Bush Unleashes Facts And Challenges Congress

President Bush rips Congress in a speech today, accusing them of not doing their jobs. Some excerpts [emphasis mine]:

"Congress has been unable or unwilling to get its basic job done of passing spending bills. They have not been able to send a single annual appropriations bill to my desk, and that’s the worst record for a Congress in 20 years. One of the important responsibilities of the Congress is to pass appropriations bills. And yet the leadership that’s on the Hill now cannot get that job done."

"They haven’t seen a bill they could not solve without shoving a tax hike into it. You know, they proposed tax increases in the farm bill, the energy bill, the small business bill, and of course, the SCHIP bill."

"[P]roposed spending is skyrocketing under their leadership. After all, they’re trying to spend an additional $205 billion over the next five years." "Some have said, well, that doesn’t matter much; it’s not that much money. Well, $205 billion over the next five years in the real world amounts to this: $4.7 million per hour, every hour, for every day, for the next five years. That’s a lot of money."

"Despite knowing it does not have a chance of becoming law, the Senate will now take up the second SCHIP bill the House passed last week. I believe the Senate is wasting valuable time." "This [SCHIP] bill, remarkably, manages to spend more money over five years than the first bill did."

Congress’ SCHIP bill "proposed tax increases [that] would actually pay for 2 million people to move from private health insurance to an inefficient, lower-quality, government-run program." "We want a bill that enrolls the more than 500,000 poor children currently eligible for the program who are not a part of the program."

Some have been calling Bush a 'lame duck' President for months now, but does this sound like the words of lame duck President? He's been getting his way with almost every piece of legislation for years, and doesn't seem reluctant to continue fighting with a Congress riddled with corruption and complacency. If the Democrats are hoping for a change in course to carry the day in next year's elections, they'd better be careful; they're ultra-leftist obstructionist practices are the same as they've been for decades, and they're not making Americans happy.

There's my two cents.