In last week’s State of the Union address, President Bush said, “In this decisive year, you and I will make choices that determine both the future and the character of our country.”

The choices the President has made in his 2007 budget make the future look bleak for poor and middle class Americans.  We can do better than an immoral budget that cuts funding for health care, education, and clean energy to fund $1.8 trillion in tax cuts for the rich and an unnecessary war in Iraq that has no end in sight. The President’s budget does not live up to the promises he made in the State of the Union.

In the State of the Union, President Bush said, “Keeping America competitive requires affordable health care.  Our government has a responsibility to provide health care for the poor and the elderly.”  

Seniors, already furious about the President’s disastrous Medicare drug benefit, will not swallow his proposed $41 million cut to Medicare and Medicaid in order to fund tax cuts for the rich. In Illinois, there are 124,000 more uninsured individuals than when the President took office, and health care costs have gone up seventy-six percent. Yet the President is doing nothing to bring down costs and cover the uninsured. In fact, he has introduced a phony solution that could actually increase health care costs. The President’s $87 billion Health Savings Accounts, like his ownership society, will leave individuals and employers on their own to find healthcare coverage.

In the State of the Union, President Bush said, “We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity.  Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hardworking, ambitious people – and we are going to keep that edge.” 

The President also continued his raid on student aid. The budget fails to raise the maximum Pell Grant scholarship for the fourth time since 2001. The maximum Pell is now worth $4,050 – $900 less than it was worth in 1975-76.

In the State of the Union, President Bush said, “Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy.  And here we have a serious problem:  America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.  The best way to break this addiction is through technology.”

Last year, the President and the Republicans provided billions of dollars in subsidies and giveaways to American oil companies. If America is addicted to oil, President Bush is the pusher-in-chief.

The President should put his money where his mouth is. Funding for clean energy research in the President’s budget amounts to less than 7 percent of the profits made by ExxonMobil in just the last three months of 2005. Instead of making a serious investment in renewable fuels and hybrid technology, the President continues to direct most of his energy funding to the same old sources like nuclear technology.

In the State of the Union, President Bush said, “Keeping America competitive requires us to be good stewards of tax dollars.”

Our country is facing a fiscal and moral crisis – and it is not because of out-of-control domestic spending. When the President took office, we had a $236 billion surplus. This year, the deficit is predicted to be one of the top five largest in American history, falling somewhere between $337 and $423 billion. The reason for this fiscal reversal is because of the President’s $1.8 trillion tax cuts for millionaires and the hundreds of billions of dollars he has spent on the unnecessary war in Iraq.

Last year the President tried to pull the wool over our eyes about the cost of the war in Iraq.  He refused to request any money for it in his budget, and then after Congress added $50 billion in funding for the war in Iraq, the President came back and asked for an additional $70 billion.  This year, he has requested $50 billion for the war in Iraq, but taxpayers should brace themselves for another bill in the billions later this year.