Tuesday evening President Bush addressed our nation in his State of the Union Address. This is the first time I have watched any president give this address. Before this year I had no idea of the importance of this speech. I did not know that in this address our president is supposed to talk about the issues he plans to tackle that year. I know many of you think, “Why should I care?” Well now is the time to start paying attention. Believe it or not he is dealing with issues that affect you.

Since I had no previous knowledge of State of the Union Addresses, I decided to go back and examine Bush’s last three addresses. I wanted to see how our president had done with accomplishing the goals he had laid out in his prior addresses. A quick search on the Internet helped me find that you can read all of Bush’s State of the Union Addresses on the Internet. It was not hard for me to read through them and pick out a few issues in which a quick fact check would show how the president is doing at accomplishing his goals. Here is what I found:

In 2004 Bush mentioned that he planned to “cut the deficit in half over the next five years.” The next year, he stated again that he would “cut the deficit in half by 2009.”

Call me crazy, but I think that if the president intends to keep his promises to the American people then the deficit should be slowing or decreasing by now. The funny thing is that this is not what I found. What I did find is that old Bushy Boy’s budget actually increased the deficit from $412 billion in 2004 to a record $427 billion in 2005. Wow, that is a large step in the wrong direction.

In 2004 and 2005 Bush also proposed “larger Pell grants” so he could “make it easier for Americans to afford a college education.” After investigating this proposal, I found that in 2004 a change in eligibility reduced the number of students receiving Pell grants by about 90,000.

Not just that, but the amount of money people received for their grants decreased. When are we going to start holding our president accountable for what he says? In my book, it is not okay to say one thing and do another. If you say you are going to “make it easier for students to afford college,” then you should be expected to do just that!

One thing I noticed that he mentions every year is the need to Make “America more secure and less dependent on foreign energy.” I agree with him on this. In his most recent address when he called Americans oil addicts, he is correct. I have to question, shouldn’t we be trying to wean ourselves off ALL oil, not just FOREIGN oil? Could it be that this is just a ploy to get approval from Congress for more drilling in Alaska and off our coasts?

Not only do the president and I not agree on that but we also have different opinions on how this issue should be handled. I believe that technology already exists to start creating a society that does not run on gasoline.

He seems to think that we still have a long way to go until this is possible. I think that solar power is a long-term, low-cost way to handle this problem. He thinks that we should continue to pump money into nuclear power, a source of energy that is sure to cause problems down the line.

Isn’t it time that Americans expected and received some accountability from our president? We all need to let him know that if he tells our country that we need “reliable supplies of affordable, environmental responsible energy,” then we expect him to find a way to make this possible. We don’t need someone to label and belabor our problems, we need someone who will work to solve them.

Our generation can no longer sit back and ignore politics. We are reaching an age where we need to start taking an interest in what the president is saying. It is our job as American citizens and members of a democracy to listen to our president and hold him accountable.

Investigate for yourselves the issues that he mentions. If we continue to ignore our government then our government will continue to ignore our needs. Do not sit back any longer and think that it doesn’t really matter to you. Pay attention! Your environment, your financial aid, and your quality of life are at stake.

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