For a country deeply divided
by party affiliation, job title, religion, and even ethnicity these
days, President Bush's last State of the Union Address produced a
fairly uniform response from pundits, politicians and the public: change
is coming, and not a moment too soon.
The message couldn't have
been clearer from where I sat on Monday night, surrounded by several
SEIU members, including two child care providers, a janitor, a security
officer, and a hospital technician/MPA. Watching Bush's seventh
and final SOTU,
we were prepared to hear anything. What we did hear left us cold. I
think we shared the sentiment of working families all around this country,
who were neither surprised nor impressed to hear the lip service the
president paid to what are pocketbook issues for most of us: child care,
utility bills, housing and healthcare.
Gloria Knight, a 50 year-old child care provider
with SEIU
Local 500 Kids First Maryland,
summed it up best: "Did he talk about the things that matter to me?
Well, housing, wages, healthcare--I heard him mention them, but I didn't
hear solutions. He gets you all hyped up, but then he leaves you hanging."
You see, from where Gloria, and SEIU members Annette Scurry, Kevin
Hills, Leonard
Green, and Raquel
Mack sit, this
country is out of balance and we need a lot more than empty promises
if we're going to put it back on course. Gas prices have nearly tripled,
the annual cost of a family
health insurance premium has gone up by more than $3,800, families are losing their homes,
and more Americans live in
poverty than ever
before. Since the president came into office in 2001, the median household
income in this country has decreased by $1,100.
At the same time, the gap between the rich and poor has reached an all
time high; in 2007, the salary of a full-time
minimum wage employee without vacation was $12,168 while the average
salary of a CEO of a Fortune 500 company surpassed $15 million.
But the president didn't
focus on these realities.
On healthcare reform, president
Bush talked about giving healthcare workers more freedom to do their
jobs, but offered no solutions for how to help the more than 47 million
uninsured Americans who have to pray that they won't get sick every
day. "He talked about making healthcare more 'affordable'--whatever
that means," said Annette, a family
child care provider and leader in SEIU Local 500 Kids
First Maryland.
"But he didn't talk about the SCHIP bill he vetoed last year. He
didn't talk about healthcare for kids at all. I just don't think
it interests him."
On energy, he talked about
how we should wean ourselves off of foreign oil, but he failed to mention
how this dependency led us to a deplorable war--or how the increasing
costs of oil enrich his friends in the oil industry. For Annette, the
concerns are more immediate: "I need the gas to keep my child care
center warm enough for the kids, and if it's not warm enough, they'll
come in and shut down my facility. But I don't get extra money to pay
for the more expensive gas. Already it takes my income and my husband's
both to heat the house. I don't know what I'll do if the prices keep
going up."
The president talked about
job creation, but he didn't say where the jobs were or whether they'd
really support a family. In our discussion, we gave the president lots
of credit for mentioning how the rising cost of living hurts working
families, but his solution--more tax cuts for the rich--didn't sound
promising to ordinary working folks like SEIU Local 32BJ's Raquel Mack, a security guard for Allied Barton
Security on K Street. Despite working two jobs, she can't make enough
money to pay for her son's child care. And her constant worry over
the sorry state of her child's public school in the District was not
assuaged by the president's celebration of "leaving no child behind."
Of course the president reserved
over half of the speech to talk about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and the future threat of a war in Iran. But we all know that he left
out most of that story. "He didn't say anything about how we've
been spending our dwindling budget on a war without an end," said Kevin Hills, a janitor for the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services and member of SEIU Local
32BJ. "I didn't
hear him talk about how the American people are being fleeced."
Indeed, it was a sobering night
to be reminded of just where our country has come these past seven years.
But in our little watch party, there was a glimmer of hope. "I will
tell him this," Kevin said to us all at the end of the night. "The
fight starts now. We're going to begin by knocking on doors; talking
to our fellow members; and making sure we use all the energy possible
to make a real change in our country in 2009."
Long before the president started
talking about a weakening economy, the core of our country's workforce--the
engine of our country's prosperity--knew that we were running out
of steam. And long before this campaign season began to heat up, these
same workers started making plans to regain it. Thanks to working people
like Kevin, I know that there is real hope in the future. There is real
hope in change. And there is real hope in November 2008.
