#43 - Passing the Buck

“I went to Washington to fix problems, not pass them on to future Presidents.”

George W. Bush
President's Remarks at Victory 2004 Rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota
September 16, 2004

Interesting. Because, from where we sit, Bush seems to have passed quite a few problems off to future generations and their leaders. Here are just a few:

The Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire in 2010 – long enough to get him through a potential second term while passing both the expanding deficit and potential tax increases to a new administration.

John McCain has said the U.S. military is likely to remain in Iraq for 10 to 20 years. The mess Bush has created in Iraq – an entirely avoidable war – will hinder administrations (and kill an untold number of boys and girls growing up in America right now) for years and years to come.

Instead of making real Medicare/drug price reforms, the Bush administration has created a policy that lowers prices at a rate so low they will be overtaken by inflation and gives tremendous concessions to the pharmaceutical industry. A future administration will need to start the entire process over again.

The Bush administration’s overhaul of the EPA, turning it into the Environmental Pardon Agency, has done irreparable harm to this nation’s public lands and completely voided the concept that the needs of today’s and future generations of citizens (to breathe clean air, to name one example) outweigh the needs of big business. Future presidents will have to clean up Bush’s environmental legacy.