[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 155 (Friday, November 9, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11649-S11651]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        STIMULATING THE ECONOMY

  Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague, the 
chairman of the Appropriations Committee and a great leader of this 
body and our country, for that courtesy. I thank my colleague from 
North Dakota for very thoughtful and thought-provoking remarks. I join 
those remarks, and I ask that as we do move toward this debate on how 
we stimulate our economy and how we take care of our people, we put it 
in a broader context.
  I sometimes worry that talk about economic stimulus, talk about Tax 
Code provisions, talk about a lot of the issues that come before the 
Finance Committee and then come before the Senate may not be 
communicating directly and effectively with the public who need to 
follow this debate closely because what we will be or will not be 
deciding over the course of the next several weeks will have profound 
effects on our daily lives, on our quality of life, on our national 
security at home and abroad, and on the future of our economic growth 
and opportunities.
  The Finance Committee came out with a package that should deserve the

[[Page S11650]]

support of Senators on both sides of the aisle. I am well aware there 
is a very different point of view on behalf of my colleagues on the 
other side, so we are going to have a debate. I agree with my colleague 
from North Dakota; it is an important debate. But we cannot look at 
what is being proposed today without recognizing several very important 
factors.
  First, we are now moving into deficits. We thought we had deficits 
tamed. We thought the struggle, sacrifice--economic, personal, 
political, and public--of the last 8 years meant that we were on strong 
fiscal footing, that we did have a policy for economic growth that 
would demonstrate fiscal responsibility, pay down the debt, free up 
investment capital, and keep this great engine of economic prosperity 
going.
  We did not repeal the law of business cycles, so understandably there 
will be ups and downs, but we moved the economic plain to a higher 
level and had a consensus in the country that the smart fiscal policy 
was the responsible one; that trying to continue to pay down our debt 
in order to relieve the burdens not only from future generations but 
from ourselves, not to crowd out investment capital so that businesses 
could come into the market and have long-term interest rates at an 
affordable level, meant we knew the direction in which the economy 
should go.

  Now it will not surprise anyone in this Chamber that I ascribe to the 
Clinton-Rubin economic policies. I happen to think they make sense. I 
believe in a global economy, fiscal responsibility, investment 
policies. Making it possible for people to pursue their own futures by 
creating economic opportunities goes hand in hand with keeping deficits 
down, in fact keeping surpluses growing and giving us a chance to know 
we are going to have for the foreseeable future strong economic times.
  That is not the philosophy of the other side, and I respect their 
right to hold that contrary philosophy. So we stand here now in 
November, having passed a very large tax cut in the spring which 
undermines our long-term economic future, which demonstrates clearly we 
are going to have some very hard choices to make even had September 11 
never occurred because we had already seen that we were going into 
deficits, that we were taking from the Medicare and Social Security 
surplus dollars that hard-working people believed would be there for 
Medicare and Social Security, and as a result we now are facing much 
more difficult choices which, had we been more fiscally responsible, we 
could have avoided.
  That is water under the bridge. There is nothing we can do about it. 
A majority of our colleagues in both Houses voted for a U-turn away 
from fiscal responsibility. So here we are.
  What do we do now? Again, I do not think we can look at this stimulus 
debate in some kind of vacuum. We were attacked on September 11. We are 
at war. We have men and women from Fort Drum in northern New York over 
in central Asia. We have Special Forces. We have carriers. We have 
people who wear the uniform of our country who are in full-time service 
defending us because this is an act of self-defense, attempting to 
uproot and destroy the terrorist networks. We have many from the 
National Guard and the Reserves called to duty, disrupting their lives. 
We know we are at war.
  If we go back and look at history, we know when we are at war we have 
to think differently about our priorities than when we are not at war. 
So what are those priorities? First, to do everything we possibly can 
to support the President, to support our military leadership, in waging 
this war successfully and victoriously. I do not think there is one 
dissenting voice in this body to that proposition.
  We also know this is a war that has been brought home tragically to 
us, that those on the front lines are not just our men and women in 
uniform, they are also our firefighters, our police officers, our 
emergency responders, our doctors and our nurses, our postal workers, 
men and women who got up on September 11 and in the weeks since to do 
their job as part of the great American mosaic where people, through 
their individual efforts, create this extraordinary democracy we so 
treasure.
  We know we have to do more to protect ourselves at home. That is why 
the President has named Governor Ridge the Director of Homeland 
Security. So we have to take a very close look at what it is we need, 
both for our men and women in uniform and on the homeland front to 
protect ourselves.
  We did not have to think about that when this big old tax cut was 
voted on last spring. Maybe people should have, but nobody really 
stopped and said, well, we cannot take all this revenue away because 
Heaven knows we might have anthrax attacks that will cause the Postal 
Service and the Federal Government and local communities across our 
country to spend literally millions and billions of dollars to protect 
themselves and us. We did not imagine that, but now we not only imagine 
it, we have lived with it. That raises a whole new set of 
responsibilities that we ignore at our peril.

