Everyone can see from the President’s State of the Union Address that he is the last man standing that has NOT heard the calls of the American people on Iraq.

In the State of the Union address, President Bush demonstrated that he has not listened to the American people and is not ready to work with Congress on their priorities. On the critical issue concerning Iraq, most members of the CBC did NOT vote for the war.

I am very proud that I didn’t vote for it, and I knew from the beginning that it was a sham. I knew that it was going to be President Bush’s Vietnam oil war of choice…yet when you have your head in the lion’s mouth, how do you get it out….it’s not a question of who supports the troops, we all support the troops who are in harm’s way. But the American people, and the Congress, want our troops home, they do not want an expansion of this horrible war.

Just two months ago in the mid term elections the American people made their voices heard loud and clear: they do NOT support the war, nor do they support a troop increase. They want the Iraqi military and Iraqi government to take control of Iraq: not young American soldiers, over 3,000 of whom have already given their lives for this war.

Let us remember that the Bible says: “when there is injustice in the world, the poorest people, those with the least power, are injured the most.” We clearly saw this during Hurricane Katrina. This was a natural disaster, magnified by a man-made disaster…it is now 18 months since Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and to this day, thousands and thousands continue to suffer.

What the nation witnessed was the Bush administration at its worst: a callous government, one that does not care for its own people in a time of need. They also saw an entirely inept government, an ice cold and terribly disorganized federal bureaucracy.

To this day the city of New Orleans still runs at 50% capacity. Only half the city has electricity, half of the hospitals remain closed, and less than half of the population has returned. To me, it seems outright criminal that very little has improved.

Hurricane Katrina symbolizes the serious failings of the Bush administration, a government that preaches compassion but that time and time again demonstrates callousness.

The administration overlooked numerous warnings: it was simply not ready, and was outright apathetic in preparing the region for the scope of Hurricane Katrina’s massive devastation. As a result of the government’s botched response, thousands and thousands of our American brothers and sister do not have their basic needs met.

The President needs to listen to the American people and not just those that fund his campaigns. The President had the opportunity to change course and join the Democratic Congress in working on behalf of America’s families. Yet he did not even mention Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. He did not discuss re-deploying our troops in Iraq. Instead, he spent the night talking about the importance of sending even more troops into harm’s way.

This is a time when the President had the opportunity to lay out his plan to work for America and the American people. Yet what we got was more of the same, more of reverse robin hood, robbing from the poor to give tax breaks to the rich…the American people know that we are not standing by the President, but we are going to stand by our troops, and do all we can to end this war.