[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 117 (Tuesday, September 17, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8627-S8628]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     LET'S HAVE AN ECONOMIC SUMMIT

  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, several weeks ago I wrote to President 
Bush and suggested it is time--perhaps past the time--to have an 
economic summit in this country to talk about the challenges we are 
facing with this American economy.
  It is interesting, if you look at what has happened. We had gone 
through a

[[Page S8628]]

period of almost unprecedented growth and opportunity. The 1990s was a 
period in which people were working. We had increases in the number of 
jobs available, home ownership, personal income, and the stock market 
was moving up. The economy was growing.
  It solves a lot of problems in a country when you have an economy 
that is growing. There is no social program that is as good as a good 
job that pays well, and people who are trained and skilled and able to 
assume those jobs.
  But in recent years--the last year and a half, 2 years--we have hit 
some rough water here, and the economy is not doing well. We have a 
series of things that have happened.
  Early in the President's term, he proposed a fiscal policy with a 
$1.7 trillion tax cut, the bulk of which goes to the upper income folks 
in the country. And he said: Well, we are going to have surpluses for 
10 straight years.
  I was on this floor and said--I am the conservative on this--I don't 
think you ought to predict, with any precision, what is going to happen 
10 years from now. We don't know what is going to happen 3 months from 
now or 3 years from now, let alone 10 years from now.
  The President, and others here, insisted: No. We are going to have 
all these surpluses, and this money belongs to the American people. 
Let's give it back. Let's lock it in, and do it now.
  In a matter of months, we had a war on terrorism, the terrible and 
tragic attack on this country of September 11. We have a recession that 
occurs shortly after this new fiscal policy is developed, which 
probably was occurring even as it was being developed. And then we have 
a series of corporate scandals, scandals unlike any we have seen in our 
lifetime, certainly, and perhaps in a century or so. In addition to 
that, we see a stock market that begins to collapse.
  So all of these things, coming together, have dramatically changed 
what is happening in Government. Big budget surpluses have now turned 
to big budget deficits. And it is as if nothing has happened. We have 
the administration, the President, and others acting as if: Well, 
nothing has really changed. There is no need to be talking about these 
things.
  Of course there is a need for us to be talking about them. Things 
have changed in a dramatic way. As a result of that, I think we ought 
to come together and have an economic summit of some type with the 
President, to talk about what kind of fiscal policy can put this 
country's economy back on track, so that those who are out of work can 
find work, so that those whose life savings in their 401(k)s, that have 
been dissipated, can begin to see them grow once again, so that the 
economy produces opportunity and jobs once again.

  This isn't going to happen just by accident. It is going to happen if 
we take a look at what is not working and what are the potential 
solutions to make it work.
  I understand the discussion in the last few weeks has been all Iraq 
all the time. I am not suggesting it is not important. That is a very 
important matter, a serious and deadly issue for this country. It is 
also the case, however, as the newspaper tells us this morning, that 
the President is out 2 days a week campaigning across the country and 
fundraising and so on. He has a right to do that as well. But if he has 
the time to do that, then he also has the time to work with us to 
construct a fiscal policy that relates to what we face today.
  Today we face an economy in trouble. We face a war on terror. We face 
budget surpluses that have turned to budget deficits. We face a stock 
market in great turmoil. We face a a circumstance of well over 6 
percent of our population out of work, unable to find jobs. It is time 
for us to stop, take stock, and evaluate what works and what doesn't. 
How do we put together a plan that moves this country toward economic 
opportunity and economic growth once again? I understand why some want 
to ignore it, but it is not the right thing for this country.
  I have been chairing hearings for the last 8 or 10 months on the 
subject of corporate scandals. That is an important issue. It has also 
played a role in injuring the feelings of people and the confidence 
they have in the economy. There is a difference in how we view those 
issues.
  For example, I was trying to offer an amendment to the corporate 
responsibility bill that passed the Senate. I was blocked by the 
Republican side. Regrettably, that amendment is not now law. The rest 
of the bill is law. The amendment is very simple. It says, if you are a 
corporate executive and you are taking a company into bankruptcy, the 
12 months before you run that company into the ground, if you are 
getting bonus payments and incentive payments, we have a right to 
recapture them and force a disgorgement of those payments. You should 
not get incentives and bonuses when you run a company into the ground.
  Since I was blocked from offering that and it is not now law--I will 
continue to try--the Financial Times came out with an analysis. They 
said that the 25 largest bankruptcies in America occurred in the last 
year and a half; 208 corporate executives took $3.3 billion in 
compensation out of those corporations before those corporations were 
run into the ground. I will hold a hearing on that in the next couple 
weeks.
  There is something fundamentally wrong with what is going on in those 
areas. We have people who don't want to talk about it. The 
administration doesn't want to talk about it. That is not the issue 
they want to bring to the floor and have a debate on. But that is what 
we should have a debate on. How do you establish confidence in this 
economy if you don't clear up those kinds of problems?
  So whether it is corporate scandals, a troubled economy, a recession, 
a war on terrorism, a stock market that acts like a yo-yo, we need to 
put the pieces of this puzzle together again. It is not going to get 
put together by people just ignoring the issue.
  One of the significant issues facing our country at this moment is an 
economy that is in very serious trouble. It does no service to our 
country to deny that. Let's try to find a way to fix it. There may not 
be a way where one party says, we have all the answers, or the other 
side says, we have all the answers. Maybe the answers are the best of 
what both have to offer, instead of getting the worst of what each has 
to offer. In order to get there, you have to sit down and talk about 
it.

  I urge the President to respond to these requests for an economic 
summit, to sit down with us and talk about what is wrong with the 
economy and how you put this back together towards an economy and a 
future of economic growth and opportunity once again.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Illinois.

                          ____________________