FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

•According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, only 6 percent of the current federal budget deficits can be blamed on the sluggish economy. The other 94 percent is due to the current administration’s fiscal policy.

•The Comptroller General of the United States, David M. Walker, has pointed out that our current deficit of $521 billion, plus the $7.1 trillion we were already carrying, translates into $24, 000 per person (including infants and children). The Bush Administration has yet to include the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq into any of its budget projections.

•If the President’s tax cuts become permanent as proposed, our debt will soar another $5 trillion.

THE TWO AMERICAS

•In the 1950s the corporate share of government tax revenues totaled 28 percent. Today corporations pay 7 percent.

•In the 1950s corporations paid 5 percent of the GDP in taxes. Today they pay a mere 1.4 percent.

•During the roaring ’80s, the average CEO’s salary was 40 times that of the average worker. Today’s CEO makes more than 400 times what the average worker makes.

•CEOs’ median compensation went up 18 percent last year, while the typical worker saw a 2.23 percent raise.

•The majority of income growth since 1990 has been concentrated in the upper 1 percent of the population.

•With his tax cuts, George W. Bush personally saved $30, 858. The average annual salary in the U.S. is $33,636.

•Gross income is down 5.1 percent since 2000.

•Wages and salaries grew the slowest on record in 2003.

JOBS

•Statistically, the last three years have seen the worst job expansion in the history of our country. We’ve lost between 1.8 and 2.4 million jobs, even as the workforce increased by approximately 5.25 million.

•22 million jobs were created during President Clinton’s tenure. President George W. Bush is the first president in the modern era since Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) to lose jobs during his tenure.

•According to the 2004 Nashville Metro economic and jobs report, jobs created between 2004 and 2006 will earn an average of 12 percent less than the same jobs between 2000 and 2003. The study also estimates that about 14.5 percent fewer people with new jobs will have health coverage during that period, as compared to those who lost jobs between 2000 and 2003.

HEALTH CARE

•We have 43 million people without health insurance in this country—3.8 million more than when George W. Bush took office.

•Those who do have insurance have seen steep increases in the cost of their policies. Rising insurance costs make employers hesitant to hire and give incentive to lay off existing workers, thus adding to our rising unemployment rate.

•Drug makers have raised prescription prices at more than three times the rate of inflation this year, negating much of the savings promised by the recent Medicare bill passed by Congress and supported by the president.

•The Medicare bill ended up costing $150 million more than proposed by the Bush administration—mostly subsidies to the large HMOs and drug companies.

•In the President’s 2003 State of the Union address he promised $15 billion over five years for AIDS treatment in poor African and Caribbean nations. Fourteen months later, our contribution to the Global Fund totaled $200 million—1/15 of what Bush promised.

•According to a recent comparison of 13 countries in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the United States ranks an average of 12th—second from the bottom—for 16 available health indicators. The U.S. has the most expensive health care system on the planet, but millions of Americans without access to care die from illnesses that could be successfully treated if diagnosed in time. Poor people line up at emergency rooms for care that could be provided in a doctor’s office or clinic. And each year tens of thousands of men, women and children die from medical errors, and many more are maimed.

GAS

EDUCATION/SOCIAL SERVICES

•In the current year, President Bush’s “Leave No Child Behind” initiative is under-funded by $9.4 billion, and several states have begun to sue the federal government to be let out of its requirements. Tennessee is under-funded by $115 million, and Davidson County alone is under-funded by $15.5 million.

•The president’s 2005 budget calls for cuts in 128 programs, such as housing assistance vouchers, child care for the poorest working families, the elderly and the disabled, and other social services. These cuts add up to just 1 percent of the current deficit.

MILITARY/VETERANS

•According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Bush administration has proposed to cut nearly $1 billion out of the Veterans Affairs budget for 2006.

•In addition, the White House has attempted to cut combat pay of troops currently in combat. Further, President Bush has cut $1.5 billion from the Armed Forces Family Housing budget at a time when the House Armed Services committee reports that troops are living in deplorable conditions.

THE ENVIRONMENT

President Bush has the worst environmental record of any president in U.S. history:

•The president has cut his own Environmental Protection Agency by 7 percent.

•The Bush administration has repealed and weakened key elements of the Clean Air Act. The release of dangerous chemicals and mercury has risen by at least 5 percent during his tenure.

•The current administration has also stalled enforcement of the Clean Water Act and weakened its provisions, putting many of our nation’s endangered wetlands and streams at risk.

•The Bush White House has allowed hazardous-waste ‘Superfund’ cleanup funding to expire, shifting the cleanup burden from polluters to taxpayers.

•In 2003 the Bush administration halted reviews by the Bureau of Land Management for wilderness protection.

