On Mon, 06 Sep 2004 20:55:54 -0400, JDG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Some interesting notes from The Economist, July 15th edition: > http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=2921425 > (requires paid subsciption) > > The biggest bone of contention is PEPFAR. PEPFAR stands for the President's > Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and the president in question is George > Bush, who proposed the fund in 2003 and persuaded Congress to stump up the > money. > > PEPFAR is offering a total of $15 billion, of which $10 billion is new > cash, over the next five years. One-fifth of the fund is to be spent on > campaigns to prevent the virus from spreading, the rest on treating those > already infected and looking after the bereavedâespecially children. Most > of the new money will be spent in 15 countries, mainly in sub-Saharan > Africa, which is by far the worst affected part of the world.
May I point out that this is $3 bn a year. Bush's budget provided $2 bn. This is similar to his past actions. He got a bi-partisan education bill through Congress because he promised there would be no unfunded mandates and money for new programs would be provided. A lot of Democrats held their noses at parts of the bill or even actively worked with him to get it passed. Less than three months later Bush submitted his budget with 40% of his promised funding cut out. Lately his acceptance speech provided more evidence to consider his words compared to his actions. Bush pledged to "double the number of people served by our principal job training program." That is a nice idea, but he has spent the last four years cutting funding for job training programs. His 2005 budget, for example, proposed to cut job training and vocational education by 10 percent - that's $656 million - from what Congress pledged to those programs in 2002. Bush also promised to increase funding for community colleges. But he was for cutting funding for community colleges before he was for increasing it. Last year, the Bush administration proposed cutting the largest direct aid initiative to community colleges, the Perkins program for technical and vocational training, from $1.3 billion to about $1 billion. He pledged to expand Pell Grants for low- and middle-income families. For three straight years, Bush has proposed freezing or cutting Pell grants. This, despite pledging in 2000 to raise Pell grants to a $5,100 limit. The maximum Pell grant is currently $4,050. His 2000 he also promised 5 million new jobs during his first term, which would have been lower job creation than under Clinton. He will end up missing his 5 million job goal by -6 million. He criticized Kerry in the same speech for proposals that Bush says will cost a disputed $2 trillion dollars. Just one Bush tax proposal alone, to make his wealthy tax breaks permanent since they now expire, is an over $2 trillion dollar hit on the federal debt over the coming ten years. This will be paid with interest by younger taxpayers. His other proposals in the speech would cost over $4 trillion. Bush is a politician, check your wallet and discount what he promises to do by at least 40%. Do other politicians do this - sure. But they are not so brazen and held to be a paragon of virtue. Gary Denton -- #2 on google for liberal news "I don't try harder" _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
