The 100 accomplishments of the George W. Bush administration

As I write this, George W. Bush is only a few days away from the end of his 8 year Presidency.  Earlier, I had graded Mr. Bush on a variety of major factors but I felt that I left off a huge number of things that he and his administration did or did not do.  This list is the result of trying to be more inclusive.  Many items on this list are actions by the Mr. Bush and his administration and some of them are inactions.

	Economy
1	Increased defense R&D spending
2	Accelerated the cleanup of brownfields
3	Prescription drug benefits in Medicare
4	Ordered renovation of military housing
5	Signed Medicare Reform
6	Allowed disabled people to use up to a year’s worth of vouchers to finance down payments on homes
7	9.7% increase in government-wide homeland security funding
8	Increased budget deficit to Eisenhower levels (% of GDP)
9	New Health Savings Accounts
10	Increased the limit of Education IRA from $500 to $2,000
11	Didn’t fix economy hurt by housing crisis
12	Allowed mortgage crisis
13	Initiated 3 separate raises for US military personnel
14	Increased the Defense Department’s base budget more than 70 percent since 2001
15	Pushed through 2 separate income tax custs
16	Reduced the number of homeless veterans by 40%
17	Fixed economy inherited in 2000 and hurt in 2001 attacks
	International
18	Killed the old US/USSR ABM Treaty
19	Paid off US debt to UN
20	Signed the largest nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia
21	10 ABM silos in Alaska
22	Prematurely declares “Mission Accomplished” regarding Iraq
23	Doubled foreign assistance
24	Forced Syra to leave Lebanon
25	Condemned the Russian attack on Georgia
26	Allows Secretary of State to go to UN with false evidence regarding Iraq
27	Won support for three U.N. Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran
28	Increased the number of free trade agreements from 3 to 14
29	Designated Iraq, Iran and North Korea as “Axis of Evil”
30	Implemented President’s Malaria Initiative in Africa
31	Increased money for medicine for AIDS suffering in Africa
32	Setup the Afghanistan government
33	Halved the nuclear weapon stockpile
34	Secured a commitment from N. Korea to end its nuclear weapon program
35	Watched as Israel attacked Lebanon
36	Iraq invasion
37	Massively increased aid to Africa
38	Got Libya to give up nukes
39	Tried to get Europe to deal with Iran
40	Watched as Israel attacked Gaza
41	Set up new government in Iraq
42	Forced N. Korea to work with multi-national panel
43	Dealt with China and the US spy plane
44	Remove Saddam Hussein
45	Afghanistan occupation
46	Afghanistan invasion
47	Gave Pakistan billions of dollars
	Policy
48	Watched passively as Katrina hit New Orleans
49	Denied knowing Ken Lay from Enron
50	Created Project Safe Neighborhood
51	Lifted the Executive Ban on drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf
52	Kept reading children’s books on 9/11
53	Was elected in 2000
54	Made changes to allow necessary clean up of national forests to reduce fire damage
55	Reduced H1B visas from 195K per year to 66K per year
56	Substantially Increased Funding for the Great Lakes
57	Federal Energy and Carbon Sequestration Programs
58	Mandated a Cut in Mercury Emissions
59	Nuclear Power 2010 program
60	Exempt food from unilateral trade sanctions and embargoes
61	Established Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
62	Put polar bear on endangered species list
63	Eased field-testing controls of genetically engineered crops
64	Tried to privatize Social Security
65	Reduced drug use among teens by 25%
66	Killed Kyoto Global Warming Treaty
67	issued an executive order that limits access to Presidential papers
68	Ethanol production has quadrupled from 1.6 billion gallons in 2000 to an estimated 6.5 billion gallons in 2007
69	Created the Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors
70	National Space Policy
71	Was re-elected in 2004
72	Created USA Freedom Corps
73	Appointed Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito
74	Appointed Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts
75	Stopped funding of new stem cells for research purposes
76	Reversed the requirement of parental consent for abortions
77	Issued an executive order regarding union dues being used for political campaigns against individual’s wishes
78	Challenged UN to not be the League of Nations
79	Stopped US involvement in International Criminal Court
80	Issued an EO implementing the Supreme Court’s Olmstead ruling
81	Established the The White House Office and the Centers for the Faith-Based and Community Initiative
82	Started the USA Freedom Corps
83	Supported the Law of the Sea treaty
84	Strengthen the National Health Service Corps
85	Ordered a 5 year plan to restructure each agency
86	Reorganized the intelligence agencies into the Department of Homeland Security
87	Put hundreds of thousands of government jobs up for bid
88	Banned partial birth abortions
89	Double the research budget of the National Institutes of Health
90	Enacted the Do Not Call list
91	No child left behind
92	Signed Teacher Protection Act
93	Interstate Air Quality Rule
94	Clear Skies Initiative to reduce air pollution
95	Prohibited federal fund for groups providing abortions
	Terrorism
96	Detained foreign citizens in prison without due process
97	Increased border security and interior enforcement funding more than 110 percent
98	Attacked Al Qaida
99	Implemented a wire-tapping scheme to detect conversations with terrorists
100	Allowed torture of suspect terrorists
101	Told American’s to shop after 9/11
102	Dealt with anthrax scare
103	Signed the Patriot Act
104	Created Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) to monitor foreign students
105	Split the Immigration and Naturalization Service into two agencies
106	Signed the workplace verification bill to prevent hiring of illegal aliens.
107	Established a six-month deadline for processing immigration applications.
108	Told Americans that Islam was a religion of peace
109	Created the TSA
110	Created a new air monitoring system to detect harmful airborne agents
111	Signed 2 bills that arm pilots with handguns in the cockpit

And of course the one accomplishment that many people feel is the most important:

A couple of comments on the above list.

• Yes, I know that there are more than 100 items on the list.  However, I didn’t want someone to say that two items were actually duplicate of each other.  For this reason, I felt that it was prudent to overshoot my goal of 100 in case a reader felt that some should have been excluded.
• The links to many of the items are not meant to be the definitive source on that topic.  Rather, I wanted to remind the reader of the topic in case you didn’t remember that effort.  My hope was the link would lead you to the discovery of the issue and the action of the Bush Administration.  In the cases where I didn’t include a link, I felt that nearly everyone reading this list would understand those issues or could easily find more information by do a quick web search.
  
• I titled this list as the 100 accomplishments.  I fully understand that many will feel that some of these items were failures.  That really isn’t the point.  My goal in creating the list was to try and identify the top 100 or so things that the administration did (or by inaction didn’t do). This is not a scorecard.
• The list is not ordered by time or importance.  Do not take any inference in the numbering scheme.
  

Did I miss anything?

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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George W. Bush, 100 accomplishments