked in mostly favorable reviews for its smooth and disciplined performance. The episode also marred Bush's careful effort to repair his relations with African Americans, many of whom remain embittered about the vote in Florida." --WP, 2/8/01
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"Several House Democrats who attended a private retreat at which President George W. Bush spoke Sunday said the president appeared confused about one of the first executive orders he signed after taking office. The White House, in turn, called it a simple disagreement over policy. According to Democrats in the room, Bush stumbled as he answered the last of a series of nine questions by House Democrats. "He was boxed into a corner," said Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Florida. Others said the president seemed uncomfortable, with one noting, "He turned bright red." The question came from Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-California, who asked Bush about an executive order banning U.S. funding for international aid groups that provide abortions or abortion counseling, even if the U.S. funds are not directly used for the abortion work. Bush signed the executive order January 22. Pelosi asked the president if it was a "double standard" to prohibit that funding because the administration opposes the groups' abortion activities, but allow funding to faith-based charities which conduct religious activities using private funds. Bush's response, Democrats said, implied he thought his executive order had outlawed only the direct financing of abortions. --CNN, 2/5/01
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"Had Bush wished to be forthright, he should have said, "It is my conviction that any group that actively supports abortion rights should be punished by being denied taxpayer assistance for its other endeavors." That would have been a much more accurate explanation. He could also have argued that in the real world all funds are fungible. Consequently, if you provide millions to an overseas family planning program for non-abortion services, that allows it to divert other funds to its abortion-related work. But if Bush depended on that reasoning, he would undermine his own faith-based initiative, which is predicated on the assumption that the government can give money to a religious outfit for social services without subsidizing the religious functions of the group. (Money for soup kitchens, but not for proselytizing between courses.) Instead, the president falsely depicted his action. --David Corn, 2/5/01
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"In his premier action in office, Bush reimposed Ronald Reagan's global gag order that prohibited U.S. government family planning funds from going to overseas groups that provide abortion services, lobby for abortion rights, or counsel pregnant women that abortion is an option. In his two-paragraph statement explaining the decision, Bush noted, "It is my conviction that taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion, either here or abroad. It is therefore my belief that the Mexico City policy should be restored." This was a disingenuous remark, for the funds in question -- $425 million -- do not underwrite abortion-related activity. Yes, some family planning groups that do offer or support abortion services would have received a portion of these millions, but that money would only support non-abortion activities. Bush's "conviction" was misapplied. His revival of the gag rule was a punitive step aimed at outfits that engage in legal health services and advocacy." --David Corn, 2/5/01
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"The military overwhelmingly supported Mr. Bush; officers thought that they had an understanding — nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more — that defense spending would quickly expand once he reached the White House. Indeed, senior officers have been telling Congress that they need a 30 percent increase in their budget. Guess again. Last week, according to newspaper reports, Mr. Bush told lawmakers that there would be "no new money this year for defense." Karen Hughes, a counselor to Mr. Bush, conceded that "we may in fact need resources" for the military — may? after all that martial rhetoric? — but made it clear that there was no rush. One officer bitterly declared, "It sounds like campaign promise No. 1 being broken." --Paul Krugman, 2/4/01
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