After reading Aaron Brown’s submission (“Bush deserves recognition for compassion,” Nov. 22), I rushed to make sure the definition of compassion hadn’t changed – it hasn’t. After coming to this reassuring conclusion, one can understand my confusion – George “Dubya” Bush ... compassionate?
Do not let the inconsistencies and half-truths fool you. (When you start quoting Bill O’Reilly as a reliable news source, you know you’ve got a problem.)
President Bush and his fellow Republicans aren’t completely devoid of compassion. (Their support of Terri Schiavo was heartwarming, especially since it was not in any way motivated by political strategy.) It’s just that their compassion tends to be directed toward less conventional things – wealth, oil, big business, tax cuts and the top 10 percent of the population.
One simply needs to look at the president’s record on poverty to truly see how much he cares about the poor. As Mediamatters.org has shown, the poverty rate under Bush has increased from 11.7 percent in 2001 to 12.7 percent in 2004.
While it is true that this percentage is lower now than it sometimes was under President Clinton, one should not overlook the fact that the poverty rate during the Clinton administration decreased from 15.1 percent in 1993 to 11.3 percent in 2000.
More importantly, the number of Americans who are plagued with poverty has increased under Bush, from 31 million in 2001 to 37 million in 2004. Of course Bush is allocating more money to the poor – he’s got more of them to deal with.
It’s hard to believe that the president has really put the needs of the poor at the top of his agenda. Take a look at the distribution of tax cuts throughout the American population – a majority of the cuts benefit the top 10 percent. But supporters like Brown argue that these tax cuts put money into the pockets of the American public. On average, the bottom 60 percent gets $330 from the president’s tax cuts and the bottom 20 percent only $27, while the top 20 percent gets $5,055 from the cuts – not necessarily life-changing for those who need it most.
The deficit Bush’s tax cuts created has led to a reduction in the funding of important programs that benefit the poor the most. A major factor for this deficit isn’t compassion, as Brown would like you to believe. It’s the president’s desire to coddle the wealthy, and the ridiculous spending habits of the Republican-led Congress that Bush has failed to rein in.
I’d certainly like to see Bush put an end to his tax cuts, which by some estimates have cost $819 billion since being put in place in 2001. There should be no need to cut programs such as food stamps for legal immigrants, or reduce child support enforcement, which are meant to help the poor.
It is certainly nice that the president chooses to fund charities (even though nearly all of them are faith-based). It’s also great to hear that nearly 50 percent of minorities own homes (although there is still a considerable gap between minority home ownership and non-Hispanic white home ownership).
But the president has a long way to go before he can be considered compassionate in my eyes. I’ll start calling him compassionate when he starts working to address the more pertinent needs of the poor. Or when he admits he manipulated the public in the rush to war in Iraq (a poorly planned endeavor) and apologizes for endangering over 150,000 troops in Iraq and millions of Iraqi civilians. Or better yet, when he steps up and puts an end to the idea that suspects captured in the U.S.-led war on terrorism should not be held under the standards put in place under the Geneva Conventions.
“Compassionate conservative” – this phrase works like Feb. 29; it comes up every four years. But in between that time, we get a real sense of what the president stands for. Kudos to him for being the first president with an MBA. (I’ll overlook his failed business endeavors and the SEC investigation.) But let’s not get ahead of ourselves by clamoring for sainthood.
Tsega is a fourth-year physiological science student.