Truespeak

According to the American Heritage Dictionary the term waffle, when applied to speaking, is defined as follows:

Informal. -intr.v. To speak or write evasively; willfully mislead.

No other word could be more accurate when describing the Bush administration. The President himself has been speaking evasively for the last four years and to say that he has willfully mislead the country would be a massive understatement. Take for instance the Bush/Cheney campaign's recent attacks on John Kerry's health care plan. According to their website, the Kerry plan would cost $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.

According To The Non-Partisan American Enterprise Institute (AEI), The Kerry Health Care Plan Would Now Cost $1.5 Trillion Over Tens Years. "Over the ten-year period between 2006 and 2015, the Kerry plan would increase federal outlays by about $1.5 trillion. That estimate nets out the savings that could be obtained from several provisions included in the plan." (Joseph Antos, Roland King, Donald Muse, Tom Wildsmith And Judy Xanthopoulos, "Analyzing The Kerry And Bush Health Proposals: Estimates Of Cost And Impact," American Enterprise Institute, 9/13/04)

While this statement is technically accurate, it fails to mention any of the pertinent details of the study it has cited. According to the study, John Kerry's health care plan would indeed cost $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. By comparison, the Bush health care plan would only cost $128.6 billion over the same time period. If this were a matter of who can propose the cheapest plan, Bush would win hands down, but for the millions of Americans who currently have no health care, cheaper is not necessarily better. What is important in this debate is how many people will be able to get coverage. This is the part of the study that President Bush likes to leave out.

According to the American Enterprise Institute's study, $622 billion from the Kerry plan would be dedicated directly to helping the uninsured while only $39.4 billion would be directed towards the uninsured under the Bush plan. As a result of this funding, Kerry's plan would lead to 27.3 million new people obtaining health insurance while Bush's plan would allow for only 6.7 million new people to obtain coverage. To me, this points out at least 20.6 million reasons why Kerry's plan is going to be more beneficial than the President's. But I wouldn't expect our President to tell you that.

This type of fiscal deception is typical of our president as the Washington Times noted in an article today.

The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.

A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.
.....
The White House has declined to provide a full and detailed accounting of the cost of the new agenda. The administration last week provided a partial listing of the previously unannounced proposals, including "opportunity zones," that totaled $74 billion in spending over the next 10 years. But there was no mention of the cost of additional tax cuts and the creation of Social Security private accounts. Discussing his agenda during an "Ask the President" campaign forum in Portsmouth, Ohio, Bush said Friday that he has "explained how we're going to pay for it, and my opponent can't explain it because he doesn't want to tell you he's going to have to tax you."
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The administration has been secretive about the cost of the war and the likely impact that the bulging defense budget and continuing cost of tax cuts will have on domestic spending next year. The White House put government agencies on notice this month that if Bush is reelected, his budget for 2006 may include $2.3 billion in spending cuts from virtually all domestic programs not mandated by law, including education, homeland security and others central to Bush's campaign.

But Bush has had little to say about belt-tightening and sacrifice on the campaign trail. Nor has he explained how he would reconcile all his new spending plans with the mounting deficit.

If asked, I'm sure the president will tell us it's all just "fuzzy math."

Looks pretty clear to me.