BUSH'S COMPASSION IS ALL TALK

WITH A Washington Post/ABC News poll showing his job approval rating
for Iraq and the economy below 50 percent for the fifth straight
month, President Bush returned to campaign ploys that softened up
voters in the 2000 elections.

In a speech this week at a Cincinnati social service center that
specializes in prisoner re-entry and alcohol and drug addiction, Bush
talked anew about armies of compassion. He was back to pushing
faith-based initiatives. He exhumed his education mantra of
"challenging the soft bigotry of low expectations. If you've got low
expectations, you're going to get lousy results."

Bush said, "I wanted you to hear that in your own community here in
Cincinnati, you've got heroic figures, heroic people, saving lives on
a daily basis," Bush proclaimed. "And these folks need to be
supported. They need to be supported at the local level, they need to
be supported at the state level, and they need to be supported at the
federal level."

Bush then left for another affair and received a hero's welcome at a
private fund-raiser in the suburbs that garnered $2.5 million for the
Republican Party. None of that money was going to support the folks at
the social service center. It was going to support the party's agenda
of slashing as many social services as it can get away with.

If Bush thinks he can turn back the clock to the days of
"compassionate conservatism" in order to turn back the tide of the
negative poll numbers, he is mistaken. He has had three and a half
years to challenge low expectations. He has delivered lousy results.

Earlier this month, Bush delivered a speech at a White House
conference on faith-based initiatives. The speech was intended to
revive interest in a program which stalled in Congress over concern
that loosening up the rules for federal dollars to go to religious
based organizations for social and educational work dangerously blurs
the lines between church and state. Bush bypassed Congress and signed
an executive order that allowed him to give away $1.1 billion last
year under the initiative.

"There's a lot more money available," Bush said. "That's what I hope
the conference explains to you: that there is money throughout our
government available for faith-based programs. And the idea is to
teach you how to access that money, how to make sure the grant-making
process is understandable and how to make sure that people in your
communities do not fear the bureaucracy interfering with your mission."

What Bush did not explain then or in Cincinnati is that while the
church may giveth, the state will taketh away much more. His $1.1
billion into the collection plate of religious organizations is an
illusion, considering the cuts in social services and education he has
already proposed and further cuts he plans to make if he is reelected.
The National Priorities Project, the think tank that studies the
impact of federal budget policies to the states, has calculated that
Bush's budget for 2005, with its massive increases in military
spending and its attempt to make tax cuts permanent, would slash $28
billion in grants to states and cities.

Bush made a big show in Cincinnati about appearing with an ex-prisoner
and unemployed workers who turned their lives around. But he plans to
cut many of the things that will help others do the same. According to
The Washington Post, Bush's 2005 budget would kill programs for
alcohol-abuse reduction, computer training in low-income
neighborhoods, family literacy and literacy for prisoners, and
severely slash vocational education programs.

Adjusted for inflation and population growth, the National Priorities
Project says Bush's 2005 budget would cut $2.3 billion in housing
assistance, $900 million from justice programs, $1 billion in
temporary assistance to needy families and $570 million from
vocational education.

If Bush is reelected, he plans $2.3 billion of more cuts in 2006,
according to a White House memo recently obtained by the Post. The
cuts include $1.5 billion in discretionary education funding, $177
million for Head Start, $53 million from a home ownership program,
$910 million for veterans affairs, and $122 million for Women,
Infants, and Children. The cuts would either significantly reverse or
negate election-year increases in several of those programs.

In his speech in Cincinnati, Bush used the word "compassion" or
"compassionate" eight times. He referred to the human "heart" or
"hearts" nine times. He referred to the human "soul" or "souls" seven
times. It is getting as tiresome as hearing Bush say that there is a
link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. He figures if he talks about
compassion enough, people will believe he has a heart.

He told his audience at the social service center, "You can go from
prison to be a boss. You can go from prison to the White House, just
so long as you have somebody who's there, willing to take you by the
hand, and say, I want to help you help yourself."

That somebody will not be Bush. His budget cuts are not the helping
hand. They are the prison.