[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 70 (Tuesday, May 18, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5564-S5566]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          STATE OF THE ECONOMY

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I will use my leader time and save what 
Democratic morning business is still allocated to others. I compliment 
the distinguished Senator from Illinois for his comments this morning.
  This week it will be our hope to discuss the question about how it is 
that Americans view themselves as we enter this critical decisionmaking 
period for our country, choosing its national leadership for the next 4 
years.
  Senator Durbin has put his finger on the question that was so 
appropriately posed by then-candidate Reagan in 1980. The question he 
asked in 1980 to the American people was: Are you better off? In many 
cases, Americans had a right to say yes in 1980, but there was a 
perception that on many specific issues and circumstances they were not 
better off.
  So we felt it was appropriate that we have some analysis of our 
circumstances today in the year 2004. Are we better off than we were in 
2000? Are we better off in education today than we were back then, 
having passed but not funded the No Child Left Behind Act? Are we 
better off with our own national security and homeland security today 
than we were in 2000? Are we better off in our fiscal policy, our 
economic policy? Are we better off with regard to crime statistics? Are 
we better off with infrastructure? Where is it that we are better off?
  I dare say no one could possibly say we are better off.
  Well, this week, we hope to analyze a little bit of the lay of the 
land as the American people see it today. Wondering out loud, 
expressing concern, and certainly providing some of our own reaction to 
the question, Are you better off today?
  Senator Durbin, our distinguished colleague from Illinois, said it so 
well with regard to our circumstances for average working families. In 
asking the question, Are you better off than you were 4 years ago, when 
you look at the first 2 years of the Bush administration, real income 
actually dropped by $1,500 per household, and throughout the last 4 
years growth in wages has actually been very weak.
  After growing at a healthy rate during the Clinton administration, 
wages have barely kept up with inflation under the Bush administration. 
In fact, the Labor Department recently reported that in the last 12 
months wages and salaries grew at the slowest rate in 20 years. At the 
same time, Americans are facing skyrocketing costs. Whether it is a 25-
percent increase in gasoline prices at the pump, a 28-percent increase 
in college tuition, a 36-percent increase in family health care 
premiums, the middle class is being squeezed.
  This chart says it as graphically as one can. Here you have the 
average weekly earnings for a typical American household. It has gone 
up 1 percent over this period of time. In that same timeframe, while 
wages have only gone up 1 percent, gasoline prices have gone up 25 
percent; college tuition, 28 percent; health care premiums, a whopping 
36 percent. So at times like these, the last thing you want to do is 
threaten wages, but that is exactly what the Bush administration is 
planning to do in August, by implementing rules that will actually 
strip millions of Americans of the ability to cope with this situation.
  Here you have an increase in earnings of 1 percent. One of the ways 
Americans have historically coped with that situation is to say: OK, if 
I am only making a 1-percent increase, I am going to work harder and 
longer.
  We already have the longest workweek in the world with regard to 
industrialized nations--the longest workweek in the world and Americans 
respond to these increasing pressures by saying: I am going to work 
longer. If they work longer, under current law, they are allowed 
overtime. But what the administration says is: We are going to make you 
work even harder and longer because we are going to take away some of 
your overtime. So the pressure is even greater.
  For many Americans, the problem is even worse than just flat wages 
and high costs. For millions, the problem is no wages because they have 
lost their jobs. We have actually lost 2.2 million private sector jobs 
under President Bush, compared to 21 million jobs created during the 
time President Clinton was in office. The manufacturing sector has been 
particularly hard hit, with jobs lost in 36 out of 39 months under the 
Bush administration. In all, we have lost 2.7 million manufacturing 
jobs. And a net of 2.2 million private sector jobs lost--the first time 
since the Hoover administration we have actually seen an actual job 
loss over the 4 years of any one President's term in office.
  So here you have it: During the Clinton administration, 21 million 
private sector jobs created; under the Bush administration, a loss of 
2.2 million private sector jobs.

