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Issues & Facts
Health Care
44 million Americans, 15 percent of population, including 8.5 million children, don't have health insurance.
As the ranks of the uninsured have swelled and health costs have skyrocketed, the Bush administration has responded aggressively with the only kind of public policy it believes in: giveaways for large corporations. In this case, HMOs and drug companies were the big winners.
- General Wesley Clark (www.clark04.com)
With Americans paying the highest price for drugs in the world, Bush pushed through a prescription drug bill that actually prohibits Medicare from negotiating a lower price for seniors. He turned a $400 billion benefit for seniors into a subsidy for the drug companies that help pay for his party.
- Robert Borosage , co-director of the Campaign for America's Future ( www.ourfuture.org )
Jobs and Economic Recovery
Two million fewer jobs than when Bush took office. Tax cuts promising 300,000 new jobs a month never reached one-third of that goal. In December 2003, only 1,000 new jobs created. New jobs pay less than those lost.
Under Bush's watch, companies like Tyco avoid paying $400 million a year in U.S taxes through shell headquarters offshore, while they are rewarded with $331million in Federal contracts in 2002. George W Bush has chosen tax cuts for the wealthy and special favors for the special interests over our economic future.
- Senator John Kerry (www.johnkerry.com)
"The Bush economic policy of multi-trillion dollar tax cuts that largely benefit the wealthy has totally failed American workers. Since Bush became President, we've lost 2.3 million jobs altogether, 2.6 million manufacturing jobs and 2.9 million private sector jobs - and the jobs that are being created are not good family-supporting jobs with benefits. To the extent that there is an economic recovery, it has completely bypassed working people."
- John Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO ( http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/jobs/jobcrisis.cfm)
"Working families are still facing sizable economic problems that are not likely to be solved over the next year. The economy may be looking brighter on spreadsheets, but their economy -- the one they live in -- is plagued by shrunken paychecks, fears of job loss and little opportunity.
"Even though production has been growing for more than two years, the United States has just experienced the sharpest loss of jobs this far into a recovery since the Great Depression, with nearly 2.9 million private- sector jobs lost. For every job vacancy there are now three unemployed workers, and nearly half of all Americans personally know someone who has lost their job. We are a long way from a healthy labor market with strong real-wage improvements and unemployment steadily dropping toward the 4 percent level we enjoyed in 2000. In economic terms, there is a huge gap between the rising GDP, productivity and capital investment that is
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