[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 69 (Monday, May 17, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H3021-H3022]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    THE WORK HABITS OF THE PRESIDENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 20, 2004, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, before I begin on my text I

[[Page H3022]]

want to just correct the minority whip, the Democratic whip. He is a 
man with whom I have a great deal of agreement. But I think he was 
wrong when he said the rigid ideology of the people in power today 
leads them to the view, my way or the highway.
  I wish that were the case. Mr. Speaker, as you well know from your 
own committee position, the right wing ideology are on the point of 
saying, my way instead of the highway. Because so rigid are they in 
their right-wing ideology that we cannot even get a highway bill passed 
this year, as we certainly should, in the interest of the 
transportation needs of this country and the economy.
  But I want to talk beyond that about the work habits of the 
President. It is clear that in addition to an excessively rigid 
ideology we have an administration which is not very competent in a lot 
of things. I do not think we have seen a more incompetently executed 
national security policy of a major sort than Iraq in our history.
  And I wonder why we get such poor execution, even given that I 
disagree with some of the things they are trying to execute. Now it 
does become clear one of the problems may be the President's work 
habits.
  On December 16 in an interview on ABC News with Diane Sawyer, the 
President boasted about how he does not need to read the newspapers or, 
presumably, watch television. He gets his information, he says, from 
members of his administration. When Diane Sawyer said, ``Is it just 
hard to read constant criticism? He interjected, ``Why even put up with 
it when you get the facts elsewhere? I am a lucky man,'' the President 
said. ``I have got, it is not just Condi and Andy, it is all kinds of 
people in my administration who are charged with different 
responsibilities. And they come in and say this is what is happening, 
this is not what is happening.''
  Well, Mr. President, you are being ill served by this refusal to get 
independent sources of information. You got a lot of people who confuse 
what is happening with what is not happening and sometimes they do not 
tell you anything.
  Most recently we have the Secretary of Defense who forgot to tell you 
that we had a major debilitating problem coming up with regard to the 
mistreatment of prisoners. And he did not tell you that.
  Last year, in what I think you consider to be, Mr. President, the 
single most important domestic accomplishment in the administration, 
did someone forget to tell you that the bill you were telling us was 
going to cost $400 billion over 10 years was, in fact, going to cost 
$540 billion and that all of the additional billion would go to the 
providers and none of it to the recipients? Did someone forget to tell 
the President or did the President forget to tell us?
  Then, of course, we have the comment by CIA Director George Tenet who 
told the President apparently that it was a slam-dunk that there were 
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Well, once again, we have a case 
on a very important issue of the President and, to quote his words, all 
kinds of people in my administration were charged with different 
responsibilities and they would come in and say this is what is 
happening and this is not what is happening.
  There is a serious problem, Mr. President. The time has come for the 
President of the United States to admit an error in this case, I know 
he does not like to do that, to admit that relying on Secretary 
Rumsfeld or CIA Director Tenet or Secretary Thompson or a whole range 
of other people to give him the information to brag about how he 
eschews independent, factual sources is a great mistake and may explain 
some of the serious mistakes this administration has made.
  Old sayings sometimes can be overdone. Sometimes they have some 
truth. There is a saying that ignorance is bliss. Well, Mr. Speaker, 
there may be context in which ignorance is bliss, but the Presidency of 
the United States is not one of them.
  The time has come for the President to acknowledge the fact that his 
method of getting information only from people within his own 
administration, who may have their own motives for misrepresenting or 
not giving him information that might be embarrassing to them, that 
that has broken down, and the time has come for the President to dip 
into the budget that he gets and buy a subscription to some newspapers 
and watch the TV news.
  Mr. Speaker, I will insert into the Record at this point the excerpt 
from the interview with Diane Sawyer.

       DIANE SAWYER. First of all, I just want to ask about 
     reading. Mr. President, you know that there was a great deal 
     of reporting about the fact that you said, first of all, that 
     you let Condoleezza Rice and Andrew Card give you a flavor of 
     what's in the news.
       PRESIDENT BUSH. Yes.
       DIANE SAWYER. That you don't read the stories yourself.
       PRESIDENT BUSH. Yes. I get my news from people who don't 
     editorialize. They give me the actual news, and it makes it 
     easier to digest, on a daily basis, the facts.
       DIANE SAWYER. Is it just harder to read constant criticism 
     or to read----
       PRESIDENT BUSH. Why even put up with it when you can get 
     the facts elsewhere? I'm a lucky man. I've got, it's not just 
     Condi and Andy, it's all kinds of people in my administration 
     who are charged with different responsibilities, and they 
     come in and say this is what's happening, this isn't what's 
     happening.

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