[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 40 (Friday, March 23, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2813-S2817]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE ECONOMY OF OUR COUNTRY

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have listened with some interest today 
to some of the discussion on the floor of the Senate, first about 
campaign finance reform, and then to Senator Byrd, and others.
  I come to the floor to talk about the economic circumstances this 
country finds itself in for the moment. I want to visit about a number 
of issues that relate to our economy.
  Mr. President, I came across one of my favorite books last evening 
while going through a pile of old books that had been stacked for some 
long while. The book is written by a man named Fulghum. Most people in 
this country have read this book or seen the book. It is entitled ``All 
I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.'' It is a wonderful 
little book.
  In ``All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,'' he 
describes: ``Put things back where you got them.'' ``Don't hurt 
others.'' ``Play fair.'' ``Clean up your own mess.'' ``Don't hit 
people.'' ``Wash your hands.'' ``Flush.''
  There is a whole list of things you learned in kindergarten that 
represent enduring truths throughout life.
  I started thinking about this in the context of the grappling that we 
do in this country with our economy. We forget the most basic of 
things--almost kindergarten-like lessons--about our economy so very 
quickly.
  Let me describe just a few of them.
  We have been blessed, of course, with a long period of economic 
expansion, a period in which we have seen almost unprecedented economic 
growth: new jobs, better income, and more opportunity for most American 
families. The stock market began to increase in value and rolled to 
increasing new heights. People felt good about the stock market. They 
invested in the

[[Page S2814]]

Dow Jones, in the Nasdaq, and would see their net worth increase daily 
or weekly or monthly.
  We saw college dropouts who were still fighting their acne problems, 
and hadn't yet learned to shave, making million-dollar deals in 
technology companies, and then selling them and starting new technology 
companies. It was a go-go economy with remarkable and almost 
unimaginable new things that were happening. We had higher economic 
growth and lower inflation.
  Of course, the one constant in all of this was a Federal Reserve 
Board. The Federal Reserve Board sat down behind its thick doors, and 
in its concrete building, and continued to ring its hands and fret 
about inflation, despite the fact that inflation was receding rather 
than increasing.
  So that is what kind of economy we had. It has been quite an economy.
  Then about 10 months ago, the Federal Reserve Board, and its 
chairman, Alan Greenspan, decided they once again would increase 
interest rates--then 50 basis points--because our economy was growing 
too rapidly. They had great fear that an economy that was growing too 
much would produce inflationary pressures.
  What they did not understand--and have not understood for some long 
while--is the workers in this country are more productive. Productivity 
was on the march, on the increase. You can have lower unemployment and 
higher economic growth if you have higher productivity.
  But, nonetheless, 10 months ago, the Federal Reserve Board took its 
last step to increase interest rates because they felt America was 
growing too fast. It was the last, I believe, in six steps over about a 
year to substantially increase interest rates and slow down the 
American economy.
  At about the same time, we began the see some energy problems in this 
country--price spikes in natural gas, propane, and home heating fuel. 
We began to see the dislocation of energy restructuring, especially 
electricity restructuring in California. And now we see--in recent 
days--rolling blackouts in the State of California. So we have 
significant energy problems.
  Part of that resulted from the euphoria of having the price of oil 
drop to $10 a barrel, which resulted in very few people deciding they 
wanted to look for additional oil and natural gas, and the drying up of 
new drilling rigs. Therefore, because the price of oil dropped so low, 
and we had so few new people looking for oil and natural gas, we now 
find a dislocation--increased demand for natural gas especially and 
oil, and reduced supply.

