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In three and a half years Bush has turned the biggest surpluses in history into the biggest deficits in history, and the current projections are for much bigger deficits in the future. Following are the actual and projected deficits, and these number do not reflect the money borrowed from the Social Security trust fund: 2001 $127 billion (actual surplus), 2002 $158 billion (actual deficit), 2003 $374.2 billion (actual deficit), 2004 $550 billion (projected deficit), 2005 $765 billion (projected deficit). The next highest deficit in U.S. history belongs to his father's administration, $290 billion in 1992. The Bush family and the Republicans in Congress appear determined to run the U.S. government into the ground.

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Our country is experiencing a jobless economic recovery that is largely based on our government spending hundreds of billion of dollars more than it collects in taxes. The historically high GNP numbers are a result of a rapidly growing federal government and the expansion of the military industrial complex. Large corporations are still laying people off and moving their operations out of America. The economic recovery that the Republicans claim is the result of their big tax cuts for the rich is really one based on wars and deficit spending. Bush campaigned on a promise that he would "tear down the toll roads to the middle class", but instead he has erected huge barriers to the middle class with bad tax policies that concentrate wealth, bad trade policies that encourage outsourcing of U.S. jobs, spending priorities that have college tuition's skyrocketing, and a economic policy that is based on a failed idea of "trickle down economics" where money and opportunities are given to the very rich with the hope that their success will trickle down to the rest of us.

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Up

Bush inherited the lowest level of unemployment in recent history (4.1%) and in three and a half years he managed to put over 3.3 million people out of work and increased unemployment to over 6.5% of the population. However, these numbers do not reflect that 1.4 million people working in part-time jobs, or the people who have dropped off the unemployment rolls, or the people who have had to take jobs at much lower pay levels, or the people who have given up finding a job. So now there are currently 9.5 million people out of work and Bush refuses to extend their unemployment benefits. Apparently Bush believes that it is "every man for himself" when it comes to employment. He does not believe that it's the governments problem, or something the government should be involved in. America's factories are moving their operations to low cost labor markets in other countries and moving their headquarters to off-shore tax havens so they can avoid paying U.S. taxes. As a result Wal-Mart and McDonalds are now the largest U.S. employers paying poverty level wages to most of it's workers. If these type of policies are allowed to continue the middle class will be squeezed out of existence in America.

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Bush is second on the list, behind Hoover, of U.S. Presidents who were in office during big down turns in the stock markets. The markets shot down when Bush began leading Gore in the polls and trillions of dollars were wiped out. The recent rise in the stock markets is due to low interest rates and a lack of other investment opportunities for the super rich to exploit. Also, Bush's job approval is now at an all time low and the Democrats smell blood and the markets might be reacting the probability of a Democratic leader in Washington in another 6 months.

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Up

More than 3 million people (12.1% in 2002) have been added to the poverty rolls since Bush came into office ($18,556 for a family of four, and $9,359 for a single adult). This is up from 11.2% when he came into office. Bush has been so busy passing tax cuts for the very rich he forgot to raise the meager minimum wage for the poor ($5.15 per hour). Now this administration has responded to these negative number by trying to redefine what is considered poverty and decreasing the number of times per year that this data is reported. The Bush administration wants to re-classify "fast-food workers" as "manufacturing workers" so the data will not reflect the reality of his policies effects on the economy. Bush soul reflects the poverty of humanity.

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Personal and corporate bankruptcies are up 23% and more people then ever are defaulting on their home loans. Workers pension plans are being looted by corporation as they covert to cash balance system, a system that Clinton put a moratorium on in 1999 because it is unfair to long-term employees. The newest Republican federal budget will double the national debt over the next ten years to $12.5 trillion dollars. That will make interest payments on the debt the largest item in the federal budget. It appears that the Republicans are trying to bankrupt the federal government so that their billionaire friends can acquire it's assets (the people's assets) for pennies on the dollar. When people think of Bush they should think "bankruptcy".

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Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Kyoto Treaty and he has rolled back a number of consumer protection laws for air and water quality. He has signed legislation allowing logging on government land. He wants consumers, and not the corporations that made the pollution messes, to pay the cost of cleaning up superfund pollution sites. He promotes the use of oil, gas, and coal over other green alternatives. He refuses to require auto manufacturers to improve their MPG ratings. And he has allowed the energy industry to write their own legislation. Exxon just reported record profits of over $24 billion dollars and gas prices are at record highs. Now, when oil prices are at record highs, is the time when Bush decides that it's a good time to restock the strategic petroleum oil reserves and he will not release any of this oil in an attempt to moderate high gas prices. Maybe electing two oil men from Texas to run our government was not such a good idea after all.

