
Dobbs: Bush, Congress tell
working folk to go to hell
By Lou Dobbs
CNN
Wednesday, May 24, 2006; Posted: 10:21 p.m. EDT
(02:21 GMT)
Editor's note: Lou Dobbs'
commentary appears every Wednesday on CNN.com.
Lou Dobbs says
President Bush and Congress are part of an "elitist war
on the middle class"
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/23/dobbs.may24/index.html
NEW
YORK (CNN) -- President Bush says that the installation
of the new Iraqi government was a "watershed event," but
at the same time warns Americans of the challenges and
loss as we continue to prosecute the war against Iraqi
insurgents. Sen. Harry Reid declares that legislation
that would render English the national language is
racist.
Thirty-seven Democrats vote for
full amnesty for all illegal aliens in this country,
even though nobody really knows whether the number is 11
million, 12 million or 20 million. The Senate Republican
leadership demands that a "comprehensive immigration
reform" plan must be passed before this Memorial Day
weekend. And the president signs into law a tax cut that
raises taxes on the educational funds of teenagers
saving for college.
Never before in our country's
history have both the president and Congress been so out
of touch with most Americans. Never before have so few
of our elected officials and corporate leaders been less
willing to commit to the national interest. And never
before has our nation's largest constituent group --
some 200 million middle-class Americans -- been without
representation in our nation's capital.
(Watch
why Dobbs said Mexico's leader is in charge of U.S.
immigration policy -- 3:16)
George W. Bush's approval
ratings have slumped to the lowest of his presidency.
The approval rating for Congress is even lower, and
nearly three-quarters of Americans believe the country
is headed in the wrong direction.
But what is our government
doing about that? The president is staying the course in
Iraq and apparently demanding little of his generals to
create a new, far more effective strategy for urgent
success. Of course, he also wants a guest-worker program
and amnesty of millions of illegal aliens. And Congress,
faced with midterm elections in just over five months,
is intent on giving the president what he wants and
telling working men and women and their families,
American citizens all, to go to hell.
Illegal aliens are more
important to this Congress than securing our borders and
our ports, more important than those legal immigrants
who have waited in line and who follow the law. The
Senate has added to the litany of lunacy that makes up
what it calls reform: Illegal aliens would only have to
pay back taxes on three of the past five years, they
will not be prosecuted for felonies such as identity
theft or purchasing or using fraudulent Social Security
cards, and unlike millions of visa holders who have to
leave the country to have them renewed, they may simply
remain in the United States while this Congress and this
president give away all the benefits and privileges of
American citizenship.
This is an outright assault in
the elitist war on the middle class. And working men and
women who've already borne the pain of losing
good-paying manufacturing jobs and having middle-class
jobs outsourced to cheap foreign labor markets are faced
with the onslaught of more illegal immigration and cheap
labor into the American economy. This president and
Congress talk about bringing illegal aliens out of the
shadows while they turn out the lights on our middle
class.
President Bush and his most
trusted advisers tell us how well our economy is doing,
how many jobs have been created and how so-called free
trade will enrich the lives of the same people whose
livelihoods these policies are destroying.
It's hard not to think of the
trusted adviser to Catherine the Great who sought to
hide from her the embarrassing and shoddy condition of
Ukrainian and Crimean villages by having elaborate
facades built to divert her attention and to mask an
uncomfortable reality. I don't know whether Karl Rove is
President Bush's Grigori Potemkin or whether George Bush
has created Potemkin villages all by himself. But the
facades are cracking, and phony fronts of failed
policies are quickly crumbling.
Six thousand unarmed National
Guardsmen working as adjunct rear support to our
undermanned, under-equipped Border Patrol is not border
security. Three million illegal aliens continue to cross
our borders and depress wages by hundreds of billions of
dollars every year. The millions of manufacturing and
middle-class jobs lost over the last five years have
been replaced by lower-wage employment.
The president's faith-based
commitment to so-called free trade will likely lead to a
$1 trillion U.S. current account deficit this year and a
trade debt of $4.5 trillion after 30 years of trade
deficits. And while the president and Congress point to
No Child Left Behind as a solution to our educational
crisis, we're failing an entire generation of Americans
whose test scores continue to fall and whose high school
dropout rates would be embarrassing to a third-world
country.
And a third-world country is
what we will be if our elected officials don't soon come
to their senses.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/23/dobbs.may24/index.html
LOU DOBBS
TONIGHT
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/