  Now we have new exploration because oil went to well over $30 a 
barrel at one point, and we have new people looking for oil and natural 
gas. I suspect 8 months, 12 months, 2 years from now we will have new 
supplies on line, and we will have some additional balance. But with a 
Federal Reserve Board determined to slow down the economy with high 
interest rates, and a significant energy problem that has visited this 
country and provided great injury, and still does today for many 
Americans who fought through a bitterly cold first 2 months of the 
winter and discovered their natural gas prices to heat their homes had 
been jacked up, in some cases double and triple, it has been a tough 
time.
  At the same time, the bubble began to burst on the stock market. The 
Nasdaq began falling. The Dow began falling. The economy began to slow 
down. We had, and still have, a form of liquidity crisis. We have good 
businesses that are building out to try to provide competition in 
communications and other areas that can't find the kind of capital they 
need to continue doing that business. This serious liquidity crisis 
accompanies the slowdown and the bursted bubble on the stock market.
  At the same time we have a trade deficit that is growing very 
dramatically. This trade deficit is the highest in history of anywhere 
on Earth. Personal debt continues to go up in this country. As I 
indicated, economic growth is slowing.
  Amidst all of this, we have, it seems to me, probably just forgotten 
some of the fundamentals. Going back to ``All I Really Need To Know I 
Learned In Kindergarten,'' some of the fundamentals we should never 
have forgotten. Mr. Greenspan should never have forgotten that 
increased productivity allows less unemployment. Increased productivity 
allows higher growth. Don't be afraid of the American workers being 
more productive and earning more money and being employed at a higher 
rate if their productivity is up. All we really need to know, we should 
have learned in the primer course on that subject. Yet the Federal 
Reserve Board consistently has insisted that is an equation that 
doesn't work. They have forgotten the fundamentals.
  In our market for securities and investors, we have forgotten the 
fundamentals. This is not the first time. You can go back to bubbles of 
speculation throughout history. One of the most interesting ones for me 
was to read about the bubble of speculation in ``Tulipmania'' four or 
five centuries ago in which there was a time when they paid $25,000 for 
a tulip bulb because tulip bulbs became the subject of massive 
speculation. We have had a lot of speculation bubbles in recent 
centuries. This was just the last.
  Is it surprising that it doesn't work out when you purchase stock 
that is selling for 200 times its earnings or when you purchase the 
stock at a wildly inflated price of a company that has never made a 
profit and doesn't look as if it is going to make a profit? Is it 
surprising that that doesn't work out at some point? I don't think so. 
Yet many of us, probably all of us, temporarily forgot those lessons 
when the Nasdaq and the markets continued to go up and up.
  Will Rogers once said his dad gave him some advice. He said his daddy 
said that he should buy stock, then hold it until it goes up, and then 
sell it. And if it doesn't go up, don't buy it. At least that is what 
he said his dad said. He said that doesn't work out so well.
  The lesson from all of this that we probably should have learned long 
ago is that some of these prices were never justifiable; that is, with 
respect to the market.

  What about energy? Perhaps we should understand with respect to this 
energy crisis that it is not enough just to applaud when the price of a 
barrel of oil goes to $10 because there will be a consequence later. It 
is not enough when you find yourself short of energy to just go find 
new energy because that is only part of the solution.
  Opening up ANWR, as some of my colleagues suggest we should do, and 
as I oppose, is not a substitute for an energy policy. I don't believe 
we ought to open ANWR. But some say: Let's just address this energy 
policy by simply finding new supplies. Well, let's find new supplies. 
Let's incentivize the finding of new supplies of oil and natural gas, 
and let's use clean coal technology to produce our coal in an 
environmentally friendly way.
  Let's also do other things. Let's understand that conservation is 
very important. If you are sitting in a 6,000 pound gas hog and 
complaining about the price of gas, we have to be concerned about the 
issue of conservation in this country as well. We need to produce new 
energy. We need to conserve more, both with appliances and vehicles and 
other ways. Additionally, we need to incentivize new sources of 
renewable energy: wind energy, biomass, ethanol, and more. I know the 
oil industry doesn't like it, but that is precisely why I do. When the 
oil industry believes it is in its self-interest to impede the 
development of other sources of energy, I say that is exactly why we 
ought to develop other sources of energy. Yes, we need the oil 
industry. We need natural gas. But we also ought to develop wind power. 
The new generation of wind turbines are very effective and efficient. 
Wind, biomass, ethanol, all can contribute to this country's energy 
supply, and we ought to understand that.
  Again, all we need to do is to make sensible decisions. The sensible 
decision is not to just rely on additional production. That won't solve 
America's energy problem. We introduced a piece of legislation 
yesterday--Senator Bingaman, myself, and others on the Energy 
Committee, along with my colleague Senator Daschle, the Democratic 
leader--which is a comprehensive energy policy. It moves us in the 
right direction in a range of areas, one that is thoughtful and will 
lead this country out of the dilemma that currently exists with the 
imbalance between supply and demand for energy. Our economy cannot 
survive, progress and succeed the way we want it to unless we have 
assured supplies of energy.

