What is George W. Bush? : Abaara fun facts and uncommon knowledge

George W. Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut. His father was George H.W. Bush and his mother was Barbara Bush (born Barbara Pierce). He grew up in Midland and Houston, Texas, the older brother of Jeb, Neil, Marvin, and Dorothy. A younger sister, Robin, died of leukemia in 1953 at the age of three.

Like his father, Bush was educated at Phillips Academy (Andover), (September 1961–June 1964) and at Yale University (September 1964–May 1968). At Yale, he joined Delta Kappa Epsilon (of which he was president from October 1965 until graduation) and the Skull and Bones secret society. He was a "C" student, with a grade point average of 2.35 out of 4.00. He played baseball during his freshman year and rugby during his freshman and senior years. He received a bachelor's degree in history in 1968.

After graduating from Yale, Bush enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard on May 27, 1968 during the Vietnam War, with a commitment to serve until May 26, 1974. He served as an F-102 pilot until 1972 and was twice promoted during his service, first to second lieutenant and then to first lieutenant. In November 1970, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, the commander of the Texas Air National Guard, recommended that Bush be promoted to first lieutenant.

In September 1973 he received permission to end his six-year commitment six months early in order to attend Harvard University. He transferred to inactive reserve status shortly before being honorably discharged on October 1, 1973.

It has been alleged that Bush skipped over a waiting list to receive a National Guard slot, that he did not report for required duty from 1972 to 1973, and that he was suspended from flying after he did not take a required physical examination and drug test. These issues were publicized during the 2004 campaign by Texans for Truth and other Bush critics. See George W. Bush military service controversy for details.

Bush entered Harvard Business School in 1973. He was awarded a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) in 1975 – he would become the first U.S. president to hold an M.B.A degree.

On Labor Day weekend, September 4, 1976, Bush was pulled over by police near his family's summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine. He was arrested, admitted his guilt, was fined $150, and had his driving license suspended for 30 days in the state for driving under the influence of alcohol [1] (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushdui1.html). News of the arrest was released five days before the 2000 presidential election by the Kennebunkport police department. For further discussion of substance abuse issues, see below.

Bush married Laura Welch in 1977. They have twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna Bush, born in 1981. In 1986, at the age of 40, he became a born-again Christian, leaving the Episcopal Church and joining his wife's denomination, the United Methodist Church.

Business and early political career

In 1978, Bush ran for the U.S. House of Representatives but lost to State Sen. Kent Hance, a Democrat.

Bush began his career in the oil industry in 1979 when he established Arbusto Energy, an oil and gas exploration company he formed in 1977 with leftover funds from his education trust fund and money from other investors. Some of this funding came from Saudi Arabian nationals including the bin Laden family, which in 1994 publicly distanced itself from its kinsman Osama bin Laden. The 1979 energy crisis hurt Arbusto and, after a name change to Bush Exploration Co., Bush sold the company in 1984 to Spectrum 7, another Texas oil and gas exploration firm. Under the terms of the sale, Spectrum 7 made Bush its chief executive officer. Spectrum 7 lost money, and in 1986 it was merged into Harken Energy Corporation, with Bush becoming a director of Harken.

After working on his father's successful 1988 presidential campaign, he was told by a friend, William DeWitt, Jr., that then-owner Eddie Chiles, another of the Bushes' many friends, wanted to sell the Texas Rangers, an Arlington-based Major League Baseball franchise. In April 1989, Bush assembled a group of investors from his father's close friends; the group bought 86% of the Rangers for $75 million. (Bush later appointed one of these partners, Tom Schieffer, to the post of Ambassador to Australia.) Bush received a two percent share by investing $606,302, with $500,000 of it a loan from a bank. Bush paid off the loan by selling $848,000 worth of stock in Harken Energy in 1990, sparking allegations of insider trading.

In House of Bush, House of Saud, Craig Unger notes that at the time of Bush's sale, Harken Energy "was expected to run out of money in just three days" (p. 123). In a last-ditch attempt to save the company, Harken was advised by the endowment fund of Harvard University to spin-off two of its lower-performing divisions–"According to a Harken memo, if the plan did not go through, the company had 'no other source of immediate financing.'" Bush had already taken out a $500,000 loan and sought Harken's general counsel for advice. The attorneys advised him against selling so close to the receipt of internal information, fearing it could be construed as insider trading. This memo was turned over by Bush's attorney the day after the SEC ruled that it would not charge Bush with insider trading. On June 22, Bush sold his 212,140 shares of stock anyway for a net profit of $848,560. The very next quarter, Harken announced losses of $23 million, which continued to the end of the year when the stock "plummeted from $4 to $1.25."