•The Bush EPA has eased requirements that would force power plants to install pollution-reducing equipment when they expand a plant.

•The Bush administration plans to allow commercial logging in the Giant Sequoia National Monument. This is directly in opposition to the proclamation issued by President Clinton at its dedication in 2000 outlawing any commercial logging within the monument.

•According to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, as fast as polluted streams in Tennessee can be fixed, others are becoming too dirty for swimmers and so polluted that fish are killed. Only 65 to 70 percent of the state’s creeks, streams and rivers are considered clean enough to support desired uses, such as irrigation and fishing.

•Tennessee's four metro areas continue to be in the top 25 in the nation for ozone pollution—Knoxville was listed as the asthma capital of the country last year. And the Smokies are dying in the upper elevations from tons of pollutants blown into the park. Bush's plan would give industry and utilities more waivers and decades to clean up these pollutants, damaging public health in our four metro areas and killing the Smokies.

•President Bush’s Office of Surface Mining allows mountaintop removal for mining operations. In this practice, tops of mountains literally are scraped away to get to minerals like coal. The waste often is dumped into valleys, polluting and sometimes destroying streams. Zeb Mountain in Tennessee is such a case: Several streams near the mountain have been destroyed by the dumping of mine waste into their headwaters.

•The White House is proposing an elimination of the roadless rule, which protects undeveloped areas in the national forests. This would open these conservation areas to timber, oil and gas development. In Tennessee, 85,000 acres in the Cherokee National Forest, currently in wilderness status, would be opened unless the governor specifically requested their protection.

John Kerry’s environmental record is impressive:

•As a Senator, Kerry consistently supported the Sierra Club’s agenda; the League of Conservation Voters this year gave Kerry a 96.5 percent career rating, the highest LCV rating of any presidential nominee ever from a major party. He has been a Senate leader on fuel efficiency, led the charge against the Bush administration’s attempts to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and has strongly opposed the nominations of anti-environmental candidates for judicial and federal agency appointments. Kerry has championed legislation supporting Endangered Species Act protections, opposed efforts to open national monuments to drilling, voted to strengthen public lands protections, and opposed the Bush administration’s attempts to weaken Clean Air and Clean Water Act protections.

•Senator Kerry advocates removing the incentives in federal regulations and tax policy that encourage sprawl, and he favors restoring the Superfund Act’s "polluter pays" trust fund to clean up hazardous waste sites. He has promoted an energy policy that would reduce our dependence on oil, increase our energy efficiency and increase the amount of clean, renewable energy used to generate electricity. In 1997 Kerry traveled to Kyoto to promote the climate control accords that President Bush subsequently shunned, and he has stated that as president he would work to re-establish the United States as a world leader on environmental policy.

IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN

•According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost $55 to $60 billion next year, not counting the expenses of rebuilding the two countries. That’s more than double what President Bush has requested. None of the budgets the current administration has proposed has included costs of the war and rebuilding Iraq.

•Each American taxpayer is responsible for nearly $1,200 of the cost of the war in Iraq, effectively negating the supposed “tax refunds” handed out twice by the Bush White House.

•The Joint Chiefs of Staff and military planners requested a force nearly double the size that was actually used for the invasion. The larger force could have created greater stability in the region and much greater security for our allies. Instead the U.S. is funding controversial, expensive private contractors with taxpayers’ money. Private contractors have been the victims of the kidnappings and executions in Iraq, and were involved in the prison abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib.

•The war in Iraq has bled troops and resources from fighting the war against terrorism in Afghanistan.

•The Bush administration’s de-Baathification process ignored cultural realities in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and has provided the insurgency with a rich supply of angry, desperate recruits. There was never an exit strategy for Iraq. Even Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage admits under testimony, “We underestimated the enemy.”

•Current administration plans are for building 14 permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq.

•Since President Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech on the aircraft carrier, more than 900 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq. Before that, 148 had died during the war.

9/11 AND TERRORISM (Part 1)

•The United States has made virtually no progress in Afghanistan (the forgotten country) since major combat broke in Iraq. In fact, attacks and insurgencies have increased, according to the New York Times (Aug. 1, 2004). “There are still some huge challenges, mainly in the security area,” says Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, the top American commander in Afghanistan. This is in contrast to the recent withdrawal of 2,000 Marines and 18,000 American and other Allied troops by the Bush administration. Malim Dadu, the intelligence chief in Helmand province, estimates that the Taliban are 50 percent stronger than they were a year ago and are increasingly well funded.

•According to the 9/11 Commission report, the U.S. Government had 10 opportunities to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden before September 11: four during the eight-year Clinton administration and six during the first nine months of the Bush White House.

•According to the 9/11 Commission, border agents still don’t have the support or resources to stop terrorists entering our country either from the north or south.