[[Page S2815]]

  I talked about the stock market. I talked about the economy. Energy 
is also a very important element of these issues. We have to respond to 
them, and we have to deal with them.
  At the same time we are confronting the other issues, we are 
confronting the challenge of international trade. I mention the 
challenge of international trade only because, while all of the other 
elements of our fiscal policy seemed to have improved dramatically over 
the most recent 8 years, the one area that continued to decline was 
trade. By decline, I mean our trade deficit continued to grow year 
after year. We have the highest deficit in human history. It is not 
rocket science to fix this. Again, all we really need to know we 
learned in kindergarten. Everyone needs to play fair. Our current 
merchandise trade deficit is a huge problem at over $440 billion just 
this last year. The problem is that when we have trading partners, 
whether it is Europe, China, Japan, Mexico, or Canada, we say to them, 
we will open our markets to you, but in exchange, you must open your 
markets to us. We have never had the nerve or the will to do that.

  Let me give some examples of what we have done in trade. We just 
negotiated a deal with China. We said to China, after a long phase-in, 
we will give you this deal. You have a huge surplus with us or we have 
a huge deficit with you, and after a phase-in, we will give you this 
deal. You have roughly 1.2 billion people who are looking for new 
products. However we negotiated a deal that when we sell American 
vehicles to China, they can impose a 25-percent tariff. But if the 
Chinese sell automobiles to the United States, we will impose a 2.5-
percent tariff. In other words, we will make a deal with you. You can 
charge a tariff that is 10 times higher than the United States on 
automobiles. That is with a country with which we already have a huge 
deficit, an over $80 billion last year. I scratch my head and look at 
that and think, on whose side were our trade negotiators? They 
certainly weren't for America. At least, they forgot for whom they were 
negotiating. That is one example here are a few others.
  The average agricultural tariff in the United States is 12 percent. 
The global average is 26 percent. The average tariff in the European 
Union is 30 percent. We have a long series of trade agreements, and big 
disputes, with the European Union. How is it that our trade negotiators 
let our European counterparts take advantage of our farmers?
  The average Japanese tariff is 58 percent. Every pound of T-bone 
steak that goes to Tokyo has right now a nearly 40-percent tariff on 
it. That is after the beef agreement with Japan--unforgivable. Japan 
has a $70 billion trade surplus with the United States but they won't 
cut a deal for our ranchers.
  After our beef agreement, almost every pound of beef going into Japan 
has a huge tariff on it. Yet this country seems to lack the will, the 
strength, or the nerve to do much about it.
  Every time we get involved in a trade negotiation, we lose in a very 
short period of time and agree to trade concessions that continue to 
ratchet up the trade deficit. I hear all my colleagues say: These trade 
agreements are really important so we can sell around the world. Yes, 
they are important. Every time we have a new trade agreement, we have a 
higher trade deficit. Does that add up?
  We have a trade agreement with Mexico. We had a surplus; we turned it 
into a deficit. We have a trade agreement with Canada. We had a 
deficit; we nearly doubled it. We have a trade agreement with China. We 
didn't have a vote on that, but we just had a bilateral agreement with 
China.
  I will make a wager with my colleagues that in a year and a half, 
when we evaluate our relationship with China, our deficit will have 
increased and we will be getting fewer agricultural products into 
China. Incidentally, after the trade agreement with China, in December, 
a load of barley was shipped to China from the U.S. and it is still 
waiting to enter. China stopped the shipment and apparently isn't going 
to let it get in. And China will give no reason for it. It is 
reasonable to ask: Who is looking after our interests?
  You could put on a blindfold and listen and you could not tell the 
difference between George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Ronald 
Reagan, or Richard Nixon. It is all the same mantra on trade: This 
country is ill served by the trade agreements we have had. I support 
expanded trade and expanded opportunity for American products abroad. 
That is not what is happening in these trade agreements.
  Now we come to a backdrop of an economy with energy issues and issues 
with respect to the market, trade, and other things I have discussed, 
and we have a new President who wants to cut taxes. In his campaign for 
the Presidency, when he was campaigning against Mr. Forbes in the 
primaries, he said he wanted to cut taxes by $1.3 trillion over 10 
years. That was nearly 2 years ago that he made that announcement. That 
$1.3 trillion is scored by those who know it all works out that we will 
offer $2 trillion in real costs. So we have a President who, a couple 
years ago, said he wants a very large tax cut, and that there are 
surpluses as far as the eye can see. He and virtually all others from 
all political parties say they expect surpluses every year for the next 
10 years, so the American people ought to receive some of those 
surpluses back in the form of tax relief.
  I agree. I think it is time for a tax cut for a number of reasons. 
No. 1, I think our economy is weaker than most people believe. We are 
headed toward some pretty troublesome circumstances. Our fiscal policy 
ought to be stimulative. It is time for a tax cut that will help 
stimulate this economy and help provide additional economic growth.
  But I do not believe we ought to lock in a tax cut for 10 years that 
is so large that it could pose a danger of putting us right back into 
very large, significant budget deficits once again. It took well over a 
decade to get out of that problem. This country should not want to be 
back in the same set of circumstances.
  First of all, I don't think anyone here really believes that we know 
what is going to happen 2 years, 5 years, or 10 years from now. Nobody 
believes that we know there will be surpluses. We have never had 
surpluses for 10 straight years. We have never had those surpluses. 
Nobody knows what is going to happen 6 months from now in the economy. 
Yet we have people here who are prepared to say we are going to lock in 
a very large tax cut in a way that will put us in jeopardy of going 
back into Federal budget deficits 2 years, 5 years, or 10 years from 
now. I don't think that is wise. We should only lock in a tax cut for 
the first 2 years, and do the right kind of tax cut so that it is fair 
to everybody and in a way that stimulates our economy.
  The first 2-year phase--make that portion of it permanent. Make the 
first phase stimulative, and at the end of 2 years, if we still have 
surpluses and the economic outlook is good, do a second phase. That is 
a much more conservative and a much more thoughtful way to address 
these issues.
  I hope as we have these discussions in the budget debate, and in the 
subsequent tax debate that will come following that, we will be able to 
think through exactly what kind of projections we have for the future 
and exactly what we think is going to happen and, as a result of that, 
what kind of tax cuts we should enact.

