A reality check on the 'state of the union'

President Bush's spin doctors characterized his State of the Union speech in January as "above the fray" of election-year politics. But what has become evident is that it was the opening salvo of an ongoing political harangue and fund-raising stump speech for the president's re-election campaign.

As the president exhorted Congress to make his tax cuts permanent, boost funding for drug testing in schools, begin privatizing Social Security and pass his immigration "reform" legislation, it was clear that the White House is set to gloss over the nation's growing deficit, joblessness and the serious budget crises plaguing the states.

"The president's domestic policy comes down to one disastrous fact: his insistence on huge tax cuts for the wealthy has robbed the country of the money it needs to address its problems and has threatened its long-term economic security," opined The New York Times on Jan. 21. "Everything else is beside the point."

Indeed, the president's claims that "jobs are on the rise" and that "manufacturing activity is increasing" are questionable. Labor Department figures for December show job figures well short of the predicted 150,000 new jobs and recovery in manufacturing employment. The actual tally was an anemic gain of 1,000 jobs in December (created only because 225,000 of the jobless stopped looking for work), along with continued losses not only in the high-paying manufacturing sector but also in government employment.

The president also touted his new Medicare prescription drug plan for seniors and came up with several ideas for holding down rising healthcare costs÷but failed to mention that his drug bill specifically prevents Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices.

And while President Bush proclaimed a 36 percent increase in funding for schools since 2001, he failed to mention that his 2004 budget leaves funding for No Child Left Behind programs $7.8 billion below authorized levels. Higher education fared no better, as the Pell Grant maximum remains frozen at $4,050 despite state budget cuts and rising college tuitions.
 

ADDING AND SUBTRACTING

Among the education initiatives President Bush announced during his address was Jobs for the 21st Century, a $500 million job training and education program aimed at preparing workers for high-skill jobs. According to the White House, the program includes $250 million to fund partnerships between community colleges and employers, and $33 million to enhance the Pell Grant program with $1,000 bonus grants to recipients who take rigorous courses in high school. The remaining $210 million would be targeted to improving the math and literacy skills of middle and high school students and to expanding Advanced Placement and other challenging course offerings in high school.

As with other parts of the president's speech, the outlines of the proposal are notable for what is left out. President Bush has repeatedly cut job training and vocational education programs. Over the past two years alone, he has proposed $800 million in cuts. In the president's 2004 budget, he proposed cuts of $300 million in vocational education and $60 million in adult job training. This year, he seeks to eliminate Youth Opportunity Grants, a job training program from which he has tried to cut $225 million over the past three years.

The morning after the State of the Union address, the president went to the battleground state of Ohio to tout his education initiative at Owens Community College. "I fully recognize in Ohio there are still troubled times," he told an audience of 400 guests. "The manufacturing sector here is sluggish at best, and therefore people are looking for work."

In fact, the unemployment rate in Ohio spiked from 3.9 percent to 5.7 percent in the years since the Bush administration took office. "We've lost 175,000 manufacturing jobs," says Angela Ondrus, president of the Owens Faculty Association, an AFT affiliate that represents 245 full-time faculty and professional staff at the college.

Another irony Ondrus points out is that in the week before the president's visit, 10 nonunion employees in the college's Workforce Development and Retraining Center had their positions eliminated due to state budget cuts. "Our state is facing $1.9 billion in unfunded mandates for No Child Left Behind," she says. Although welcome, the money for community college partnerships "is just a drop in the bucket when you consider the number of community colleges in the country."

While extra money for the underfunded Pell Grant program is also welcome, says AFT legislative analyst Gabriella Gomez, "we were hoping we would hear the president say he would provide more money for all Pells." Linking the $1,000 enhancements to the basic grants awarded students could be a complicated process, since it is unclear how many students in the United States would be able to qualify.  What is more, while Pells are a need-based program geared to knock down financial barriers to attending college, adding a merit-based enhancement raises questions about the program's purpose, says Gomez.

One proposal in the Bush Jobs for the 21st Century package should raise red flags for the education community, says William Scheuerman, president of the United University Professions/AFT of the State University of New York and AFT vice president. It is called the Adjunct Teaching Corps and it is designed to beef up science and math education in middle and high schools.

As outlined by the White House, this $40 million initiative would identify "well-qualified individuals outside the K-12 educational system"÷people at the "height of their careers in business, government and higher education"÷and get them to teach part time or provide education online or via distance learning.

To Scheuerman, this is "a vile idea" that is "just going to exploit more workers. We have examples of such exploitation all over higher education. It's an attack on quality and seems a clear attempt to break unions."

"It's clear that the daunting challenges facing our public schools, colleges and universities cannot be overcome without the full measure of support promised by the federal government," said AFT president Sandra Feldman in a Jan. 21 statement. "And although the president proposes increases for some education initiatives, he will have to shortchange others, with the result being that all students are cheated."

One way to start fulfilling the promises made to public schools, she added, "is to stop providing the massive tax breaks for individuals and corporations that don't need them and instead redirect those resources to where they are needed."