In a Rose Garden press conference yesterday, George W. Bush blamed the Democratic-controlled Congress for the recession. It was classic Bush: cause a problem (in this case, our economic troubles), and then try to blame it on others (in this case, Democrats and farmers). Bush offered nothing new in terms of ideas or solutions, but nevertheless he attacked Congress for failing to support his Right-wing, special-interest-backed policies. All he could propose was destroying a national treasure to help out Big Oil, giving more tax dollars away to the richest Americans, and blaming American farmers.
Consider:
Bush blamed Democratic lawmakers for high gas prices because they oppose his plan to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to petroleum drilling. Yet destroying this national treasure would only provide enough oil for less than 2 percent of our daily gas consumption, for less than a year.
Bush blamed Democrats for the economic woes of ordinary Americans because of their failure to embrace his tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent. Those tax giveaways are great for Wall Street titans like John Paulson, who took home $3.7 billion last year. But that doesn’t do much for the rest of us. Simply hitting rewind and asking the top 1 percent of wealthy Americans to pay their fair share would produce $1.9 trillion in tax revenue over 10 years. That’s enough to fund a 15 percent annual increase in spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; or – amazingly – to fund a 38-fold increase in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program; or to increase federal funding for mass transit 19-fold.
And our President blamed the rising price of food on the Democrats – and American farmers – by attacking the new bi-partisan farm bill that is being re-negotiated in both houses of Congress.
President Bush's behavior is reflective of the attitude he's has exemplified throughout his entire Presidency: blame the opposition, never take responsibility. Bush’s see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach rejects objective, fact-based analysis and empirical truth. Our current President, unfortunately, favors blind loyalty over reason and prudence, and asks Americans not to think, but rather simply fall in line behind the ideologies that are currently failing us. The Bush recession was caused in part by his tax cuts that favored the rich, not the rest of us; high oil prices and the costly war in Iraq; and special deals for Wall Street profiteers. Americans get it. Why can’t the President?