State of the Union: just the facts please.

[Zguy28]

Fellow Skins fans, I know the SOTU was nearly 2 weeks ago, but I was just on Factcheck.org and found some interesting info about President Bush's SOTU speech and a Democratic attack ad. Check it out.

For those who don't know, Factcheck.org is non-partisan.

Full Article: http://www.factcheck.org/article376.html

The President left out a few things when surveying the State of the Union:

• He proudly spoke of "writing a new chapter in the story of self-government" in Iraq and Afghanistan and said the number of democracies in the world is growing. He failed to mention that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan yet qualify as democracies according to the very group whose statistics he cited.
  
• Bush called for Congress to pass a line-item veto, failing to mention that the Supreme Court struck down a line-item veto as unconstitutional in 1998. Bills now in Congress would propose a Constitutional amendment, but none have shown signs of life.
  
• The President said the economy gained 4.6 million jobs in the past two-and-a-half years, failing to note that it had lost 2.6 million jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office. The net gain since Bush took office is just a little more than 2 million.
  
• He talked of cutting spending, but only "non-security discretionary spending." Actually, total federal spending has increased 42 percent since Bush took office.
  
• He spoke of being "on track" to cut the federal deficit in half by 2009. But the deficit is increasing this year, and according to the Congressional Budget Office it will decline by considerably less than half even if Bush's tax cuts are allowed to lapse.
  
• Bush spoke of a "goal" of cutting dependence on Middle Eastern oil, failing to mention that US dependence on imported oil and petroleum products increased substantially during his first five years in office, reaching 60 per cent of consumption last year.
  

Analysis

We found nothing that was factually incorrect in the President's Jan. 31 State of the Union address to Congress and the nation. However, we did note some selective use of statistics. We also found that Bush omitted some relevant facts that tended to make the state of the union look less rosy than he presented.

DNC SOTU Attack

Full Article: http://www.factcheck.org/article373.html

An ad released by the Democratic National Committee in advance of President Bush's Jan. 31 State of the Union address accuses him of breaking his word on jobs, education, body armor for troops and the federal deficit. We find it misleading in most respects, but close to the mark on the deficit.

Jobs:The ad gives a misleading picture of Bush's record on jobs, which is weak but not as weak as the ad implies. It uses a misleading statistic that focuses only on one category of employment: manufacturing. In fact, counting all categories of employment, the economy has squeezed out a gain of nearly 2 million jobs since Bush took office five years ago.

Body Armor: The ad also takes liberties with a New York Times story that said the lives of 300 troops might have been saved with "improved" body armor. The ad calls it "proper" body armor, a term not used by the Times story. Actually, some military experts say the bulkier, heavier new armor would unduly weigh down troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Education: The ad says Bush's "No Child Left Behind" legislation has been "underfunded" by nearly $10 billion. That's misleading because federal aid for elementary schools and high schools actually has increased 33 percent under Bush, according to the Congressional Research Service. The "underfunding" refers to the gap that remains between the higher spending levels signed by Bush and the authorization level – the theoretical maximum that could be appropriated. In fact, federal appropritions usually fall short of their authorized levels for education programs, in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Deficit: The ad is close to the mark, however, when it chides Bush on the deficit, which the President said four years ago would be "small and short-term." In fact, the deficit projected for this year is close to a record in dollar terms and higher than average even as measured as a percentage of US economic output. It is nearly the same as in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson was spending heavily for the Vietnam War and his Great Society programs, though less than half what it reached in 1983 under Ronald Reagan.

Analysis

The Democratic National Committee announced Jan. 27 that it would air a 60-second TV television ad on Las Vegas television stations. National Journal's "Ad Spotlight" later reported that the ad would also run Feb. 1 in Nashville, TN where the President is scheduled to make his first speech after the State of the Union address. The new ad is called "Broken Promises" and it features a series of quotes from President Bush, some of which have also been featured in a Kerry Campaign television advertisement that ran in 2004.

Just the facts ma'am. Just the facts.