Help me understand what Bush is all about?

Question

I have been observing what Bush tends to favor of late and what he tends to reject. It seems to me that the common denominator is ...if the proposed bill or law is designed to use the tax payers' money to help tax payers here in america, whether we are talking education, infrastructure repair, healthcare, stem cell research,etc... Bush seems to almost always oppose those bills and vetoes them. On the other hand Bush himself also requests funds from tax payers money, and he prefers to use them for things that have nothing to do with using tax payer money on the taxpayers. So that if the moneys will be used by tax payers, you can count that Bush will veto it.

I am now beginning to study politics, but this is what I have gathered so far. Do I have it right?

Answer 1

Bush is the king of borrow here in the US and spend elsewhere. He is a fiscal wreck for the US. His only goal is to pad the profits of defense and energy corporations. He has diverted funds from pell grants to fund Balckwater and Haliburton.

Neo-cons do not appear to be interested in investing in US citizens. They seem bent on having the largest CEO profits that US tax money can buy. Meanwhile our shortage of Engineers and other critical human capital is growing worse every year.

Answer 2

that isn't the way I read the President at all.

My reading is that President Bush is a rock-ribbed conservative who makes decisions based on his values when he can and on the weight of the evidence when his values offer little guidance.

Example: Conservatives know that welfare [handouts based on some status variable, frequently negative] does not work. The old welfare programs lead to many, many families without men in them because a woman with kids but without a man got free money while one otherwise similarly situated with a man in the house got nothing.

Workfare, as passed in 1996 proved spectacularly successful in moving people permanently off the dole and into jobs. Jobs rather naturally lead to better jobs and better jobs create positive self-esteem, which welfare never did create.

Example: earmarks [budget pork] are almost always about re-electing some specific politicians by taking money from everyone else's constituents. From a national perspective, they are usually a poor deal for the country as a whole and thus a bill that carries "too many" earmarks is a veto magnet.

Interfering with the economy is usually a bad idea. When the free market is permitted to operate, millions of people make individual decisions that closely reflect their situations and priorities. This is almost always [99,999 cases out of 100,000] a far more efficient economic solution than some government program (of which we have a lot that, economically speaking, should be abolished).

On the other hand, national defense is clearly a Federal duty [it is specifically mentioned in the Constitution] and so draws the President's attention.

President Bush is specifically required by his oath of office to defend the Constitution "from all enemies, foreign and domestic." He thus is almost required to ask for funds for such things as missile defense and foreign intelligence agencies, plus the work to control foreign terrorists.

Answer 3

There is much truth in what you say. But most Americans look to the federal government for all their needs and wants. When in fact, it is the individual state that most often should shoulder that responsibility. Infrastructure that includes highways and their upkeep, forestation, environmental obligations, water rights, etc... is often schlepped off toward the federal government when the state needs to ante up.

People should be far more diligent in electing state legislators. May people cannot even name their governor of their own state. When unhappy about trash pick up or the price of the toll road , they are quick to simply cry " Bush".

Answer 4

He has received enormous criticism for not being fiscally conservative, and his base feels that one of the reasons they lost the elections in '06 was because they strayed from their fiscally conservative reputation. So now he is vetoing domestic spending bills to show he's tough on out-of-control spending.

He will spend money on the war, however, because he cannot politically afford failure in Iraq.

There - that's the unbiased opinion on the matter. I'm sure you'll hear all sorts of useless propaganda and hate spewed from both political parties, but...

Answer 5

Yes. That is the gist of republican ideology.

Generally speaking, republicans and Bush hate to spend tax payer money to benefit tax payers domestically here at home. They would much prefer to spend tax payer money on the military and war making, which then creates more hatred for the USA overseas, which causes more wars, which raise the need for more weapons, which required more funding. The bottomline to all this being, that since money is finite, and if its all being used on warmaking and weapons buying, that then leaves very little for use for domestic peacetime things such that you mentioned.
And we do know that they hate spending money on domestic matters.

Bush would rather have Halliburton and Blackwater be making billions than spend one red penny to build an american grammar school.

Answer 6

Bush is merely exploiting beneficial political circumstances. he knows that a veto cannot be overridden at present, so why not veto everything not to his liking? he also doesn't mind to wait congress out on Iraq spending bills...because he knows that, should they actually pull funding, he might actually have a way to blame someone else other than himself for the total disaster which is his war in Iraq.

Answer 7

Yep. That is absolutely dead on.

I was just laughing at the guy above me (Jim Sock) who said you don't have it correct. lol

Its amazing that someone could actually step up and actually try to deny that the reality you see is not real, and he then proceeds to try to paint an alternate reality.

I bet he believes the economy is booming, and that record budget deficits are nothing to worry about, and trade deficits are a sign of, you know it, our booming economy. I would even guess that he agrees with Bush that millions of mexicans coming here to take jobs is good for americans and they don't take jobs from americans and they don't depress wages. In fact, I will bet the ranch, he thinks us being in Iraq reduces the threat of terror.

Answer 8

If you are serious and want to research Bush you will not get anywhere here. You will get nothing but opinions here.

Wikipedia is a good place to start.

Answer 9

I would worry about who's coming into the office instead of what's happening now. I'm a Bush supporter, or was; but this year has been nothing but dissapointments. Sorry I wasn't more help.

Answer 10

He is way over his head-not a good President-surrounded by selfish ignorant spoiled brats.....