Final Bush SOTU Address

The New York Times has the prepared text of President George Bush’s final State of the Union address. I read through it and saved myself a bit of time in watching 😉

I participated in a conference call with Senator Jim Webb this afternoon. If you recall, Webb gave the Democratic response last year. NLS was on the call as well and has up his notes about it. Webb issued a press release on the SOTU address, which I have included in its entirety below the fold. Much of this release was covered in this afternoon’s call.

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is offering the Democratic response. Word is she is on the short list of Vice Presidential candidates.

A year ago, I had the honor of delivering the response to the President’s State of the Union address and covered a number of issues that are not only still relevant today, but unfortunately, have increased in terms of the threat to the long-term welfare of our country.

In terms of foreign policy, over the last year the discussion with this administration have been based solely on military activities inside Iraq, rather than the political considerations in Iraq and the diplomatic considerations in the region, and the long-term dangers that have increased throughout the region over the last year, from Lebanon all the way over to Pakistan.

We have seen the movement of much of al Qaeda out of Iraq, largely into Afghanistan and Pakistan. I was discussing this phenomenon before and during my recent trip to Iraq. Unfortunately, after that trip, we saw the assassination of Benazir Bhutto by al Qaeda.

We need a vigorous approach with the strong leadership from the United States to focus on diplomatic solutions that can take advantage of the excellence that our military has brought to the specific situation inside Iraq — not simply the reiteration of what those military people have been doing.

Economically, I worry that this country is moving into an unresolved crisis that at this point is as worrisome as anything we’ve seen since perhaps the Great Depression.

On one hand, we are all aware right now of the crisis that has emerged out of the banking and mortgage industry which has affected banks across the country and internationally as well. As this has developed we have not yet addressed the issues of executive compensation, which I mentioned last year during the State of the Union response. When I graduated from college the average CEO in this country made 20 times what the average worker makes. Today, that average CEO makes 400 times what the average worker makes.

And, we’re not seeing benefits to the average workers themselves from corporate profits. And we have seen no move from this administration to recognize these sorts of issues.

On the horizon, we have a concept of sovereign wealth funds, where foreign governments, including the government of China, are making large-scale investments inside our economy. There are serious concerns, including national security concerns, that arise, and we haven’t heard any word out of this administration on that note.

And finally we have a balance of trade issue in our economy that is going in the other direction to the tune of two billion dollars a day, making our economy vulnerable in many ways.

I also spoke last year about accountability; the accountability of the Presidency to Congress and the accountability of all of us to the American people. We have seen no movement from this administration on that front.

What we have is a situation in which every single issue of consequence that has been brought to the Senate floor has been filibustered by the Republican Party with the direct cooperation of the White House. The previous two-year record for filibusters in the United States Senate was 61 in two years. We just saw last year, in one year, was 62 filibusters. This is a deliberate obstruction of government process. The opposing party seems to be more interested in party politics going into this election than they are in the long term health of our country.

For those who are living in Virginia, I would like to say that Senator John Warner and myself, although we are of opposing parties, have developed a model that could be used for bi-partisanship efforts, truly and sincerely for the good of the country, as well as working on issues for the good of the people of Virginia.

We don’t always agree, in fact we frequently disagree on political issues. But, on all those issues where we come together— as for instance on issues like judgeships—we work openly, we work intimately. We sit down together and work things out. If we can do it for Virginia, we can do it in the country.