There are those out there who feel that had a few more of President Bush’s proposals been passed, Americans would be much better off today. In “New president faces number of old issues,” published on Aug. 27, Blake Hasenmiller argues that three of President Bush’s proposals could have fundamentally changed the issues Americans face.

Currently, the U.S. consumes about 20 million barrels of oil a day with 12 million of those barrels being imported. If both the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the coastal shelves were drilled, studies show in five to 15 years we could see crude production of 1.5 to three million barrels per day. This could potentially offset some of our imported oil, but only a small portion. With 83 million barrels of oil produced a day and the cost of domestic oil production being only slightly cheaper than foreign production, a 2 to 4 percent increase in global supply would only marginally lower the price of gasoline.

Privatization of social security would require high startup costs and benefit reductions that supporters tend to avoid addressing. In President Bush’s 2007 budget plan, it was documented that a voluntary switch of one-third of employee social security taxes to private accounts would cost approximately $712 billion dollars in just the first seven years. In addition, benefit reduction would need to be 20 to 30 percent for new retirees and up to 50 percent for our generation to make up for the decline in incoming revenue.

In 1996, the line-item veto was passed by Congress and immediately ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. District Court of D.C. In order to pass the line-item veto into law it would require a constitutional amendment. Also, pork barrel spending may be politically wonderful to rally against, but at $17.2 billion of the $2.9 trillion 2008 budget, this barrel spending only makes up 0.6 percent of the federal budget. When examining the expected deficits of $250 billion in 2008 and $482 billion in 2009, an end to pork barrel spending would only decrease the deficit by 6.8 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively.

Blake Hasenmiller’s smug insistence that if only certain Bush policies had been carried out we would be better off is a fallacy. The fact is that these policies are shortsighted, partisan plans instead of the comprehensive, bipartisan policies Americans need. As a centrist independent, my hope is that whoever takes over on Jan. 9, 2009, recognizes that we need a comprehensive energy policy that includes alternative energy research, a long-term gradual change in social security to maintain solvency and balanced budgets created by sensible taxation and maintainable government sending. While the Blake Hassenmillers of this country are entitled to their opinions, they still need to be accountable for the facts that support or counter their arguments.

—Bret Ulery is a chemical and biological engineering graduate student from Nevada.