  So part of what we have to figure out how to do is provide enough 
resources to protect us, to wage the war on both fronts that we are 
waging, and to create economic opportunities by getting our economy 
moving again.
  I have listened very closely to what my colleagues have said, and I 
have consulted with people in the business world, people who run big 
companies, people who are economists, some of whom sit in ivory towers, 
others of whom actually get out and talk to people on the street about 
what is happening.
  The real core of our challenge is, how do we inspire confidence? How 
do we get consumer confidence, citizen confidence up? How do we get 
people back into the normal give and take of their lives?
  When I first joined the Senate last January, and all through the 
spring and summer, I could not walk through these halls. They were 
crowded with people, especially school groups. I used to be so thrilled 
to think I was honored to serve in a body of the greatest democracy in 
the history of the world that was open, where people could come, like 
those who are here today but in far smaller numbers than they ever have 
been.
  Now, of course, we can walk through the halls and not see anybody. I 
do not have young people coming up to me and saying, oh, Senator, what 
are you doing today? Or, I am from New York. Or, how are you?
  They are not here. Why? Because schools do not want children to 
travel. Parents understandably are concerned. We have not done what we 
should do to take care of airline security. That is still being 
debated. So we have to inspire confidence.
  How do we inspire confidence? I think there really are several ways 
we should address it. Some of it does go directly to the points the 
Senator from North Dakota was making. We have to have a balance. We 
have to have a balance between what we believe will work for business 
and what we believe we should do for workers and citizens who 
themselves deserve both help and motivation to go on with their lives, 
to be productive.
  I think the Finance Committee has struck the right balance. Spending 
money on unemployment insurance is not only the right thing to do--a 
lot of people are out of work not because they were sloughing off on 
the job, not because they did not show up on time, but because we were 
attacked--we owe an obligation to these people. I think unemployment 
insurance will enable people to get back on their feet, and if there is 
any dollar that will be spent immediately to stimulate the economy, it 
is a dollar in unemployment insurance. There is not an economist in the 
world who disagrees with that, unless they are blinded by some 
ideological prejudice. That is what they all tell us.
  Health care is increasingly a problematic issue. My colleagues know I 
have had a few things to say about that in the past, and I am still 
very concerned about it. I am especially concerned because I see the 
price of health care going back up. I see employers pushing down on 
employees and making it more difficult for people to afford health 
care. We are going to have to address that issue.

  What we are worried about right now are all of those people who have 
lost their health care because it came through employment they no 
longer have. They cannot afford the COBRA extension. They need help.
  We also are stimulating the economy in the Finance Committee package 
by

[[Page S11651]]

trying to do in a targeted way what we have been advised will work in 
business, not these big, irresponsible giveaways in which the House 
engaged. I do not understand how with a straight face they can put a 
provision into their package which pays people back for taxes they paid 
all the way back to 1985 without a promise that it is going to create a 
new job, without a promise that it will be invested in a new plant and 
equipment right now.
  As Senator Dorgan rightly pointed out, they actually give an 
incentive to businesses to move American jobs overseas. What on Earth 
are they thinking about? That is just unbelievable to me. So I think 
the Finance Committee, with their vote last night, really struck the 
right balance. I hope we go forward with that.
  I also hope we recognize the additional program that Senator Byrd and 
Senator Reid have advocated is essential. We have not made the 
commitment of resources.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Carper). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mrs. CLINTON. We have not made the commitment of resources we need to 
our public health system, to our fight against bioterrorism, to the 
kind of security we need in our powerplants, our chemical plants. I 
think we have a lot more to do. I commend Senator Byrd for his 
leadership.

  Finally, a special word of appreciation to the Finance Committee for 
their recognition and support of New York. We know this was an attack 
on America. The epicenter of the attack was on New York City. It was 
New York City firefighters who went up those towers when people were 
coming down. It is the firefighters and the police officers and the 
emergency responders who have been going to countless funerals. It is 
the people who worked in those buildings who have scrambled to try to 
make sense of their lives, to restart their jobs, and many of them are 
no longer employed. The estimate is about 100,000 have been dislocated.
  The ripple effect through the city and the State has been even 
greater. Because of those 100,000 who directly lost their jobs in lower 
Manhattan, many of them work for companies that bought from smaller 
companies, that did work with banks and law firms and advertising 
agencies that had catering and restaurant business to give out. They no 
longer do that. We are now looking at a loss of about 250,000 
individuals in New York alone by the end of this year.
  We have seen unemployment go up around the Nation, but it has gone up 
even more in New York City. We are not sure the end has been reached. 
We know this has had a ripple effect through the entire State, not just 
through the city. In Syracuse we lost 400 employees of USAir when they 
decided to close a call center after losing so much business. In 
Buffalo, with the loss of tax revenues--because 15 percent of all the 
State's tax revenues came from Ground Zero; those are gone--we are 
looking at laying off up to 500 teachers in Buffalo, which is at the 
opposite end of the State.
  The package coming out of the Finance Committee will help enormously. 
I am particularly grateful for the tax incentives that will help us 
rebuild Lower Manhattan, will help us recover some of that lost office 
space to get back into the business of being the global financial 
capital of the entire world. It will take a long time. New York will 
need a lot of help. This is a very welcome start.
  The tax credits for employers to keep their offices in Manhattan will 
help tip the balance in favor of doing just that. Tax-exempt bonding 
authority for construction will give an extra boost to rebuilding, and 
reinvesting insurance proceeds will enable people to make that 
decision. We are still working on something to keep residents downtown, 
which is a very big challenge, and to provide additional relief for 
advance refunding for the port authority and the metropolitan 
transportation authority and for their infrastructure projects.
  We lost our subway lines. We lost the PATH Train from New Jersey. We 
will have a lot of work ahead. I thank and commend the Finance 
Committee, particularly the chairman, Senator Baucus, for a job well 
done.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
West Virginia is recognized for such time as he may consume.

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