Last night Bush gave his farewell address and during it he gave himself an awful lot of pats on the back. Here’s one part that really got me:

A new Medicare prescription drug benefit is bringing peace of mind to seniors and the disabled.

Really? Someone should have told the seniors and disabled about this “peace of mind”. When the new program went into effect and tons of seniors couldn’t get their medicine, a local group of seniors tried to get answers from our district’s congressman – John Boehner. When they contacted his office to hold a meeting, he flat out refused and just said “the program is working”.

Then seniors got a new wake up call a few months later – the doughnut hole. This ended up costing the seniors even more.

This program has been a colossal fuckup, much like NCLB, but it looks like Obama has recognized that and is ready to undo the hell Bush and the Republicans created for our seniors:

Barack Obama pledged yesterday to shape a new Social Security and Medicare “bargain” with the American people, saying that the nation’s long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs.

That discussion will begin next month, Obama said, when he convenes a “fiscal responsibility summit” before delivering his first budget to Congress. He said his administration will begin confronting the issues of entitlement reform and long-term budget deficits soon after it jump-starts job growth and the stock market.

“What we have done is kicked this can down the road. We are now at the end of the road and are not in a position to kick it any further,” he said. “We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else’s.”

Here’s hoping he can make good on this and get some sweeping new legislation past the obstructionist Republicans, who apparently don’t give a damn about the seniors of this country. A good start would be negotiating for lower prices, instead of giving the mega health corporations a sweet handout at full price from the taxpayers.