Congressional Black Caucus
"The Conscience of Congress since 1969"
www.congressionalblackcaucus.net

(Washington, D.C.) - Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Melvin L. Watt today issued the following statement summarizing the points he made in a State of the Union speech he delivered in Durham, North Carolina yesterday:

As the President prepares to deliver his assessment of the State of the Union, I think we should focus on the criteria ordinary citizens should use in assessing the state of their families, communities and nation.  These criteria would lead us to answer the following questions:  (1) Are we healthy? (2) Are we secure? (3) Are we fiscally and economically healthy? (4) How are we perceived? (5) Are we happy? and (6) Are things getting better?

I think most Americans will agree that these are appropriate criteria and most will agree that they are simply not doing very well – the state of their union is not good.

Are We Healthy?
Approximately 45.8 million Americans lacked health insurance coverage for all of 2004, an increase of 860,000 from 2003, according to Census Bureau data.  The number of people without insurance has increased by 6 million since 2000. Enrollment in Medicaid grew by 1.9 million in 2004 and this prevented the number of uninsured from being even larger. 

Nearly one-third of all Hispanics were uninsured in 2004 and almost 20 percent of African Americans were uninsured in 2004. 

Are We Secure?
Airports are perhaps the most secure places in America, but our ports, schools, parks,  cargo and other common areas remain extremely vulnerable to the kinds of individual acts of terrorism that are most likely to occur. 

Can Americans really feel secure (a) following a President into a war in Iraq when the leader of terrorism, Osama Bin Laden, has acknowledged that he is in Afghanistan, (b) having spent $280 billion with more expenditures to come in Iraq to create an environment in which Americans are hated and havens for terrorist and suicide bombers persist and (c) spending more and more money to build jails and prisons to house people receiving mandatory minimum sentences for less violent crimes when we know that education works to prevent crime.  In fact, because of the very high correlation between crime and school dropout rates, we should be extremely concerned that dropout rates, especially for minorities, have escalated dramatically.

Are We Fiscally and Economically Healthy?
In two major speeches on the economy leading up to the State of the Union address, President Bush has cited a number of economic indicators to support his assertion that the economy is strong.  However, the real facts revel that:

• The unemployment rate was 4.2 percent in January 2001 when President Bush took office, 0.7 percentage points lower than the current 4.9 percent, and twice as many people are experiencing unemployment for 27 weeks or longer now than there were when President Bush took office.

• Under President Bush the country has had the slowest rates of overall and private sector job creation in the past 70 years, averaging 150,000 new jobs per month, barely enough to keep pace with the number of new workers entering the workforce.

How Are We Perceived?
It doesn’t take much travel anywhere in the world to realize that the United States, and especially this Administration, is perceived as arrogant and inconsistent in its foreign policies because of its attitude of ‘do as I say, not as I do.’ 

In last year’s State of the Union, the President spent a lot of time talking about supporting and encouraging democracy.  But he has not been satisfied with the results of democratic elections in Iraq, the Middle East, Bolivia, Haiti or Venezuela, leaving the impression that the only democracy he believes in is one in which he selects the government.  That strikes most people as absolute arrogance.

Are We Happy?
Recent polls confirm that over 60 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country and well over half are unhappy and dissatisfied with the Bush Administration.

Are We Making Progress?
Just before the 2005 State of the Union address, the Congressional Black Caucus gave the President a CBC Agenda focused on disparities that continue to exist between African Americans and other Americans in every aspect of our lives.  The CBC committed to evaluate the President on whether his policies and results closed or widened the disparities in six important areas.  Unfortunately, the President has failed on every point.

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