How would you sum up Bush's 1st term as President?

Let's firsts focus on the economics of it. We are a consumer driven economy; as much of a smokescreen as the street likes to convey notwithstanding, if people don't buy & buy like it's the holiday season all the time , we are in trouble. It's likely one of Bush's most famous pleas....to go out "and shop like everything is OK".
To that end, 3 million jobs (93,000 in August of 2003 alone) have been lost since Bush took office--more than the last 11 Presidents combined. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 2001-August 2003). Tax revenues AND consumer spending lost in one giant swoop.
I'll take it gleefully, but Ididn't need a tax cut. Bush's Tax Cuts only benefit the rich. Bush claimed that his tax cut would “reduce tax rates for everyone who pays income tax.” He failed to mention that this “relief” program would put half of the tax cut's dividends into the hands of our nation's wealthiest 5%, while 8.1 million citizens in the bottom half of the income bracket receive approximately $300 a year. Reducing tax revenues while doubling the growth rate of federal spending has caused the federal budget deficit to balloon to a projected $4 trillion over the next 10 years. I have & never will be a proponent of "Trickle Down Economics" theory, you can find my posts on it in a simple search.....it doesn't work. The reason it doesn't work is because the human animal is, when confronted with altruism & perceived self preservation or betterment, will always default to the latter. Government models & theories like this work in the absolute only because they take out the human equation of greed and competition - two things that we are all hard coded with....hence, the failure of theory.
Investment in our Future - Team Bush dramatically underfunded the No Child Left Behind program. We have morphed into a Service Economy, with professional services yielding the best ROI - our education system needs to train the best workers in order for that to be valid, because we can't compete in the sheers numbers race with countries like India. Team Bush has squashed & squandered the needed focus on that.
Conservatism has been the winning political force in our country for sometime. It's why Bill Clinton won two terms. Our kids on the board here will hop up and say, "Clinton, Conservative"? Because they have been schooled in soud bytes, not facts. The two of the core principles at the heart of modern conservatism are a belief in the virtue of smaller government and a conviction that government must be accountable to the public. Clinton shrank government & installed accounting mechanisms that were not seen in the Regan/Bush years that lead tothings like Iran Contra & the S&L debacle.
Team Bush, on the other hand, has dramatically increased government & been the most seacrative in history. It's not simply a matter of outrageous spending or enlarged government programs--both offenses of which this administration is guilty, as manifested in a 25 percent domestic discretionary spending hike, a half-trillion-dollar Medicare expansion, and the ripping away of free-market agricultural reforms enacted over the past decade. The president continues to pursue tax cuts, as any Trickle Down Theory disciple would. But a government that cuts taxes and continues to spend ultimately becomes as amoral as one that raises taxes and spends.
The deception & subsequent military adventurism of the ill conceived and failing Afgan/Iraq campaigns at a price tag of $100 BILLION +, I won't even start on. Suffice it to say that the Multi-Billion dollar sink holes have lead to nothing more than strategic base builds & lucrative vendor contracts - it was nothing more than Ceasar's legions securing Carthaginian wheat fields for the tables of Rome.

Here is what I think of that was GOOD FROM BUSH'S FIRST TERM, or outcome there of: a)This massive mismanagement will trigger a multilateral public outcry, to the point that diverse section of Americana will not only heal the rifts, but come together like we've never seen before.

b) I think a valid 3rd party will arise, unless the Democratic party is gutted - they threw this fight in some sort of power share agreement, going back to the Howard Dean abandonment. Actually, prior to that; they should have forced national standardization of voting after the 2000 theft, yet, they did not.

c) Media has been exposed as a willful tool of Bush style politicians, to the fascist degree.

Originally posted by mwm1331
uhh kidfinger. The "projected budget surplus" was based on both the level of expenditure and taxation revenus remaining the same. By Cutting taxes he cut the tax revenue. Lower revenue while spending stays the same is what ate up the "surplus" It was projected because the money was never in the governments hands, it was in ours, the government just planned to take it.

Show me where he has cut 5 trillion dollars in taxes. The largest taxcut he has made was 148 billion dollars and that was geared to get rid of foriegn tarrifs on American companies headquarted out of the nation.