Rhetoric vs. Reality

Rep. David Obey has a great chart listing the differences between President Bush's State of the Union promises vs. the reality of his FY 2006 budget. This year's budget request isn't any better. Here's a sample:

SOTU: “In recent years, you and I have taken unprecedented action to fight AIDS and malaria, expand the education of girls, and reward developing nations that are moving forward with economic and political reform.”
 
Reality: President Bush has announced a new malaria initiative, but his last three budgets made significant cuts to malaria funding.  Last year he requested malaria funding be cut from $90 million to $57 million.
 
SOTU: “Keeping America competitive requires affordable health care.  Our government has a responsibility to help provide health care for the poor and the elderly, and we are meeting that responsibility.”
 
“For all Americans, we must confront the rising cost of care ... strengthen the doctor-patient relationship ... and help people afford the insurance coverage they need.”

Reality: 45 million Americans are without health insurance.  Last year, Bush’s budget cut the government agency responsible for healthcare access, the Health Resources and Services Administration, by $842 million.
 
For example, Bush’s budget: cut Rural Health and Telemedicine by 69% or $76 million; eliminated the Healthy Communities Access Program, which made grants to improve healthcare access for uninsured and underinsured Americans; and cut the Health Professions Programs, which increases the number of minority students in health professions schools and encourages medical students to go into primary care fields and practice in underserved communities, by 96% or $289 million.

It's nice to make a bunch of self-serving statements to the people, but if you keep going back on them year after year after year, pretty soon the Congress manages to catch on. This is a chart that could be mailed to every swing district in the country. The "accountability moment" is just 9 months away.