The subsequent SEC investigation ended in 1992 with a memo stating "it appears that Bush did not engage in illegal insider trading," but noted that the memo "must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result" ([2] (http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/07/03/bush.stock/)). However, the SEC's makeup at the time may have heavily favored Bush. The chairman at the time was Richard Breeden, a good friend of the Bush family who had been nominated to the SEC by George H. W. Bush and had been a lawyer in James Baker's firm, Baker Botts. The SEC's general counsel at the time was James Doty, who had represented George W. Bush when he sought to buy into the Texas Rangers (although Doty recused himself from the investigation). Bush's own lawyer was Robert Jordan, who had been "partners with both Doty and Breeden at Baker Botts and who later became George W. Bush's ambassador to Saudi Arabia." Finally, Bruce Hiler, the associate director of the SEC's enforcement division, who wrote a letter to Bush's attorney saying the investigation was being terminated, now represents former Enron president Jeff Skilling in matters before the government ([3] (http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20020722&s=leopold20020718)).

As President, Bush has refused to authorize the SEC to release its full report on the Harken investigation. When the Rangers franchise was sold for $250 million in 1998, at a total profit of $170 million, Bush personally received $14.9 million for his $600,000 investment ([4] (http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol17/issue19/pols.bush.html)).

Bush served as managing general partner of the Rangers until he was elected Governor of Texas on November 8, 1994 over incumbent Democrat Ann Richards. He went on to become, in 1998, the first Texas governor to be elected for two consecutive four-year terms.

Bush has been criticized [5] (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17670) for overseeing the execution of 152 convicted criminals while governor, more than any other governor in the history of the United States. Texas's penal system allows the governor to grant a single 30-day reprieve for each offense, which Bush did for Henry Lee Lucas, only. It does not allow the governor to commute a sentence or grant pardons, except on the petition of the state parole board; however the governor's opinion is generally considered to carry a lot of weight with the members of the parole board, particularly since by the end of his term all 18 of them were Bush appointees. In any event, Bush made no attempt to intervene on behalf of any of the condemned, except Lucas. Bush has expressed his belief that all those executed were guilty, based on briefings by Alberto R. Gonzales, even though these briefings failed to mention critical factors, such as the fact that a condemned man's public defender slept through much of his case. [6] (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A52193-2000May11&notFound=true) The 1998 execution of Karla Faye Tucker, who repented in prison and become a born-again Christian, was particularly controversial. Among those who unsuccessfully urged Bush to grant her clemency were Pope John Paul II and such prominent leaders of the Christian right as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. [7] (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17670#fnr3) The case received further notoriety in 1999, when conservative journalist Tucker Carlson published a profile of Bush in Talk magazine in which he reported that, in an interview with Carlson as a CNN correspondent, Bush had mocked Karla Faye Tucker's appeal for clemency. Carlson cited this incident as an example of occasional "flashes of meanness" beneath "Bush's brand of forthright tough-guy populism". (Talk, (New York NY, Talk Magazine LLC) Vol 1 No 1 September 1999, "Devil May Care", pp103 - 110).[8] (http://superannuatedpedagogue.blogspot.com/2004_10_17_superannuatedpedagogue_archive.html)

In 1996, Bush was summoned to jury duty in a Travis County, Texas drunk driving case. His counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, successfully argued that, as governor, Bush might one day be called to pardon the defendant, and that this should excuse him from sitting on the jury. When Bush's 1976 summary conviction for driving under the influence was made public during the 2000 presidential campaign, Democrat Ken Oden, the prosecutor of the 1996 case, re-examined the case and revealed that Bush's juror questionnaire left blank the question whether he had ever been accused in a criminal case. The prosecutor said, "With all the new information that has come forward, it's logical to see that there may have been motives at work that none of us knew about." He concluded that Bush had "used his position as governor" to avoid disclosing the information, because the conviction was neither included on the written form nor mentioned by Gonzales. The prosecutor added, "I feel I was directly deceived." A Bush campaign spokesman responded that the form had been "filled out by a staff member who left a variety of questions blank, including the Social Security number, because he didn't know the answers to them" ([9] (http://dir.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/05/jury_duty/index.html)).