  There are a number of priorities for this country. Tax cuts are one 
at this point, especially because, A, we have a surplus and, B, we have 
an economy that is weakening. There are other priorities as well, one 
of which is to pay down the Federal debt. If you run it up in tough 
times, pay it down during better times. To those who say we are paying 
down the debt, I say when the budget document gets here, we will go to 
the page number I say and look at gross debt. It is going to increase, 
not decrease. Tell me why you think we are paying it down. Gross debt 
will increase, not decrease. That is why a significant part of the 
surplus that exists, in my judgment, should go to reducing the Federal 
debt.
  Second, there are other things for us to do. Yes, a tax cut is a 
priority. So, too, is paying down the Federal debt. But there are other 
things we should do. We need to improve our schools in this country. 
That is something that is important to our future. We need to try to be 
helpful to senior citizens--to all Americans, but especially senior 
citizens--to pay the cost of prescription drugs. We ought to do that in 
the Medicare program and in a way that is affordable and effective.

[[Page S2816]]

  So those are the other needs and priorities that we ought to 
consider. Finally, let me say that without disparaging any of the 
economic thinkers, either in the administration, or in Congress, or the 
Federal Reserve Board, no one knows what is happening in the future. We 
are all united by that profound lack of understanding. No one knows 
what the future holds for this economy. The most important element, by 
far, for this economy is the confidence of the American people. There 
are some who think we are so sophisticated that the control room on a 
ship of state has all kinds of gauges and knobs and dials and levers, 
and if you just go down there and adjust them all right, pull the right 
lever, adjust the right knob, move the right gauge, whether it is M-1B 
or tax cuts or spending or any number of devices, somehow the ship of 
state will sail forward at maximum speed. That is not the case at all. 
That has very little to do with the speed at which this ship moves 
forward.
  What has everything to do with it is the confidence of the American 
people. This economy rests on the confidence of the American people. If 
the people aren't confident, the economy is going to contract and there 
isn't anything anybody can do much about it. People make judgments 
about their future, about buying a house, buying a car, buying other 
things--making decisions about their life that affect the economy. They 
make decisions based on their view of what will happen in the future. 
If they are optimistic, they decide one thing. They may buy a new home, 
a second car, or a vacation home. They may make a decision to buy new 
clothing. That confidence creates a wave of improvement in any economy. 
That economy rests on a mattress of consumer confidence, and it always 
has.
  When people are not confident about the future, they delay decisions, 
postpone decisions, or simply decide they will not make purchases. So 
they behave differently and they create a contraction in the economy. 
That is the important thing for all of us to understand. This is all 
about confidence, about the American people's perception about the 
future and their confidence in the future.
  I want to talk for a few more moments about this tax cut. When we do 
a tax cut, as I indicated, it ought to be stimulative and fair. Let me 
talk about this issue of ``the top 1 percent'' because there has been 
so much discussion about that. I open my mail and people write to me, 
and some support this and some support that; it is all over the mark. 
As some journalists write, some of my colleagues call it ``class 
warfare'' and so on.

