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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (533817)	2/1/2004 5:16:12 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Transcript: President's Weekly Radio Address Saturday, January 31, 2004 The following is a transcript of President Bush's weekly radio address: Good morning. This coming week, my administration will release our proposed budget for fiscal year 2005. In that detailed blueprint for government spending, Americans will see my priorities clearly at work. We will devote the resources necessary to win the war on terror and protect our homeland. We'll provide compassionate help to seniors, to schoolchildren, and to Americans in need of job training. And we will be responsible with the people's money by cutting the deficit in half over five years. With troops currently on the ground fighting our enemies, my budget increases defense spending by 7 percent, money that will go the pay for equipment, ammunition, and troop housing. We'll keep our military strong and ready for every challenge that may come. Since I took office, we have increased pay for our men and women in uniform by 21 percent. Next year, I propose raising their pay by another 3.5 percent. Our troops put their lives on the line to defend America, and we owe them our best in return. Given the continued terrorist threat against the American people, my budget nearly triples homeland security spending over 2001 levels, including an increase of nearly 10 percent next year, to $30.5 billion. This money will help tighten security at our borders, airports and seaports, and improve our defenses against biological attack. I'm proposing to raise the budget for the FBI by 11 percent, including a $357-million increase in spending on counterterrorism activities. America will not let its guard down in our war on terror. My budget also focuses on our priorities at home. This year, we'll begin moving towards prescription drug coverage under Medicare by providing drug discount cards to seniors. We'll also help lower-income seniors this year and next with up to $600 in direct assistance for drug costs. We're devoting additional resources to our schools, to help them meet the higher expectations set by the No Child Left Behind Act. My budget calls for a 49-percent increase over 2001 spending on our public schools. There will be additional money for early reading programs for schools in low-income areas, and for enhanced Pell Grant scholarships for students who complete a rigorous curriculum. My budget also asks Congress to fund my Jobs for the 21st Century initiative, which will help young people and adults gain the skills they need to fill the new jobs in our changing economy. This initiative will help high school students who are falling behind in reading and math by supporting better teaching methods. And with the support of Congress, we will provide new funding to America's fine community colleges, to help them teach the skills our changing economy demands. We're meeting these priorities within a responsible budget. Under my plan, overall discretionary spending will grow at less than 4 percent. And non-security-related spending would rise less than 1 percent, the smallest such proposed increase in 12 years. By exercising spending discipline in Washington, D.C., we will reduce the deficit and meet our most basic priorities. To assure that Congress observes spending discipline, now and in the future, I propose making spending limits the law. This simple step would mean that every additional dollar the Congress wants to spend in excess of spending limits must be matched by a dollar in spending cuts elsewhere. Budget limits must mean something, and not just serve as vague guidelines to be routinely violated. This single change in the procedures of the Congress would bring further spending restraint to Washington. Americans expect government to meet its most basic responsibilities -- protecting citizens from harm, and promoting prosperity and compassion at home. Americans also expect our government to live within spending limits. My 2005 budget is designed to meet both of these goals, using tax dollars wisely and by focusing resources where they are most needed. Thank you for listening. URL:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,110057,00.html

To: calgal who wrote (533817)	2/1/2004 5:16:23 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Wesley Pruden Uneasy rides the pol on a skittish horse newsandopinion.com \| John Kerry is riding high, but on Howard Dean's horse, and it's a skittish critter. The governor is still rubbing his raw rear end. The senator is running well in nearly all the states where Democrats vote next Tuesday, and anyone could tell, watching last night's debate in South Carolina, that the prototype Massachusetts liberal is suffering a case of front-runner disease. He's not trying to win so much as trying not to lose. It's what the football coaches call "the prevent defense" — let the opposition complete a few passes and make a plunge or two between the tackles while the clock runs down. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't when the cliches fall like stars on Alabama. The political-science professors are furiously recycling to the lazy reporters the things they read in the newspapers: Kerry has the momentum. He's raising the cash. People want a winner. Voters are naturally gravitating to somebody who has won something. Kerry, Botox or not, looks presidential. And of course, there's the standby bromide: "Only time will tell." Howard Dean won the Pundit Primary, and John Kerry is winning the Pundit Runoff. Mr. Kerry is getting the endorsements now, in the way that Howard Dean was getting them barely more than a fortnight ago. Al Gore is only one of the has-been pols who wishes he could take his back. Jimmy Carter, who never made the major leagues despite his one term in the White House, was nevertheless clever enough to hedge his endorsement. He invited Mr. Dean to Sunday school, where if he paid attention he could learn the difference between Jesus and Job, but he left without the words that he went all the way to Plains to get. Endorsements are important only to the people making them (and that usually includes newspaper endorsements), as we saw demonstrated again in Iowa. The only ones that count will be the endorsements beginning Tuesday night in seven states. The results to watch are the delegate counts. Howard Dean, John Edwards and even Wesley Clark could nibble enough to deny Mr. Kerry delegates even as he wins the popular votes in the primaries. John Edwards looks like the chief nibbler in South Carolina, where Messrs. Edwards, Kerry and Clark are fighting for the right to name 45 delegates to the Boston convention. Joe Lieberman is in South Carolina, too, though it's not clear why. Joe the ambitious candidate could never come to terms with Joe the principled man. Mr. Edwards is the empty suit in the race, who ran for president when he concluded that he couldn't get re-elected to a second term in the Senate. Mostly hair and teeth with the trial lawyer's gift of gab, he makes a certain kind of female voter go all moist and giggly in the way she went aflutter for an earlier presidential Bubba, and this may be the formula for nibbling just enough of the delegates to prevent an early Kerry lockup. You can bet Bill and Hillary are watching anxiously. Mr. Edwards can't win in Missouri (74 delegates), where the Widow Carnahan endorsed Mr. Kerry yesterday, but he can do well enough to pilfer a few delegates. In New Mexico (26 delegates), Bill Richardson, the savvy governor, says Mr. Kerry is "the clear front-runner" but warns that "the race is not over." Howard Dean can nibble at him here. Messrs. Edwards and Clark are slugging it out for the Bubba vote in Oklahoma (40 delegates), where the general was thought to have the situation well in hand only days ago. There aren't as many Bubbas in the Democratic primaries in Oklahoma (or anywhere in the South) as there used to be, and the general has revealed himself to be a little weird for most Bubbas, who instinctively mistrust anyone above the rank of sergeant. John Kerry's military record, lieutenant or not, has so far made him a sentimental favorite with many veterans, but it's a military record that won't withstand the scrutiny that's coming. His slander of the GIs he left behind in Vietnam is not yet well known. "They ... raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power," he told a Senate committee in 1971 when he was just home from the war, and "cut off limbs, [blew] up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam." Miserable lies, and he never produced evidence or repudiated the lies. Americans tolerate a lot of hyperbole in election season, but stuff like this will unhorse even a Botox man.