  In 2000, the unemployment rate was 4 percent. Today, it is 5.6. Mr. 
President, 8.2 million Americans are actually out of work, a third more 
than when President Bush took office. In addition, long-term 
unemployment has nearly tripled in the last 4 years.
  In 2000, the number of long-term unemployed people was 649,000. Now 
there are 1.9 million long-term unemployed people, three times what it 
was in 2000

[[Page S5565]]

when President Bush took office, chronically long-term unemployed 
people who have virtually given up any real prospect of gaining 
employment any time in the short term.
  Put simply, the Bush administration has the worst jobs record since 
the Great Depression. As a result, millions of Americans are now worse 
off than they were 4 years ago.
  It is not just jobs and unemployment, however. As I said, these cost 
pressures that American families are feeling go beyond their income and 
they go beyond their employment. They go to the very nuts and bolts of 
making ends meet on a weekly basis. There is no better illustration of 
the problem they are facing with pressure on prices than we have seen 
in gas prices over the last several months.
  In 2001, gas prices were averaging $1.47 per gallon. Today, the 
nationwide average is $2.01 per gallon, and the Bush administration 
recently announced that it expects the average price to climb even 
higher by June. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has done nothing 
to help consumers relieve that pressure.
  During the 2000 campaign then-candidate Bush urged President Clinton 
to put pressure on OPEC to increase oil production. But today, 
President Bush is actually refusing--refusing--to follow his own 
advice, and his administration has said it won't call on OPEC to 
increase production.
  The administration has also failed to take other action that could 
help stem the rise in gasoline prices. It has refused to defer 
deliveries of oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and, in fact, has 
not investigated anticompetitive actions in the gasoline market.
  While Americans struggle to pay higher prices at the pump, oil 
companies are posting record profits. In the first quarter of 2004, 
British Petroleum reported a 165-percent increase in their profits; 
Chevron-Texaco reported a 294-percent increase in their profits; 
Conoco-Phillips, a 44-percent increase in their profits; and Exxon 
Mobil, a 125-percent increase in their profits.
  The Bush administration has been totally unengaged, not providing one 
scintilla of leadership in addressing gasoline prices as these prices 
continue to flummox the American people and press them into longer 
working hours without the wage increases through overtime.
  There is also a concern for fiscal irresponsibility. The Bush 
administration has turned record surplus into record deficit. When 
President Bush took office, we were on track for a 10-year surplus of 
$5 trillion. Now we are headed for a 10-year deficit of $3 trillion.
  This graph shows the budget surplus/deficit just in the 4 short years 
President Bush has been in office. In 2000, we had a $236 billion 
surplus. This year, we are going to have the largest single deficit in 
our Nation's history.
  We're now on track to take $2.9 trillion from the Social Security 
trust funds. On an individual basis, that means the Government will end 
up borrowing an average of $18,500 for every worker covered by Social 
Security last year. Much of that money, which belongs to the workers, 
will be used to finance the tax cuts we have heard so much about with 
this administration.
  While millionaires get billions in Federal tax breaks, middle-class 
Americans are facing dramatic increases in their State taxes. State 
taxes actually rose by $14.5 billion in 2002 and 2003, after 7 straight 
years of decline. Household debt has climbed from $7.1 trillion in 2000 
to $9.4 trillion at the end of last year. That is a 32-percent 
increase.
  What does that tell you? What that tells you is that American 
households, because they are paying higher State taxes, higher gas 
prices, higher health insurance premiums, and higher tuition costs, 
what they are now doing is borrowing more and more. They are putting 
more of that debt on their credit cards, maxing out their credit cards 
at the very time when they do not have the ability to pay back that 
debt on a monthly basis.
  By 2001, we had actually seen a reduction in the amount of public 
debt. It had fallen for 4 years, and we were on track to eliminate the 
debt by 2009. Now we are on track to reach $5.9 trillion in public debt 
by 2009. That is more than $20,000 for every American child, every 
American parent, every American family member.
  We have heard a lot about the death tax, the so-called death tax, 
which is the estate tax paid by some who have large property transfers 
from one generation to the next. I do not hear my Republican colleagues 
talk about the birth tax.
  There is now a birth tax of more than $20,000 because of fiscal 
irresponsibility and mismanagement. That birth tax is paid not just by 
people who inherit but by every single American child when they are 
born.
  The consumer confidence index has fallen by 20 percent in the last 4 
years. The NASDAQ has dropped over 30 percent. Standard & Poor's 500 
has dropped by over 18 percent, and the Dow Jones by 5 percent.
  We come back to the question posed famously by President Reagan: Are 
we better off? Are wages better off? Are gasoline prices better off? 
Are we better off with college tuition or health care costs? Do we have 
more or fewer jobs? Have we provided more or less tax relief when the 
entire picture of taxes paid by workers is taken into account? The 
question provides a simple and very obvious answer to all of us: We are 
not better off. Americans are not better off than they were 4 years 
ago.
  But we can do better. We are a ``can do'' country. We can be stronger 
economically, stronger in national security. We can be strong in 
meeting the values and ideals of our heritage.
  We proved during the Clinton administration that Federal deficits can 
be eliminated, that the stock market can boom, that 22 million jobs can 
be created, and that low interest and inflation rates could increase 
the quality of life for families from Maine to Washington. We are not 
better off than we were, but we can be and we will be with a new 
majority, with a change in administration policy, and new leadership in 
the White House.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, it is said that we inherit this great 
country of ours from our parents and we borrow it from our children. 
Yet, for all of us, it is what we do with this country, in what shape 
do we leave it for our children?
  All of us aspire to give our children something more, leave a country 
to our children that is a better one, a stronger one, with better jobs 
and growth and opportunity.
  My colleague asked the question: Are you better off today than 4 
years ago? That was a question President Reagan asked repeatedly many 
years ago. It is a fair question. We have some serious challenges: the 
challenge of responding to the threat of terrorism; the challenge we 
now find in Iraq and Afghanistan; the challenge in this country of 
finding a way to create new jobs, to pay our bills and avoid running up 
very large deficits, and to deal with our trade imbalance. These are 
very significant challenges. In many ways the answer to these 
challenges relates to our values.
  David McCullough wrote a wonderful book about John Adams, who 
traveled a great deal as they tried to put this new country together. 
He was in London and France. He would write right back to Abigail and 
he would ask the question in his letters plaintively: Where is the 
leadership? Where will the leadership come from to help put this 
country of ours together? Then he would answer his question by saying: 
There is really only us. There is Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, 
George Washington, me, Mason, Madison.
  In the rearview mirror of history we know the ``only us'' represents 
some of the greatest talent in human history. But for every generation, 
the question has been, Where will the leadership come from? Now more 
than ever the question is, Where will the leadership come from?
  Let me talk for a moment about some of the challenges we face. I 
mentioned terrorism, the war in Iraq, Afghanistan. Let me talk about 
this country's fiscal policy and specifically trade policy with respect 
to large and growing and dangerous deficits.
  This year we will have the largest Federal budget deficit in history, 
the largest ever in the world by any country. Last week we saw a story 
in the Washington Post that says: ``U.S. Trade Deficit Grows 
Unchecked,'' $46 billion gap in March is the biggest monthly trade 
deficit in our history. Think of that, $46 billion in 1 month,

