Bush should use the next four weeks to fill in blanks

President Bush's assertion Tuesday night that "Today, the state of our union is strong," was not surprising given the setting, but there are any number of challenges that can be offered to show why his optimism may be exaggerated.
Just a day before the president's State of the Union speech before a joint session of Congress, Ohio Gov. Bob Taft met with Vindicator writers and admitted he was extremely worried about the future of Delphi Corp., a major auto parts manufacturer that has thousands of employees in Ohio. Taft also expressed concern about the American automobile industry and, in particular, the impact on General Motors of any contraction by Delphi.
Yet in his hour-long speech to a nationally televised audience, President Bush made no mention of the challenges facing the domestic auto industry. Indeed, his comments about health care would have been more signficant had he introduced a sense of urgency to the issue by talking about the price the Big Three auto manufacturers are paying for health care coverage for their employees and retirees.
Health savings accounts
Instead, the president repeated his call for individual health savings accounts and portability of health insurance. However, those moves do not address the problems associated with 46 million Americans without health insurance.
The millions of dollars worth of free care provided by the hospitals in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys and the large number bad debts that are written off attest to the enormity of the problem.
Bush insisted the federal government is meeting its responsibility of helping to provide heath care for the poor and elderly, but his much-touted Medicare prescription drug benefit, an entitlement for up to 42 million disabled and older people, has been hamstrung by inept implementation.
Tens of thousands of recipients did not get medicine due to confusion and computer glitches, prompting some members of Congress to seek an extension of the May 15 signup deadline.
Add to that the skyrocketing cost of the program -- it was launched by Republicans in Congress with a price tag of $534 billion, but since then the 10-year cost estimate has risen to $720 billion -- and it is clear that the bipartisan commission proposed by Bush to study Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is essential.
While the president's optimism about America's future at home and abroad was to be expected, given the fact that any sign of weakness or uncertainty could have had far-reaching implications, he must now fill in the blanks that were evident in his speech.
He will give one speech a week for the next four weeks in various parts of the country, expounding on the initiatives he proposed and seeking bipartisan support in Congress for them. The four issues that will be the focus of his national appearances are taming health care costs, moving America away from its dependency of foreign energy sources, remaining competitive in the global economy and getting the ballooning federal defict under control.
Foreign policy
Bush should also consider a major foreign policy address to the nation to expound on his contention Tuesday that the United States is "committed to an historic, long-term goal -- we seek the end of tyranny in our world."
How are we going to pay for all these domestic and global initiatives? Bush didn't say. Yet, he insisted that the federal deficit, which stands at $337 billion, will be cut in half by 2009. He revealed that 140 federal programs will be eliminated, but didn't provide any details.
Those are the blanks that Bush must fill in if he is to win the support of the majority of the American people.