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Health Care cost are up 12.6% and are expected to continue climbing. The Republicans passed, and Bush signed, a prescription drug benefit bill that is nothing more than a corporate welfare bill for the drug and insurance industries. This bill prevents seniors from buying cheaper drugs in Canada, it prevents Medicare from negotiating cheaper drug prices through bulk drug purchases, and it pays HMO's for signing people up. The cost of this bill has skyrocketed since it became law, over $150 billion more than we were told it would cost, and it is now being exposed that many Republicans knew all along that the bills cost was much higher than was being reported and that a cover-up scheme was carried out so their would be enough votes to pass it. It appears that Bush, and the Republicans in Congress, are only concerned about the heath of the bank accounts of their super wealthy financial supporters.

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Bush said he was going to be the education president, just like his father told us when he was running for reelection, but he has broken his promises once again. He has not provided the funds he promised for Head Start and Title I. He has not addressed the skyrocketing cost of a college education. He supports the idea of allowing corporations run our public schools, and he supports vouchers so that private schools can hand pick students they want and public schools will be starved for cash.

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The number of people without health insurance has continued to rise during the past three and one half years of the Bush administration. And that number is expected to continue rising. It appears that Bush's only solution to this problem is tax cuts for the wealthy, and corporate welfare for the big insurance companies. The U.S. is the only major industrialized country without a national health care system. The U.S. continues to experience rapidly rising health care cost that are largely the result of rising insurance cost and higher drug cost. Bush is just a puppet for the insurance and drug industries, and anybody else with a fat wallet.

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Vetoed

Bush initially opposed the creation of this new department and then he would not allow the two biggest departments responsible for the intelligence failures before 9/11, the FBI and CIA, to be included in this new department. The legislation for creating this new department was about 32 pages, but suddenly, the night before the Congress was to vote on it the Republican's turned it into a 500 page pork filled piece of garbage legislation that they then passed into law largely along partisan lines. Several members of Congress have been complaining that Bush has been under funding this new agency. In my opinion Bush's war in Iraq has made the "Homeland" much less secure, and his budget deficits are endangering American's fiscal safety.

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In 2002 homelessness increased 19% and at the same time Bush is repealing the tax incentive that have encouraged charity to the organizations that normally help the homeless; i.e. the estate tax. Bush has been pushing for a huge new government bureaucracy, the Department of Faith Based Initiates, so that the government can give money to religious organizations to take care of the homeless and other needy people in our society. This idea ignores the Constitution separation of church and state and it is designed to get the government out of the business of providing the American people with social safety net protections. Because his faith based plan is highly unconstitutional, and opposed by members of Congress, he has been going around Congress in trying to implement this bad idea through executive orders.

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Two of our biggest allies, German and France, are now mad at America for attacking Iraq when we did. And I suspect that the countries that don't like us are laughing and celebrating the fact that Bush and the Republican Party are deliberately undermining the fiscal health and legal foundations of America. I suspect that the rest of the world hates what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and they blame America for financially supporting Israel while ignoring the Israeli's inhumanity towards the poor and defenseless Palestinian people. Bush's war in Iraq has set off a tidalwave of anti-American and anti-Jewish protest around the world. The new liberal President of Spain pulled his troops out of Iraq and I suspect he hates Bush and would like to see him voted out of office this year. The world hates Bush, and so should the American people.

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The Bush administration has shifted the cost of cleaning up toxic waste sites from the industries that make the messes to the taxpayers. As a result, funding for cleaning up these sites has stopped and the efforts to clean up these sites has also stopped. Bush's new proposals will weaken government regulations over industrial pollution and ignores the effects of global warming. The Bush administration is like a huge oil spill all over Washington D.C., what a mess!

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The Bush administration has not been able to inspire confidence in the American public and his poll numbers reflect that lack of confidence and fear about the direction he has been leading this country. Just before 9/11 Bush's job approval rating was at 50% and dropping fast, but fear and anger about the attack on 9/11 got his poll number to rebound strongly. However, his numbers are once again dropping fast, so watch out for another "wag the dog" motivational crisis.

