George W. Bush: brutally mean conservative

I tend not to believe the liberals who say President Bush isn't that bright. I have yet to find a liberal who knows the President and says he isn't smart. On the contrary, all of the liberals I know who have spent time with the President have found him to be a smart guy.

Why is that important? Because the President's budget proposal either contains some incredibly stupid mistakes or the President of the United States is just plain mean. Either way, he certainly isn't interested in the wise use of taxpayer money.

This is from Bob Herbert in today's edition of the New York Times.

"The federal government has a national breast and cervical cancer early detection program, run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It provides screening and other important services to low-income women who do not have health insurance, or are underinsured.

There is agreement across the board that the program is a success. It saves lives and it saves money. Its biggest problem is that it doesn't reach enough women. At the moment there is only enough funding to screen one in five eligible women.

A sensible policy position for the Bush administration would be to expand funding for the program so that it reached everyone who was eligible. It terms of overall federal spending, the result would be a net decrease. Preventing cancer, or treating it early, is a lot less expensive than treating advanced cancer.

So what did this president do? He proposed a cut in the program of $1.4 million (a minuscule amount when you're talking about the national budget), which would mean that 4,000 fewer women would have access to early detection.

This makes no sense. In human terms, it is cruel. From a budget standpoint, it's self-defeating."

"The program is really designed to help working women," said Dan Smith, a senior vice president at the American Cancer Society. "They may be working at a job that doesn't provide health insurance, but they're not the poorest of the poor who would qualify for Medicaid."

What is most amazing is that they President proposed cuts in every single cancer program in the Federal budget. He didn't go in and look to see which program was having success and which was failing. He cut them all.

It appears the Presidential position on how to reform health care in this country is to wait until people are sick and then spend billions of dollars caring for them and trying to cure them of disease. What the medical and scientific community know, however, is that this is the most expensive way to do health care. Early detection and prevention of disease allow governments to spend less money while American families avoid being faced with the pain and despair caused by the diagnosis and treatment of terminal illnesses.