Reply #8: the real deal

[goodhue]

You can listen to the audio from the DK web site
http://resources.kucinich.us/video/press_audio/sotn.ram

I like how he cuts to the chase at the outset:

"Our nation is in a perilous condition due to fear, war, tax cuts to wealthy Americans, and trade policies leading to widespread unemployment in manufacturing and high tech industries. The rising costs of health care threaten the financial stability of all Americans. The retirement security of tens of millions of Americans is in doubt. Social Security is under attack with another privatization scheme.

National economic trends are discouraging. The official unemployment rate for all of 2003 was 6%, but this figure masks the number of people who have not been able to find work and who have given up looking for work and are no longer recorded in the totals. Tax cuts produced only a fraction of the jobs promised. The economy would have to create 375,000 new jobs per month in order to keep the Administration from having the worst job creation of any administration since the beginning of the Great Depression. There are 2.4 million more people unemployed now than when the Administration took office.

In less than three years, a projected ten year surplus of $5.6 trillion has turned into a projected deficit of $3.6 trillion.

The official poverty rate is up, from 11.7% in 2001 to 12.1% in 2002. Nearly 34.6 million Americans live in poverty. About 1.7 million more than in 2001."