[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 121 (Monday, September 23, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9006-S9008]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              THE ECONOMY

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, my friend, the senior Senator from New 
Mexico, has a chart. He talks about when the downtown started. The fact 
is, it is here. To try to divert attention from the problems of this 
country by trying to talk about when this problem started really 
doesn't do the trick. Presidents are blamed or given credit for what 
happens during their 4 years of office. That is the way it is, and that 
is the way it should be. The fact is, during this administration the 
economy has gone downhill every month the President has been in office.
  To talk about when a problem started, we had problems during the 8 
years that Clinton was President, but he was able to respond to make 
sure the country went on an upward path after that. The fact is, 
President Bush, no matter what he received when he was President, has 
done nothing to alleviate the problem. He has made it worse.
  I would say to my friend from New Mexico, if he read the rest of 
Stiglitz's article, I find Stiglitz blames much, if not all, of the 
problems of this economy directly on the President, President Bush's 
economic policies. We just had Stiglitz appear before the Democratic 
Senatorial Campaign Committee and he spent all afternoon telling us 
what was wrong with the Bush economic policies. Joseph Stiglitz has won 
a Nobel Prize in economics. He is one of the most renowned economists 
in the world. He places the blame at the foot of the President of the 
United States, President Bush, for the economy we now have.
  There may have been some corporate problems that started many years 
ago. But, remember, this White House wanted to bring corporate America 
to the White House--and they did. There is no better example of that 
than the fact that when the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange 
Commission was having his confirmation hearings, he said he wanted to 
bring a kinder more gentle SEC to America. That is what we have had at 
this White House. They simply have been kinder and gentler. They 
brought corporate America to the White House. The American people do 
not want that.

  My friend also mentions in passing the United States of 
Representatives, which is controlled by the Republicans by just a few 
votes. Those of us who have served in the House of Representatives know 
the party that controls the House of Representatives controls the 
agenda over there. That is the way it works. It has always worked that 
way. One reason we have gotten nothing done in the Congress is because 
the Republican majority in the House of Representatives decided a long 
time ago they were not going to have anything happen this year. That is 
why we have every conference report stuck in a dark hole in the House 
of Representatives. They won't let us do anything on bankruptcy. They 
won't let us do anything on terrorism insurance. They won't let us do 
anything on election reform. They won't let us do anything on the 
Patients' Bill of Rights. They won't let us do anything on our generic 
drug bill, and on and on.
  Whether it is 1 or 100 vote, it doesn't matter in the House of 
Representatives. It works like the parliamentary

[[Page S9007]]

system. The party in power controls the agenda, and the House 
leadership has stated publicly that they are going to have nothing 
happen. They don't want their members to take tough votes, just like on 
the bankruptcy bill.
  For the former chairman of the Budget Committee to come here and 
blame the problems on the budget--we don't have a budget because they 
won't let us have a budget--the fact is, the Appropriations Committee, 
under the leadership of Senator Byrd and Senator Stevens, made sure 
that all appropriations bills were under the budget numbers, even 
though we didn't have budget numbers. The budget numbers are good 
numbers. They will not let us do the budget bills because of the same 
reason--the same reason. The House of Representatives has not moved 
appropriations bills.
  You see, the Senate passed out of committee every appropriations 
bill. It has been done long since. But the House refuses to move on the 
bills. Therefore, we cannot do them. We are going to have a cloture 
vote on the Interior bill, which the Presiding Officer has worked on, 
not for hours, not days, but weeks, trying to come up with a compromise 
to meet the needs of the American public in the western part of the 
United States on firefighting but has been unable to work anything 
else. But that Interior appropriations bill is extremely important. It 
is not as if there is no money going to firefighting. There is 800 
million extra dollars in this Interior bill to fight fires.
  But they only want them to be fought--in the minds of the 
Republicans--the way they want to fight them. Do you know how they want 
to fight them? Take all environmental standards and go out and start 
chopping and burning anything in the forest that a lot of lumber 
companies want.
  I say to my friend--he is my friend--the distinguished Senator from 
New Mexico that this won't sell. To come and say the problem started 
before President Bush became President is to blame it on somebody else. 
The President of the United States is stuck with an economic standard 
in this--his--administration, and for 2 years this economy has been 
going downhill, downhill, downhill. You can't blame it on September 11. 
The Afghanistan war caused about 25 percent of the problem. But all 
economists indicate that the other problem is right at the foot of this 
administration--whether it is tax policy or their other economic 
policies--which is responsible for 75 percent of our downturn.
  We have all been affected. People in Nevada--in fact, people in every 
State in the Union--have been affected by the downturn in the economy. 
Many Nevadans, and people who live in all 50 States, have seen their 
retirement savings disappear in the wake of corporate crime, accounting 
abuses, and stock market declines.
  The Las Vegas Review-Journal, the largest newspaper in Nevada, which 
has a circulation of a quarter million--to say it is conservative is a 
gross understatement; it is really conservative. It really focuses on 
government a lot. However, as conservative as that newspaper is, they 
wrote an editorial one day last week--in fact, the day after Senator 
Daschle gave a speech on the floor with the charts that he had--under 
the headline ``Daschle is right.'' I thought they made a misprint when 
I picked up that newspaper. But they had not. They believe Tom Daschle 
is right.
  This newspaper with a conservative bias, and which seldom has kind 
words for Democrats or the majority leader, said in this editorial that 
America needs a new economic direction and President Bush's policies 
have failed.
  The Las Vegas Review-Journal said:

       The economy is showing an anemic 1 percent rate of growth, 
     the majority leader charged. Under the Bush administration 
     the Nation has lost 2 million jobs and $4.5 trillion in stock 
     market value--much of it melting out of individual Americans' 
     retirement acts. Foreclosures are up, and the government is 
     once again spending Social Security surpluses to pay for 
     other programs . . . it would be a mistake to dismiss the 
     statistics he cites. They are real, as are the economic 
     doldrums they describe.

