The Katrina speech that Bush isn't man enough to make

My fellow Americans:
I want to start by doing something I’ve never done before. I want to apologize.

A natural disaster is a natural test for any government, and when Katrina struck us, your government failed that test. We flunked. We got an F.

We failed you, the American people, because we didn’t respond to the devastation of Katrina promptly, like we should have. Americans in New Orleans were left stranded for days without food and water in attics, on rooftops, in the Superdome and the Convention Center.

Was there a racist component to this? I’m not a racist, but maybe our country still is. You and I know that if New Orleans had been a white city, FEMA and Homeland Security would’ve had rescue teams there on day one. So I want to apologize especially to all African-Americans for our failure.

Now, for the first time, we’ve seen the suffering of thousands of poor people, who did not have the means to evacuate themselves. We thought all we had to do was tell people to pack up their belongings in their cars and drive away. But many people don’t have cars. Many don’t have the money for a bus. Many have to choose between busfare and paying for food so their children have something to eat that day.

Like many Americans, I’ve lived a life of privilege. I admit that like most privileged Americans, I don’t understand poverty. Maybe it’s time us privileged Americans should concern themselves with the problems of the poor. Maybe it’s time for politicians like me to do something about poverty relief instead of tax relief for the rich.

We didn’t abandon the poor last week. We abandoned them long ago. Let me give you a few statistics.

Most Americans think between one and five million Americans live in poverty. The actual number is 37 million. One in eight Americans is poor. And we’re supposed to be the wealthiest nation on earth. One in five children is poor during the first three years of life, the time when brain development is the most crucial. Child poverty in America is two to three times higher than child poverty in other industrialized nations. Each day in America, 2,000 babies are born into poverty.

When people are poor, it’s families that suffer. It’s children that suffer.

How do we solve the problem of the poor? Well, we can start with the rich, by asking them to pay their fair share of taxes. For many years now, my party and I have attacked the very idea of taxes as a burden on Americans. We’ve believed that government should be reduced, that government programs be cut, because the people themselves know better how to spend their money than government does.

Well, I still believe the people themselves know better than any government to spend their money. After all, most of us live within a budget, unlike your government.

But taxes are there for our common good. We have to change our minds about taxes. Not paying taxes is selfish. Paying taxes is about contributing to the common good, about being selfless and charitable. We should be happy to pay taxes because that is our social capital. That’s the money we pool to make ourselves better. We should be happy to pay taxes to build a better education system, for example, so poor kids have a better chance at life, and can work themselves out of poverty.

That's what government is for. To serve the common good. That's our purpose and our motive, unlike private business, whose only motive is profit. That's why government is there to do the things that business cannot do. But let's face it, your government hasn’t always had the common good as its motive. When you look at the lobbies in Washington, and how laws get written by Congress, it seems as if our motive has been to serve only the good of those corporations whose only motive is profit. We in government have been running a welfare program for big business, who need it the least. That’s what the energy bill was about that we’ve recently passed.

The common good should be about what’s good for the little people, not about what’s good for big business. The number of poor people in America has increased by 17% on my watch. In this respect, my government has failed you. For example, we passed a law making it more difficult for families to declare bankruptcy to allow them to make a new start. We did something for the good of the credit card industry instead of for the good of the people.

We’ve been blind to the poor. It is this blindness to the least among us, I believe, that led to us reacting more to the living death of one person, Terri Shiavo, than to the living deaths of the people of the city of New Orleans.

We in America have forgotten that we are one big family, the family of America. Like a family, we have to learn how to take care of our own. A good, strong family stands together to help its members who are in trouble. Everyone who is in a family knows that when you are in need, you can rely on someone in your family to come through for you. And when you are doing well, you don’t think twice about helping those in your family who need help.

It’s time for your government to accept a new responsibility for the common good of the American family. That means, for example, that we have to be held accountable for how we help or don’t help the American family. Here government has something to learn from private business: that when leaders fail, they must go, and give others a chance to succeed. That’s why I’ve asked for the resignations of FEMA chief Michael Brown and Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff. Homeland Security was created three years ago precisely to handle emergencies like Hurricane Katrina, and it failed at that task. It failed at an emergency that was foreseen. Imagine how it would fail at an unforeseen emergency, like a terrorist attack.

As I hold these leaders accountable, I hold myself accountable, too. Last week I failed you as a leader. It was pretty obvious to all of us Americans. But it’s become obvious to me in a deeper sense. In my own heart, I failed myself as a Christian, for not acting promptly when my fellow Americans were in trouble.

Katrina is a wakeup call for the privileged among us. It's time we stepped up to the plate and took responsibility. As your leader, as a Christian, as a compassionate conservative, I promise you that I will spend the rest of my term as president doing something about our problem of poverty. I’ve created a new cabinet position to be headed up by the former mayor of New York, Rudolph Guiliani, to solve our problem of poverty within the next decade. Many years ago President Kennedy galvanized the nation with the challenge to land on the moon in ten years. Today I challenge you to a nobler vision: the eradication of American poverty in the next ten years. It’s time the wealthiest nation on earth solved the problem of its poor. And maybe, when we’ve been successful at that, we can do something about the world’s poor, too.

Tonight I want you as Americans to go to bed thinking of your responsibility not only to your own family, but to the American family. We are a family, the American family. Let’s start acting like one.

Thank you, and God bless America.