Presidential campaigns

In Bush's 2000 presidential election campaign, he declared himself to be a "compassionate conservative." He campaigned on, among other issues, allowing religious charities to compete on an equal basis for participation in federally funded programs, tax cuts, promoting the use of education vouchers, supporting oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, maintaining a balanced federal budget, and restructuring of the armed forces. In foreign policy, he stated that he was against using the U.S. armed forces in "nation building" attempts abroad.

Bush was inaugurated President on January 20, 2001. Bush had faced Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat, and won electoral votes in 30 of 50 states for a narrow majority of the electoral votes (Bush-271, Gore-266). Neither candidate received a majority of the nationwide popular vote (Green Party candidate Ralph Nader received 2,695,696 votes, Libertarian Party candidate Harry Browne received 386,024 votes, pushing Gore under 50 percent), but Gore received more votes by approximately 540,000 out of 105 million, a margin of barely one-half of one percent. It was the first presidential election since the 1876 election in which a candidate received fewer popular votes while winning the electoral vote, and the first presidential election since the 1888 presidential election where the principal party of the winning candidate received fewer popular votes than the principal party of the losing candidate. It was also the first presidential election to be directly affected by a Supreme Court decision.

The Florida vote, which favored Bush by a slim margin in the initial count, was heavily contested after concerns were raised about flaws and irregularities in the voting process, and became the subject of a series of contentious court cases. After the Supreme Court's mid-December decision in Bush v. Gore to end the recounts, Gore conceded the election. In the final official count, Bush won Florida's 25 electoral votes, and thereby won the presidency, by 537 votes. See U.S. presidential election, 2000. The election results are still disputed by many, though no longer contested in any legal venue.

In the 2004 election, Bush won a second term, an electoral majority, and also received 3.5 million popular votes more than his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry. Bush was the first presidential candidate since his father, George H.W. Bush in 1988 to receive a majority of the popular vote. (The intervening elections had seen stronger showings by non-major party candidates such as Ross Perot and Ralph Nader.) His margin over Kerry of about 3 percent was the smallest popular vote margin for a re-elected President since Woodrow Wilson's 1916 victory. As in the 2000 election, there were charges raised alleging voting improprieties, especially in Ohio. In 2004 they did not lead to recounts that were expected to affect the result, but led to a civil case challenging the result. On January 3, three days before the counting of electoral votes, Bush's campaign asked the judge to throw out the case.

Bush was inaugurated for his second term on January 20, 2005; the oath was administered by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Bush's inaugural speech centered mainly on a theme of spreading freedom and democracy around the world. George W. Bush is the only President to win re-election after losing the popular vote in his first election. Of the three other Presidents who lost the popular vote, John Quincy Adams and Benjamin Harrison were defeated in their bids for a second term, and Rutherford B. Hayes did not seek re-election.

Related articles: 2004 U.S. election voting controversies; 2004 U.S. Election controversies and irregularities and its subsidiary articles on 2004 election (voting machines), 2004 election (exit polls), and 2004 election (voter suppression)

Years as President

Presidency

Foreign policy and security

During his first presidential visit to Europe in June 2001, Bush came under harsh criticism from European leaders for his rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, which is aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions that may contribute to global warming. The treaty, symbolically signed by Vice President Gore in 1998, was never submitted by the Clinton administration to the United States Senate following the 95-0 passage of the Byrd-Hagel Resolution. The 1997 resolution (S. Res. 98) pre-emptively opposed any Kyoto treaty that did not place or schedule binding commitments on developing nations. The passage of the resolution effectively stopped Kyoto from becoming binding on the United States. In November 2004, Russia ratified the treaty, giving it the required minimum of nations to put it into force.

Bush's imposition of a tariff on imported steel and on Canadian soft lumber was controversial in light of his pursuit of other free market policies, and attracted criticism both from his fellow conservatives and from nations affected. The steel tariff was later rescinded under pressure from the World Trade Organization.