  Let me describe the 1-percent issue. The top 1 percent have done very 
well, far better than anybody else in the country. That is good for 
them. When you add up the individual income taxes and the payroll taxes 
paid by the American individual taxpayers, it is about a trillion 
dollars in individual income taxes and about $650 billion in payroll 
taxes. The top 1 percent bear about 21 percent of that burden. 
President Bush, in his proposal, says he would like to give the top 1 
percent about 43 percent of the proposed tax cut. I think that is 
unfair. When I raise that and somebody says that is class warfare, I 
say it is not about class warfare; it is about class favoritism. Why 
have a tax policy that plays favorites, that says: you pay 21 percent 
of the total taxes, but you ought to get 43 percent of the tax cut? 
That is about class favoritism. What I say is, let's take care of the 
99 percent first, look at their burden; let's look at what they have 
done, and their struggles. Then we should evaluate what kind of a fair 
tax cut can be helpful to working families, which can reflect their tax 
burden--yes, including the payroll tax because three quarters of the 
American people pay a higher payroll tax than they do in income taxes. 
That is very important to understand. That is where we get these 
differences in numbers.
  I hear people get on the floor and say these are fuzzy numbers and 
you are jockeying around these numbers. Look, there is only one set of 
truths, only one. We know what the tax burden is the American people 
bear, and we know what the proposals are to relieve that burden--and 
there will be more, I am sure. The proposals that say the payroll taxes 
people pay don't count are proposals that shortchange working families 
who pay a significant amount of payroll taxes and are told when it 
comes to handing part of the surplus back to them, their tax burden 
didn't count.
  That is not fair. It is not class warfare to describe that as unfair. 
It is class favoritism to decide the top 1 percent should get nearly 
double what they would normally deserve if we had a proportional tax 
cut related to their tax burden.
  I know there are differences in how we see the economy that probably 
relate to our attitudes about this. There are people in this Chamber 
who firmly believe the economy works based on this so-called trickle 
down theory. That is the notion that there are some people who run this 
country who know about allocation of capital, and they are the ones who 
make the country go; they are the ones who run the big businesses and 
they hire the people, and if you give them something to work with, it 
all trickles down to the bottom, and everybody is better off.
  I had an old farmer write me a letter some years ago. He said: I've 
been reading about this trickle down stuff for 20 years, and I ain't 
even damp yet.
  The old trickle down does not always trickle down.
  Others believe there is a percolate-up theory of economics: The 
engine works best when everybody has a little something with which to 
work, when American families have something with which to work. After 
all, you can have the best business in the world, but if nobody has the 
income to buy your product, your business ``ain't'' going to do very 
well.
  Hubert Humphrey used to talk about the trickle down theory. It is an 
old story everybody has heard, I am sure. He said: It's sort of like 
when you give a horse some hay and hope later the sparrows will have 
something to eat. It is kind of a description of believing that somehow 
everybody will get something ultimately.
  As we look at this tax issue, which I think is going to be one of the 
significant issues in Congress this year, we ought to be pretty 
hardheaded on two fronts: One, how do we do this in a way that helps 
this economy because this economy is in tougher shape than some know; 
and No. 2, how do we provide a tax cut that reflects the understanding 
we now have a surplus and ought to give some of it back in a way that 
also saves some for debt reduction, but in a way when we give it back 
it is fair to all the families in this country, it is fair to 
everybody.
  There is an old song by Ray Charles that has a lyric:

       Them that gets is them that's got, and I ain't got nothing 
     lately.

  That is an apt discussion, it seems to me, of the way some people 
look at tax cuts. When they are proposed, they say: Gee, let's take a 
look at the top; they pay a lot of income tax. We will give them a 
large tax cut and the rest we will try to figure out. But we will 
trickle down, and somehow if we give enough at the top, it will trickle 
down and everybody will be better off.
  It seems to me when we talk about taxes, we need to talk about the 
total tax burden people face, which is income taxes and payroll taxes, 
and give a tax cut that reflects the burden for working families. That 
is not the case in the proposal that has come from the President.
  I think it is very unwise not to be somewhat conservative, and I am, 
frankly, surprised that those who call themselves the most conservative 
Members of Congress are often saying: Look, we are not conservative on 
this; what we want to do is provide a very large tax cut, and we are 
going to do that on surpluses that do not yet exist, but surpluses we 
expect we will have in 6 years, 7 years, 8 years, 9 years, 10 years.
  That is not very prudent, in my judgment. It was an awful struggle to 
get rid of these Federal budget deficits, but they are gone. The last 
thing we want to do is get put right back into the deficit ditch.

