A Year of Accomplishment for Special Interests

As he headed to his ranch in Crawford for the month of August,
President Bush gave himself a pat on the back. On his radio address
Saturday, Bush said, "this year Congress and I have addressed many key
priorities." The only problem is, this administration's priorities are
different from your priorities. Every major legislative initiative
signed by the president this year has been a boon to special interests,
but ignored the real needs of the American people.

FOR SPECIAL INTERESTS -- HIGHWAY BILL: On Friday, Congress sent to
President Bush a six-year $286.5 billion highway bill which was
overflowing with wasteful pork spending. Take the $25 million "Bridge
to Nowhere," connecting two South Carolina towns with a combined
population of 2,000. Or the $95 million appropriated to widen a highway
in Sheboygan and Fond du Lac counties in Wisconsin -- "a widening that
the state Department of Transportation says is unnecessary for 15 to 20
years and that legislators approved after bypassing the DOT and a
commission charged with developing major road projects." And thanks to
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), known as "Uncle Ted" for his willingness to
spoil his constituents with pork projects, the bill also includes $200
million for a one-mile span linking Ketchikan, Alaska, with Gravina
Island (currently, fifty people live on Gravina Island -- "they reach
Ketchikan by taking a seven-minute ferry ride") and $1.5 million for a
single bus stop in Anchorage, Alaska.

FOR SPECIAL INTERESTS -- CAFTA: President Bush hailed the final passage
of the Central American Free Trade Agreement by saying that the House
"has acted to advance America's economic and national security
interests by passing the CAFTA-DR agreement." But the combined
economies of the six other CAFTA nations "only equal that of New Haven,
Conn." and "account for barely one percent of U.S. trade." The biggest
winners in the so-called CAFTA victory are the drug and
telecommunications industries, not the American worker. Meanwhile, "the
Bush administration's fiscal irresponsibility with tax cuts and
unnecessary spending priorities has crippled our ability to help
workers retrain and compete on the international stage." Furthermore,
President Bush "has tightened the eligibility requirements for [the
Trade Adjustment Assistance program], denying many workers even the
modest resources available under that program," "pursued policies that
leave many workers who qualify for TAA benefits without access to this
program," and essentially taken the safety net out from under real
workers with real families directly affected by CAFTA.

FOR SPECIAL INTERESTS -- ENERGY BILL: Next up was energy legislation
that lavished the fossil-fuel industries with $515 million in new
subsidies, including "$125 million to reimburse oil and gas producers
for 115% of the costs of remediating, reclaiming, and closing orphaned
wells." The House managed to add $35 billion of pork to the energy bill
in just the last three weeks before it was passed - "a total of $88.9
billion in subsidies to industry over 10 years in the bill." Despite
these handouts, Congress admits the bill will "do nothing in the short
term to drive down high gasoline and other energy prices or
significantly reduce America's growing reliance on foreign oil." A 2004
analysis by the administration's Energy Information Administration
found that the Bush-backed energy bill will actually raise gas prices
and increase oil demand nearly 14 percent by 2010.

FOR SPECIAL INTERESTS -- BANKRUPTCY BILL: Then came the "bankruptcy
reform" monstrosity, which made it more difficult for average Americans
suffering from financial misfortune to declare bankruptcy. The credit
card industry, which took in $30 billion in profits last year and doled
out more than $7.8 million to candidates in the 2004 election cycle,
lobbied relentlessly for the bill, pushing the fiction that
bankruptcies occur because of "irresponsible consumerism" (in bill
sponsor Charles Grassley's (R-IA) words). In fact, "ninety percent of
all bankruptcies are triggered by the loss of a job, high medical bills
or divorce." In recent years, personal bankruptcy rates have shot to
record highs amid a weak labor market and declining health insurance
coverage. The bill created several "new hurdles" that will make it
harder and more expensive for Americans to recover from such episodes,
while failing to stop the actual abuses that plague the system.

FOR SPECIAL INTERESTS -- IRAQ SUPPLEMENTAL: Even the Iraq supplemental
spending was covered with special interest fingerprints. Though the
bills were passed without any provisions to hold the White House
accountable for its flailing Iraq strategy, and failed to deal with the
equipment shortfalls plaguing our troops, they did offer major cash for
questionable contracts and corrupt and incompetent corporations. At the
same time, the Pentagon has pursued "back-door budgeting for the wars."
Gordon Adams, director of security policy studies at George Washington
University, referenced "reduced training, exercises and operating
tempo, slowdowns in maintenance, [and] delays on maintaining
facilities" as ways that the Pentagon has tried to get around paying
for the bloated war costs. Other strategies appear to be not paying
soldiers what they are owed and deducting money for debts that do not
even exist.

FOR SPECIAL INTERESTS -- TORT REFORM: And finally, there was the
so-called "tort reform" legislation, pushed by conservatives who
claimed "the prospect of big jury awards in medical malpractice cases
was causing insurance rates to soar and doctors to abandon their
practices." If you scrape away the overheated rhetoric and look at the
reality, however, a very different picture emerges. The legislation has
no real effect on the cost of health ca the nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office found malpractice costs account for less
than 2 percent of health care spending, and that capping medical
malpractice would affect private health insurance premiums by a measly
one half of 1 percent. Moreover, the caps would "disproportionately
affect" children and seniors who live on fixed incomes. According to
the CBO, it also would "undermine incentives for safety" while at the
same time making it "harder for some patients with legitimate but
difficult claims to find legal representation."