In July of 2002, Bush cut off all funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Bush claimed that the UNFPA supported forced abortions and sterilizations in China.

During his campaign, Bush's foreign policy platform included support of a stronger economic and political relationship with Latin America, especially Mexico, and a reduction in involvement in "nation-building" and other small-scale military engagements. However, after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, the administration focused much more on foreign policy in the Middle East.

Shortly after the attacks, a war was launched against Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, which Bush charged with harboring Osama bin Laden. This action had strong international support, and the Taliban government folded quickly after the invasion. Subsequent nation-building efforts in concert with the United Nations under Afghan president Hamid Karzai have had mixed results; bin Laden was not apprehended or killed, and (as of 2005) is still at large. A sizeable contingent of troops and advisors remains into 2005. See U.S. invasion of Afghanistan for details. Democratic elections were held on October 9, 2004. There were allegations of flawed registration and validation, and 15 of the 18 presidential candidates threatened to withdraw, but international observers called the elections "fairly democratic" at the "overall majority" of polling centers. The election was won by Hamid Karzai with 55.4% of the votes. [10] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3977677.stm)

On December 14, 2001, Bush withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which had been a bedrock of U.S.-Soviet nuclear stability during the Cold War, arguing it was no longer relevant. Instead, Bush focused resources on a ballistic missile defense system. The proposed system has been the subject of much scientific criticism. Field tests have been mixed, with both some successes and failures. It is scheduled to start deployment in 2005. A ballistic missile defense system will not stop cruise missiles, or missiles transported by boat or land vehicle. Hence, many critics of the system believe it is an expensive mistake, built for the least likely attack, a nuclear tipped ballistic missile. Bush has also increased spending on military research and development and the modernization of weapons systems, but cancelled programs such as the Crusader self-propelled artillery system. The administration also began initial research into bunker-busting nuclear missiles.

Iraq

Since 1998, when the United States Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, stated U.S. policy had been to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration argued that the Iraq situation had now become urgent. The stated premise was that Saddam's regime had tried to acquire nuclear material and had not properly accounted for biological, and chemical material sold to Saddam's government by the US in the past, potential weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in violation of U.N. sanctions. Bush contended that Saddam might deliver such WMD to terrorists such as al Qaeda, though that group of Wahhabi Muslims positioned itself as mortal enemies of the secular "Hussein" government, whom Osama bin Laden referred to publicly as satanist. A bipartisian intelligence review has found no credible evidence that Saddam Hussien possesed WMD.

Beginning in 2002 and escalating in spring 2003, Bush pressed the UN to act on its disarmament mandates to Iraq, precipitating a diplomatic crisis. He began by pushing for UN weapons inspections in Iraq, which he received with passage of the UN Security Council Resolution 1441, which allowed inspectors lead by Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei to investigate Bush's allegations. Increasing pressure from the United States in the spring of 2003 forced the UN weapons inspectors to leave the country, unable to verify the existence of any WMD in Iraq. The Bush administration examined the possibility of seeking a Security Council resolution to authorize the use of military force (in pursuance of Chapter VII (http://www.worldpress.org/specials/iraq/chapterVII.htm) of the U.N. Charter), but abandoned the idea when it became clear that the majority of the members (including most of the permanent members with vetoing power) would vote against such a resolution; the matter was never taken to a vote (cf. The UN Security Council and the Iraq war). The United States gathered a group of mostly small countries to support a war, a total of about forty. Bush has called it the "coalition of the willing". Spain has since pulled out of the war; Poland has announced that it will withdraw troops in 2005.

The United States invaded Iraq in March, citing many Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq (1441, 1205, 1137, 1134, 1115, 1060, 949, 778, 715), the current and past lack of Iraqi cooperation with those resolutions, Saddam's occasional refusal to co-operate with UN weapons inspectors, Saddam's attempt to assasinate former president George Bush while visting Kuwait, and Saddam's violation of the 1991 cease fire agreement. The primary stated goal of the war was to stop Iraq from deploying and developing WMD by removing Saddam from power. The war proved extremely divisive, with some of the U.S.'s long-term allies such as France and Germany strongly opposed to it. In many countries, including America, there have also been civilian opposition and antiwar protests, on a scale comparable to that of the Vietnam War, and including the largest protest in world history [11] (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/). The war was called illegal by the Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, who cited the U.N. Charter, and is recognized by many of its critics as a war crime.

