04/2/2007

KUFM / KGPR

T. M. Power

The Enduring Legacy of the Bush Administration the Democrats Cannot Undo

As President Bush’s low poll ratings, Washington scandals, and loss of control of the Congress turn him into more and more of a lame-duck, his critics might be looking forward to the next elections when the Democrats are likely to regain control of both the White House and the Congress. Then, they may hope, some of the more divisive and fruitless Bush policies can be reversed.

But that may be dangerous wishful thinking. When Bush leaves, he will leave behind a legacy that will take a very long time to undo, no matter who follows him in office.

Consider the war in Iraq. Bush is going to keep the troops on the ground mixing it up with both sides in that bloody sectarian civil war through his last hour in office and may well keep adding more troops on the ground as things get worse. Any successful Democratic candidate is likely to have run on a “bring the troops home” platform. But that is not what is likely to be actually done even by an anti-war Democrat. The disengagement of American troops from the civil war will almost certainly be followed by an escalation of ethnic cleansing and bloody slaughter. Whoever the new president is, that horrific bloodshed will take place on their watch and there will cries that we cannot just sit by as a situation US policy created, degenerates into competing genocides. In addition, to discourage Turkey, Syria, Iran, Israel and our Sunni allies in Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia from becoming directly or indirectly involved in that civil war and creating a regional war in the process, we are likely to have to keep substantial troops in bases in Kurdistan, periodically making forays into the civil war to the south. Our troops are not likely to be really coming home any time soon, even if they are pulled off the streets of Baghdad and out of regular participation in the civil war. But it is unlikely any candidate running for the presidency will tell the American people that.

On the domestic front, the costs of health care continue to spin out of control, adding considerably to the financial insecurity faced even by those families with health insurance. Bush, rather than taking some bipartisan steps to begin to develop some practical solutions has instead burdened the existing Medicare system with a complex, costly, but randomly incomplete, privatized prescription drug benefit. The cost of that adds to the crisis that was already on the horizon for the original Medicare program. The Medicare prescription drug “benefit” imposes a bewildering mix of hundreds of different private insurance offers subsidized by the federal government. But the same law forbids our federal government from using its massive purchasing power to get drugs more cheaply for seniors.

Instead of moving in the direction of a single payer system that would dramatically cut the administrative costs and eliminate the multiple insurance company markups, Bush has led us the opposite direction and, in the process, ballooned the fiscal problems of Medicare as a whole. Democrats who are elected on a platform critical of our burgeoning health insurance crisis will find themselves financially boxed in by a chaotic and costly mess.

Part of that mess will be tied to the federal government’s now very limited financial resources. After running massive deficits throughout his Administration, Bush now has become a believer in balanced budgets built around slashing almost all domestic programs. Since Democrats have been attacking him with some effect on his fiscal irresponsibility, they are likely to be cornered on this issue too. The current Democratic congress is busily adding back into the budget much of what Bush proposed to cut. But, since the Democrats are afraid to raise taxes by eliminating the tax cuts that helped create the deficit, it is not clear what financial resources Democrats will have to work with. Without additional financial resources, it is misleading to suggest you can try to solve the problems of educational funding, including childcare quality and costs and college affordability, or repairing our crumbling roads, public buildings and parks, or filling the huge gaps in children’s health insurance, or protecting the viability of Medicare and Social Security. Yet these are the Democrats’ key issues.

The Democrats would like to switch from being seen primarily as low-income advocates and become, instead, advocates for the middle class that has been increasingly threatened by low pay and uncertain tenure on the job, dwindling benefits tied to their jobs, and overwork. Meanwhile the costs of necessities such as health care for their kids and their parents, safe and productive daycare for their children, gasoline and home heating, and the staggering costs of college education make balancing the household budget an increasingly stressful nightmare.

But how would such reforms be financed given the current state of the federal budget deficit without effectively raising taxes? And if a Democratic candidate does propose that, in the bumper sticker politics of contemporary America, could she or he be elected?

Some say that George W. Bush will be seen as a failed President because he will leave no enduring legacy. Bush may well be a failed President, but he will leave behind a legacy that will haunt the nation and the Democrats for a decade or more to come.