Bush's State of the Union> Politics

In Bush's 2006 State of the Union address he touched upon two points that I thought would have received much more of his focus: Energy independence and health care. This is a major concern for most Americans, so obviously he had to say something on the subject.

His proposals on energy independence center on increasing spending on alternative energy research. He mentioned ethanol, hydrogen, clean coal, wind and nuclear energy of ways for us to get away from petroleum. All good ideas. The problem is we have heard these promises before from Bush. All of these proposals seem to be Bush just paying lip service to a great problem, but not doing anything concrete about it.

He didn't ask Americans to make sacrifices in a time of war by paying a higher gasoline tax at the pump. He didn't offer any incentives for Americans to get a hybrid instead of a gas guzzling SUV. He didn't admit that the fossil fuels we burn are causing a catastrophic amount of damage to our environment. I just don't expect anything to change here until he is out of office.

On Health care Bush spoke about the need for all Americans to have adequate health care. Uh, yeah, that would be nice. His solution: Wider use of electronic records, health savings accounts, portable coverage between jobs and of course tort reform.

Yup, that's it. Thank God he has a plan. I am going to stop worrying about not have health insurance now. Seriously, the only good aspect of Bush's plan is that our health care system will collapse sooner and then we can go on with the necessary and obvious step of instituting Universal Health care. My next entry will look at the Democrat's rebuttal.