Opinion: Bush's self-policing is a joke

Who could have guessed that when President Bush recently called for a new era of volunteerism in America, he would include polluters and inept nursing homes? In recent policy decisions, Bush has decided that industries emitting greenhouse gases and understaffed nursing homes should voluntarily police themselves. Fearing regulation, those businesses probably can't believe their good luck.

In his delayed response to the international global warming treaty, the president abandoned all but the pretense of taking the problem seriously. Instead of requiring cuts in carbon dioxide emissions -- which contribute to global warming -- Bush would allow polluting industries, essentially, to go unchecked. In the place of regulation, he would ask for voluntary emission reductions and offer $4.6-billion in tax credits, a paltry amount considering the scope of the threat.

Even if power generators and manufacturers accept the president's offer, the nation's output of greenhouse gases would grow rather than shrink. That's because Bush would allow carbon emissions to increase by a percentage of overall economic growth (for example, if the economy grew by 3 percent, greenhouse gases could increase by 1 percent). His rationale for voluntary restraint is that American jobs would be lost if we act more forcefully.

That is a legitimate concern, and of course there would be a cost to reducing smokestack emissions. But there is also a cost to inaction: increased health care needs and deaths related to pollution and a declining quality of life. Perhaps the Kyoto treaty is not the best vehicle for reducing greenhouse gases, but the president would have been more responsible if he had offered an alternative that made progress in the battle against global warming.

The call for voluntary standards in nursing homes is a more immediate concern. Faced with the fact that 90-percent of nursing homes are so understaffed that they can't provide proper care for their fragile patients, the Bush administration rejected new requirements on staffing.

A report by the administration's Department of Health and Human Services found that nursing homes with too few nurses and nurse's aides were more likely to provide inadequate care. When nursing home patients are neglected, they are more likely to suffer bedsores, malnutrition, weight loss, dehydration, pneumonia and infections. And experts in geriatric medicine advised in the report that there should be "some minimum staffing ratio to protect nursing home residents."

But the administration's conclusion was similar to its response to global warming, that we can't afford to do the right thing. Federal requirements for a minimum ratio of nursing staff to patients would cost the nursing home industry too much, the report said. Instead of imposing new rules, the Bush administration is counting on the nursing home industry to voluntarily resolve the staffing shortage on its own. Rather than demanding improvement, the administration hopes that "nurse staffing levels may simply increase due to the market demand created by an informed public."

When the president called for citizen volunteerism in service to community and nation, he evoked the best qualities of America. His justification was noble: "We want to be a nation that serves goals larger than self," Bush said in his State of the Union speech.

But his words mock the very idea when applied to corporate interests that put profit ahead of a healthy environment and adequate care for the most vulnerable citizens.

Volunteerism is not the answer here. If polluters and exploiters of the elderly won't behave responsibly on their own, the government has an obligation to make them do so.

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