Truespeak

"America's prosperity requires restraining the spending appetite of the federal government. I welcome the bipartisan enthusiasm for spending discipline. [.....] The principle here is clear: Taxpayer dollars must be spent wisely, or not at all."


-George W. Bush
SOTU Address 2005

I also seem to recall George saying something about results being important.

Bush said he was serious about proposed budget cuts that would reduce spending on nonsecurity domestic programs by 1% overall and abolish or consolidate some 150 federal programs that the White House says are not producing results.

"Spending discipline requires difficult choices," Bush said. "Every government program was created with good intentions. But not all are matching good intentions with good results."

He singled out for criticism a Department of Education program called Even Start, which was designed to increase literacy among low-income families. It is one of more than 40 education programs targeted for elimination in Bush's budget.

"The problem is that after three separate evaluations, it has become abundantly clear that the program is not succeeding," Bush said. "People are not becoming more literate…. Even Start is not working."

Just to make sure I understand, it appears as though George is committed to cutting funding for programs that are "not working." I'd sure like to know how he explains this.

A test of the U.S. missile defense system failed Monday when an interceptor missile did not launch from its island base in the Pacific Ocean, the military said. It was the second failure in months for the experimental program.

A statement from the Missile Defense Agency said the cause of the failure was under investigation.

If this were the first time this had failed I could give him some leeway, but we all know that this has failed before. In fact, it has failed in almost half of the tests performed (4 out of 9 attempts have failed). For those of you keeping track at home, that's only a 56% success rate. As I've pointed out before, that's failing in most schools.

If you've got an employee who only shows up for work 56% of the time, you fire him.

If you've got an employee who only completes 56% of the projects assigned to him, you fire him.

If you've got a vehicle that only starts 56% of the time you need to go somewhere, you sell it.

If you've got...

You get the picture.

It's time for George to put up or shut up. If you really mean what you say, George, it's time to give up this fantasy. If not, you need to quit blowing smoke up our ass. I'm getting really tired of this shit!