I don’t know what his beefis,” President George W. Bush told a reporter after an Iraqi journalisthurled a shoe at him and yelled “This is your farewell kiss, you dog!”during a press conference in Baghdad.
AlthoughBush may be clueless about why Muntadar al-Zaidi reacted so strongly,the president could take a trip down memory lane and consider the longlist of his administration’s failures, helpfully compiled by the Centerfor Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group based in Washington,D.C. The center just released a new report, “Broken Government: AnAssessment of 128 Executive Branch Failures Since 2000,” which willmake readers want to throw their own shoesand moreat Bush and hiscronies. Some of the failures include:
- Bush’s wild spending spree. PresidentClinton left office with a $127 billion budget surplus, but Bush turnedthat into a $32 billion deficit after just one year on the job. Now,Bush will give President-elect Obama a $455 billion deficit in 2009.Culprits include the Iraqwar (now costing $12 billion a month, or about $904 billion for allmilitary operations since 2001), Bush’s tax cuts, the imploding economyand the cost of health care.
- Turning a blind eye to tax cheats. Morethan $100 billion in revenue is lost each year thanks to U.S. companiesthat use overseas subsidiaries or shell companies to hide theirprofits. Part of the problem is that the Internal Revenue Service underthe Bush administration has reduced audits of offshore taxpayers andhuge corporations (just 26% of big corporations were audited in 2007,compared to 70% in 1990). Audits of individuals earning more than$100,000 have been cut in half since 1996, while audits of the workingpoor now total 40% of all investigations.
- Lying about the threat from Iraq. Bush and seven members of his administration made 935 “demonstrably false” statements leading up to the invasion of Iraq.In recent history-revising interviews, Bush seems not to be bothered bythe lies. When a reporter broke the news to him that Al Qaeda didn’texist in Iraq until after the United States invaded, Bushmerely replied, “So what?” The center turned up 17 military-relatedfailures in its investigation, including poor health care for veterans,failure to regulate security contractors and the bloated budget of theU.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
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Failing to update financial regulations. “I’msorry it’s happening,” Bush said about the financial crisis, the worstsince the Great Depression. Yet the Bushera Securities and ExchangeCommission (SEC) did not limit or object to the highly risky financialtoolslike credit default swapsthat got us into this mess. What’smore, in 2004 the SEC allowed investment banks to take on more debt andcut the number of regulators who oversee these institutions, preferringto let the investment banks regulate risk themselves.
Adding to the number of Americans without health insurance. When Bush took office a whopping 39.6 million Americans under 65 did not have health insurance. Nowthat number has ballooned to 45 million. The National Academies’Institute of Medicine estimated that up to $130 billion is lost everyyear due to the impaired health of the uninsured.
The politicization of science. TheBush administration took magical thinking to new heights by downgradingthe importance of science in policy-making. It dragged itsheels when making appointments to the Food and Drug Administration andthe National Institutes of Health, and a congressional committee foundthat the administration “repeatedly suppressed, distorted or obstructedscience to suit political and ideological goals.”
Giving mercury polluters a free pass. TheWhite House allowed utility industry lobbyists to influence anEnvironmental Protection Agency rule change that would weaken toxicmercury emission regulations. The proposed change was so dangerous thata federal appeals court spiked it earlier this year.Screwing over the next generation. Dependenceon foreign oil has grown from 35% in 1973 to 60% in 2006; only 3% ofthe country’s electricity comes from alternative sources such as solarand wind. Bush’s pet project, No Child Left Behind, turned into a $40billion unfunded mandate for school districts around the country.Despite the program’s high profile, minority and disadvantaged studentshaven’t seen meaningful gains. Bush is also unconcerned aboutthe impact of environmental hazards on children’s health, allowing theEPA to ignore input from an advisory committee on children’s healthprotection and allowing a related task force to expire in 2005. And theConsumer Product Safety Commission, thanks to a drastic cut in staffand budget, has allowed toxic toys to hit store shelves. In 2007, anestimated 35% of all toys contained lead, while only 20% of all toyshad no evidence of any harmful chemicals.
To read the entire report, go to www.publicintegrity.org.What’s your take? Write: editor@shepex.com or comment on this story online at www.expressmilwaukee.com.