While the conventional Iraqi armed forces fell apart within a few days, the problems in Iraq later escalated. An insurgency continued after the declared end of major combat operations on May 1, 2003, with several terrorist groups also supporting the insurgency. More than 1400 U.S. troops have been killed and over 9000 have been wounded in action. [12] (http://icasualties.org/oif/) The failure to uncover the alleged WMD led to renewed allegations that intelligence estimates were spun or distorted to support the war. These claims have been corroborated by investigations and reports by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which also concluded that there was a strong failure of intelligence overall. Nevertheless, Bush states that he still believes it was the right decision, because a demonstrably brutal tyrant has been overthrown and can no longer threaten the world. See 2003 invasion of Iraq for full coverage. To support his view, Bush praised the high turnout in the Iraqi election of January 30 2005, and polls conducted of Iraqi citizens' opinion of the war, which show mixed results.

Political Ideology

Bush's foreign policy is influenced by the neo-conservative think tank Project for the New American Century, many of whose members have prominent positions in the Bush administration. Many argue that the administration is far more inspired by the Heritage Foundation, and to a lesser degree the Cato Institute, although these organizations lack representation in the administration.

In his 2004 inaugural address, he outlined his vision for a Pax Americana, alluding to new foreign policy set forth in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America (pdf) (http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf). Supporters of Bush see this policy as a necessary rejection of "balance of power" politics and a redefinition of America's role in the international forum, while critics of this policy consider it arrogant and dangerous on a global and historical scale. (See disinfopedia's article on Pax Americana (http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Pax_Americana) for critic's reasoning.) Bush's 2005 inaugural address spoke of his intent to act aggressively and with force "when necessary" against "every ruler and every nation" he considers "oppressive" and who refuse to "start on this journey of progress and justice." He stated that his doctrine has "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." Critics described Bush's 2005 address as "unabashedly aggressive." [13] (http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1106261411374&call_pageid=970599119419)

Domestic policy

On gay rights, Bush endorsed the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would define marriage as being "between a man and a woman"; it would ban same-sex marriage and possibly even gay civil unions. A week before the 2004 election, however, Bush expressed his disagreement with the Republican Party platform that opposed civil unions, and said that the decision on civil unions should be left up to the states. [14] (http://www.civilrights.org/issues/glbt/details.cfm?id=25769) After his 2004 re-election, his level of support for the amendment was unclear. According to the New York Times, he told a privately invited group of African-American community and religious leaders that he remained committed to amending the Consitution to ban gay marriage. [15] (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/national/26bush.html) Nevertheless, when he announced his ten-point legislative agenda, the amendment was not included, and administration officials have said that Bush wants to focus on other issues and avoid divisive social topics such as abortion and same-sex marriage. Bush has also said that he would not lobby for the Federal Marriage Amendment during his second term unless the Defense of Marriage Act were declared unconstitutional. [16] (http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/01-05/01-17-05/a07wn672.htm) Without this qualification, however, he repeated his support for a "constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage" in his February 2, 2005 State of the Union address.

During Bush's first term, his nominee as ambassador to Romania, Michael E. Guest, became the first openly gay man to be confirmed by the Senate as a U.S. ambassador. (The first openly gay ambassador, James Hormel, received a recess appointment from Bill Clinton after the Senate failed to confirm the nomination. [17] (http://www.commondreams.org/news2001/0925-01.htm))

Bush has tended to be opposed to forms of affirmative action, but expressed appreciation for the Supreme Court's ruling upholding selecting college applicants for purposes of diversity. Bush has met with the National Urban League as President, but has not yet met with the NAACP as a group since he became president, though he did address the NAACP at their 2000 convention in Baltimore as a presidential candidate, and he met with outgoing NAACP President Kweisi Mfume on December 21, 2004. In welcoming the surprise invitation of Mfume to the White House, NAACP said 'Although candidate Bush appeared at the NAACP’s Convention in 2000, in 2004 President Bush became the first President since Warren G. Harding to not meet with the country’s oldest and largest civil rights organization when he declined an invitation to speak at the 2004 NAACP Annual Convention in Philadelphia.' [18] (http://www.naacp.org/news/2004/2004-12-21.html) Colin Powell became the first African-American man to serve as Secretary of State during Bush's first term in office. He was succeeded by Condolezza Rice in the same cabinet post beginning in 2005, becoming the first African-American female to serve in such capacity.