  We have a lot of interests and a lot of opinions about all of these 
things. I come from a farm State, and the Presiding Officer is from a 
farm State. I mentioned other things we want to do: provide a tax cut, 
pay down the debt, and reach other priorities that are necessary, such 
as improving our schools.

[[Page S2817]]

 I did not mention one that is most important to me, and that is doing 
what is necessary to preserve a network of family farmers in this 
country.
  Again, there is a difference of opinion about that. Some say if 
farmers are worth saving, let the market system save them. If the 
market system does not provide a price that saves family farmers, tough 
luck. So what, America will get its food. Food comes from a shelf, and 
it comes from inside a package. Farmers are like the little old diner: 
They are kind of a nostalgic thing, like the little old diner left 
behind when the interstate came through. It is fun to look back and see 
that vacant diner and think of what was, but we have an interstate now, 
we don't need to stop there.
  That is how some feel. It is total nonsense. Farmers produce more 
than grain. They produce a community, they produce a culture, they 
produce something so valuable for this country, and yet we are losing 
on this score.
  We have a farm program that does not work. We have family farmers 
struggling to hang on by their fingertips because commodity prices have 
collapsed. Our farmers put a couple hundred bushels of grain in the 
truck and drive to the elevator and the elevator operator says: This 
grain you produced doesn't have much value. Almost half the world is 
hungry, and probably a quarter of the world is on a diet. We have 
instability in places of hunger, and our farmers are told: Your food 
does not have value.
  What a strange set of priorities. If there is any one thing this 
country can do to promote a better world and promote more stability in 
the world it is take that which we produce in such abundance--food--and 
move it to parts of the world where it is needed for survival. What a 
wonderful thing for us to do and do it in a way that gives those who 
produce it a decent return.
  We are able to do that with arms. It is interesting, we are the 
largest arms merchant in the world. The United States is the largest 
arms merchant in the world. We sell more weapons of war than any other 
country. If we can do that with armaments, we ought to be able to do 
that with food.
  Most of us in this Chamber have been to refugee camps and places in 
the world where people are dying. I held a young girl who reached out 
of her bed. I was the only one she had. I was only going to be there a 
minute or two. She was dying of hunger, malnutrition. I can go anywhere 
in the world and see this. It is happening every day.
  My late friend Harry Chapin, who was killed in 1981, used to say the 
reason people dying from hunger is not a front-page story is because 
the winds of hunger blow every minute, every hour, every day; 45,000 
people; 45,000 people a day, most of them children. It is not a 
headline because it happens all the time, and we produce food in such 
wonderful quantity and are told it has no value. We can do a lot better 
than that.
  I did not mean to speak at length--I will do so later--about 
agricultural policy, but in terms of our priorities as a country, as we 
think through all of these issues--taxes, trade, reducing the debt, and 
other priorities--and talk about prescription drugs and Medicare, about 
improving our schools and a farm policy that works for family farmers--
all of these things represent values. It is about values: Who are we, 
what are we doing here, and what kind of future do we want?

  In conclusion, when I talk about the economy, some say the economy is 
what it is and what it will be; the market system establishes the 
economy. The market system is a wonderful allocator of goods and 
services, but it is not perfect. In some cases it is perverted. It 
needs a referee, a certain structure. It needs rules and guidelines.
  My thoughts are, our economy is what we decide we want to make it. If 
we want to make an economy in which family farmers can make a decent 
living, then that is the economy we can have. Europe has it. Good for 
them. I am not criticizing them. Good for them. This economy is what we 
make it. The tax policy is what we make it.
  We need to think our way through this. I do not intend to be 
partisan. We have a new President. I like him. I want to work with him, 
but I say to him: You have given us a plan--that is good--but it is not 
the only plan. It is not the only idea. What we ought to do is get the 
best of what everyone has to offer. When people write to me and say 
support the President, I say this is not about the President, it is not 
about me; it is about this country's future: What are the best ideas to 
ensure this country's economic future? What are the best ideas we can 
get from Republicans and Democrats to ensure economic growth and 
opportunity for all Americans?
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, let me first thank the clerks who have 
been kind enough to notify me I might come over at this time. I am most 
appreciative of that courtesy. I will try to keep my remarks short. I 
recognize it is Friday afternoon and Members are anxious to be on their 
way.

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