•There is absolutely no clear link between al Qaeda and Iraq, according to the 9/11 Commission. There is, however, a certain identifiable link between Iran and al Qaeda.

•According to the 9/11 Commission report, President Bush and his senior advisors were briefed several times on the threat of terrorism and al Qaeda after the 2000 election was decided. The new Bush administration decided to focus on China, the collapse of the Middle East peace process, Russia and North Korea.

•Though it was proven in the first months of the Bush presidency that al Qaeda was indeed responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, the Bush White House chose not to retaliate against the enemy even when clear opportunities were presented to them by American intelligence agencies.

•According to the 9/11 report, there was no serious focus on terrorism in the first nine months of the Bush administration. The first principals meeting on al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden wasn’t held until September 4, 2001.

•Before 9/11 the Treasury Department did not consider terrorist financing important enough to mention it in its national strategy for money laundering.

•More time has elapsed between September 11, 2001, and today than between Pearl Harbor and D-Day, yet there has been little if any progress in the war on terrorism.

•According to the New York Times (Aug.8, 2004), in the summer of 2001, as warnings of a possible terrorist attack grew louder, key information about al Qaeda was bottled up within the American government because of miscommunication and turf wars. The White House held few high-level strategy meetings on the threat. Tantalizing leads went unconnected.

•According to the 9/11 Commission report, the Bush administration did not develop new diplomatic initiatives on al Qaeda with the Saudi government before 9/11. Instead they focused on Iraq and ongoing Israeli-Palestinian violence. We now know that 15 of 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

•The assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict (SOLIC), the key counterterrorism policy office in the Pentagon, had departed on January 20, 2001, and had not been replaced as of September 11.

•Donald Rumsfeld admitted to the 9/11 Commission that the Defense Department was not adequately prepared to deal with new threats like terrorism.

9/11 AND TERRORISM (Part 2)

•The Justice Department prepared a draft fiscal year 2003 budget that maintained but did not increase the funding level for counterterrorism over its pending fiscal year 2002 proposal. The FBI director appealed for more counterterrorism enhancements, an appeal Attorney General Ashcroft denied on September 10, 2001.

•The Presidential Daily Brief received by George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, contained the following headline: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” Further, “The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Laden’s first serious attempt to implement a strike in the U.S.” and “al Qaeda members—including some who are U.S. citizens—have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.”

•Though according to CIA director Tenet the “lights were blinking red” in various intelligence agencies all summer in 2001, the Bush administration held no further discussions regarding the possibility of an al Qaeda attack in the United States in the month before September 11.

•Richard Clarke, former National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, testified to the 9/11 Commission that he mentioned to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice at least twice before September 11 that al Qaeda sleeper cells were likely in the U.S.

•Although the FAA had authority to issue security directives mandating new security procedures, none of the few that were released during the summer of 2001 increased security at checkpoints or on board aircraft.

•Firefighters in New York City are still waiting for the first responder technology promised to them by President Bush after September 11.

•Acting FBI director Tom Pickard claims that after his first two briefings to Attorney General Ashcroft on the threat of terrorism, the Attorney General told him he did not want to hear about the threats anymore.

•In July 2001, an FBI agent in the Phoenix field office sent a memo to FBI headquarters and to two agents on international terrorism squads in the New York field office advising of the “possibility of a coordinated effort by Usama Bin Ladin” to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools. The agent based his theory on the “inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest” attending such schools in Arizona. The agent made four recommendations to FBI headquarters: to compile a list of civil aviation schools, establish liaison with those schools, discuss his theories about Bin Laden with the intelligence community, and seek authority to obtain visa information on persons applying to flight schools. His recommendations were not acted on

•An addendum to the official 9/11 Commission report establishes that flights of Saudi nationals, including members of the Bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the United States on charter flights in the first few days after the attacks, even though at that time no other commercial flights were allowed nor approved for anyone else in the U.S. The Bush administration continues to insist that it did not happen.

•Few government officials envisioned a September 11-like scenario, despite specific intelligence that al Qaeda was looking to hijack planes and plow them into landmark buildings, according to the 9/11 Commission. (Tennessean, Sept. 6, 2004)

•The North American Aerospace Command did begin an exercise to ensure that no airplane could attack the Pentagon, but the idea was abandoned because those involved felt it was “too unrealistic,” according to the Commission. (Tennessean, Sept. 6, 2004)

•More than 1,000 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, more than 800 since combat operations ended and George W. Bush stood in front of the “Mission Accomplished” banner. More than 7,000 young men and women have been wounded and/or lost a limb in Iraq since the war began.

•After 9/11 the FBI requested $1.5 billion from the government to better counter terrorism. The Bush administration gave them one-third of that.