During his first term, Bush sought and obtained Congressional approval for three major tax cuts. These temporary cuts, scheduled to expire a decade after passage, increased the standard income tax deduction for married couples, eliminated the estate tax, and reduced marginal tax rates. By 2004, these cuts had reduced federal tax revenues, as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product, to the lowest level since 1959. [19] (http://www.cbpp.org/10-14-04bud.htm) The effect of simultaneous record increases in spending was to create record budget deficits. In the last year of the Clinton administration, the federal budget showed an annual surplus of more than US$230 billion. [20] (http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/27/clinton.surplus/) Under Bush, however, the government returned to deficit spending. The annual deficit reached a record level of $374 billion in 2003 ([21] (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/26/politics/main570166.shtml)) and then a further record of $413 billion in 2004 ([22] (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-10-14-deficit_x.htm)). In an open letter to Bush in 2004, more than 100 professors of business and economics at U.S. business schools ascribed this "fiscal reversal" to Bush's "policy of slashing taxes - primarily for those at the upper reaches of the income distribution". [23] (http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_14283.shtml) The cuts were enacted as temporary ones, but Bush has expressed the hope that they will be made permanent.

Bush proposed an immigration bill that some called a "partial amnesty" because it would have greatly expanded the use of guest worker visas. [[24] (http://www.vdare.com/francis/bush_amnesty.htm)

Bush has called for major changes in Social Security, identifying the issue as a priority for his second term. As of 2005 it is expected that he will offer a proposal incorporating reductions in benefit levels and partial privatization (allowing individual workers to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts). Most Democrats and some Republicans are critical of such ideas, partly because of the large federal borrowing the plan would require ($1 trillion or more) and partly because of the problems encountered by the United Kingdom's privatized pension plan.

Bush signed the Medicare Act of 2003, which added prescription drug coverage to Medicare, subsidized large employers to discourage them from eliminating private prescription coverage to retired workers, and prohibited the Federal government from negotiating discounts with drug companies.

Of the $2.4 trillion budgeted for 2005, about $401 billion [25] (http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2004/nr20040202-0301.html) are planned to be spent on defense. This level is generally comparable to the defense spending during the cold war. [26] (http://www.d-n-i.net/charts_data/evolution_of_the_fy_2003_budget.htm)

In January of 2003, Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, which targets supporting early learning, measures student performance, gives options over failing schools, and ensures more resources for schools. Critics (including Senator Kerry and the National Education Association) say schools were not given the resources to help meet new standards, although the House Committee on Education and the Workforce said in June, 2003 that in three years under the Bush administration the Education Department's overall funding would have increased by $13.2 billion [27] (http://edworkforce.house.gov/press/press108/06jun/edspending062003.htm). Some state governments are refusing to implement provisions of the act as long as they are not adequately funded.[28] (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52720-2004Feb18.html) In January of 2005, USA Today reported that the United States Department of Education had paid $240,000 to conservative political commentator Armstrong Williams "to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same." [29] (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-01-06-williams-whitehouse_x.htm) Williams did not disclose the payments.

Scientists have repeatedly criticized the Bush administration for reducing funding for scientific research, setting restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research (to be fair, proponents have pointed out that President Bush is also the first president to give funding to stem cell research), ignoring scientific consensus on global warming, and hampering cooperation with foreign scientists by enforcing deterring immigration and visa restrictions. In February 2004, over 5,000 scientists (including 48 Nobel Prize winners) from the Union of Concerned Scientists signed a statement "opposing the Bush administration's use of scientific advice". They felt that "the Bush administration has ignored unbiased scientific advice in the policy-making that is so important for our collective welfare." [30] (http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/page.cfm?pageID=1320) [31] (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=5476374)[32] (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5722898/)

On January 14, 2004, Bush announced a "space vision" (http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/14/bush.space/index.html), calling for a return to the Moon by 2020, the completion of the International Space Station by 2010 and eventually sending astronauts to Mars. Although the plan was met with a largely tepid reception [33] (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/8572141.htm

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