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Crime rates dropped dramatically all throughout the Clinton years, but they started heading back up just after Bush and the Republicans took over. Murders are up 2.5% and robberies are up 3.7%. Bush has cut funding for the FBI and the cops program, and the huge budget deficits are going to require additional cuts. I suspect that the correlation between crime rates and the administrations leading our government is a direct reflection of the level of corruption in that particular administration. Bush re-nominated the same, previously rejected, extreme right-wing individuals to life-time federal court positions and when the Democrats in Congress refused to confirm them all hell broke lose. I suspect getting these extremist judges appointed was a key part of Bush plan to undermine the U.S. legal system and that is why the Republicans in Congress have been throwing a big temper tantrum.

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The gap between the highest income people in America and all the other people has grown dramatically. Bush's "supply-side" "trickle-down" economics policies have proven to be a major failure and disaster for this country, but it does make the rich much richer. Bush tax cuts have gone overwhelmingly to the top 2% of income earners: he repealed the estate tax, the dividend tax, and cut the top tax rates. Bush tried, but thankfully failed, to pass a huge retroactive tax cut for giant corporations, many of who hide their profits in off-shore tax havens. Under Bush the rich are getting richer and the middle class is getting squeezed. Exxon made a record profit last year, over $23 billion dollars, and gas prices are at record highs. Is the American public being price gouged? If they are, who's side do you think that this administration is on? Clearly Bush and the Republicans in Congress want the wealth of America concentrated into the hands of a few families, but that is a formula for aristocracy, not democracy.

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The Bush administration supports rolling back the "pizza rule", thus allowing lobbyist to pay for meals, sports tickets, golf trips, etc. Political fundraising totals are way up for both political parties. Bush brought back a cash bonus system for federal appointees (cronyism). The documents from Cheney's meetings with energy industry executives is still keep secret from public. The largest group of lobbyist in the U.S., the drug companies, got a big win with Bush's prescription drug bill, and the public was lied to about the true cost of that legislation. The Republican Party is the tobacco industry of American politics and we cannot allow their con job to succeed or the health of our democracy will be irreparably damaged.

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SEC has weakened rules for allowing accounting firms to provide both auditing and consulting services to the same client. Enron, Tyco, and World Com exposed the need for these conflict of interest separation rules. Nothing has been done about the growing trend of U.S. companies re-incorporating off-shore to avoid paying U.S. taxes. The Bush administration has encouraged American companies to outsource their jobs to cheaper foreign labor markets and move their factories to cheaper labor markets with fewer regulations. They also continue to claim that a declining dollar will help our exports, but they don't talk about how it hurts our standard of living. In my opinion, these government leaders in the Bush administration are deliberately undermining the economic strength of this country in an attempt to steal trillions of dollars in U.S. government assets. And in the process they are hurting the middle class and ruining our democracy.

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Bush's tax cuts have gone mostly to the top 1% of income earners. I would have given him a better grade (A+) except I believe, in the long-run, the overall effect of his policies will prove to be negative on the super rich. The first thing Bush did after taking office was pass a giant tax cut that went to the wealthiest people in our society, and since that time their focus has been on more tax cuts for these same wealthy people, even in a time of war. In my opinion, these policies are dangerous to our democracy and they are immoral, but Bush and his buddies in the Republican Party have no shame about their lack of sacrifice.

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The attack on the World Trade Center has given this administration an excuse to pass legislation that has eroded our privacy, limited our freedoms, and taken away our some of our legal rights. Bush refuses to join the World Criminal Court, he has denied access to President Clinton's papers, he appointed a bunch of right-wing puppets to life-time positions of the federal court, and he appointed a known liar to head the office of Total Information Awareness program. The Patriot Act is an infringement our the American people's right to privacy and civil liberties. Our most important tool for holding Bush accountable, the right to vote, is being threatened by electronic voting devices that don't generate a paper audit trail, thus making a vote recount impossible. I recommend that everyone vote using an absentee ballot and make two copies; one for your records and one to send to the top person who you voted for, unless that person is Bush and then just flush it down the crapper.

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Conclusions: Bush is failing badly in all his policies. His smug attitude and constant lying are disruptive to the entire country. We therefore recommend that Bush be demoted to a job that is more in line with his aptitude, like used car sales, prison guard, trash collector, or bagboy.