  They go on to say:

       President Bush has indeed failed to do all that he could 
     and should have done to put America back on the path to 
     vibrant economic growth, opportunity and prosperity.

  That is about as direct as you can get.
  It doesn't stop there. Robert Novak--I have great respect for Robert 
Novak. I consider him a friend. But I have to tell you that he has 
rarely said anything nice about me, and rarely has anything nice to say 
about Democrats. He is a very conservative political pundit, and he is 
a good one. I have appeared on his show on a number of occasions. He is 
hard, but he is fair. You always know where he is coming from. But 
rarely does he join with us in criticizing Republicans and what they 
are doing. But he did yesterday. I think it was yesterday. I read about 
it in the paper. It may have been Saturday. He said something very 
similar to what the Las Vegas Review-Journal said. But his column is 
printed all over America, and in the Washington Post, of course.
  In this piece, under the headline ``Avoidance Agenda''--and in other 
newspapers the same column had a different headline: ``Winning Without 
a Vision''--in this piece, Novak takes Republicans to task for offering 
no domestic alternative to the ``kitchen table'' issues which Democrats 
are discussing and working on: Prescription drugs and other health 
benefits, corporate accountability, pension protection, Social 
Security.
  According to Novak:

       Midsummer Democratic exuberance has vanished, and 
     Republican anxiety has faded--thanks to Iraq's eclipsing 
     economic issues six weeks before midterm elections. Yet, 
     beneath the surface, thoughtful Republicans ask: What will it 
     mean for the party to sneak by on November 5 without a vision 
     and, indeed, without an agenda?
       George W. Bush is committed to being a war President, 
     unwilling to use the bully pulpit to press domestic programs, 
     especially without support from Congress.

  He continues:

       The crowding out of corporate corruption by war against 
     Iraq unquestionably has brightened Republican prospects for 
     winning both houses of Congress, saving President Bush from 
     electoral disasters frequently visited on new presidents at 
     midterm. However, apart from the war on terrorism, the 
     Republican Party flinches from standing for much of anything 
     in the 2002 election.
       The problem is that Republicans--including Bush himself--do 
     not pursue a domestic alternative.
       This is a matter of concern for the future and perhaps even 
     for this election among a variety of wise old heads in the 
     GOP. One early GWB-for-president backer voiced displeasure 
     with Bush's handling of an economy in which corporate profits 
     are low, investor confidence has been shattered and consumer 
     confidence is in jeopardy. ``He does not seem worried enough 
     about the economy, does not express himself forcefully 
     enough.'' The president does not share his father's boredom 
     with domestic affairs, but there is no doubt he sees his 
     destiny as winning the war against terrorism and not as 
     reformer of the tax system.
       There are officials inside the administration who signal 
     their concern by suggesting it is necessary to come up with 
     new domestic initiatives.
       Bush and the Republican Party actually risk a lot tying 
     themselves to the limited goal of maintaining a House 
     majority. By accepting the caution urged on him by Capitol 
     Hill, the president abdicates a vital responsibility of the 
     president as a party leader. Any new initiatives await 
     passage of an Iraq resolution or perhaps even congressional 
     adjournment, leaving a Republican voice that is muted on 
     everything but Iraq.

  I started saying a couple of weeks ago, as others have said, that 
this country is a big country; we can have a big political agenda. We 
can focus on Iraq, as we should, but we can focus on other things. The 
administration is focusing only on Iraq. Let us talk about the other 
issues. Let us talk about the stumbling, faltering economy, which we 
must address.
  If you were planning on retiring, Mr. President, this year, you would 
have to wait, on average, 7 years before you could retire. You would 
have to work an extra 7 years because you have lost that much--mostly 
in the stock market. People who were going to retire can't retire. If 
you started out with $100 in savings, you now have about $65 in 
savings. That is it. You multiply that, and you will see what it does 
to somebody who is building for retirement.
  The Las Vegas Review-Journal has not changed its political 
philosophy; they have had the same political philosophy for decades. 
Also, I would say that Robert Novak hasn't changed; he has had the same 
political philosophy for 30 or 40 years.
  The Republicans' proposed solution to economic woes plaguing Nevada 
and

[[Page S9008]]

the entire country are far different from those favored not only by 
Senate Democrats. I also not only speak for Senate Democrats but I 
speak for mainstream Nevadans and Americans.
  I have no doubt that Republicans will continue to criticize and even 
mislead readers about our policies, and that is too bad. To come here 
today and to say the problems of this country are the result of 
something that started a long time ago is ridiculous. I have no doubt 
we must continue to address the problems that face this country, and we 
must continue to address them focusing on more than Iraq. This country 
has more ability to do that.
  I am very disappointed that my friend, the distinguished Senator from 
New Mexico, would come here and cite Joseph Stiglitz as supporting the 
policy of this country going back to the last administration when, in 
fact, if you read anything that Stiglitz writes, he talks about the 
economy being bad as a result of what happened with this 
administration's economic policy.

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