[[Page S5566]]

over $10 billion of it to China alone. This is at a time when the 
dollar is weakening, and they expect that our trade deficit will begin 
to shrink. Our trade deficit grows.
  We have the largest budget deficit in history, the largest trade 
deficit in history, and the administration acts as if this is just 
routine. They say: What problem? This is not a big issue. What problem?
  Ultimately, our children will repay this trade deficit with a lower 
standard of living. They will inherit the budget deficit and have to 
repay it. As important as that is, the combination of these deficits 
that are choking our economy mean we will have fewer jobs and less 
opportunity and a less robust economic growth in the future. That is a 
fact.
  Where are the values that deal with these questions? Should we not as 
a country begin to address this? Where is the leadership?
  I know conservatives who say this is not true. It is true. The 
President says: Let's increase spending. He says: Let's increase 
defense spending by well over $100 billion a year. Let's increase 
homeland security spending. Let's increase spending on health care 
issues because health care spending is increasing. He proposes we pay 
that. So we have very large spending increases and at the same time he 
says, Let's cut taxes and cut taxes again. Yesterday's CQ Daily talks 
again about an additional tax cut campaign.
  The question is, How do you pay for all this? Does it add up to have 
budgets proposed by this President that say, let's increase spending in 
category after category and then, by the way, let's cut revenue and 
let's have the kids pay for all this?
  Now we have a proposal for $25 billion in additional funding for 
Iraq. That is on top of the nearly over $80 billion we appropriated 
recently just months ago. Part of that money, incidentally, which is 
not paid for and that is charged to the kids, is to reconstruct Iraq.
  We have a program in this country offered to us by the administration 
for Iraq, a domestic program. They have a roads program for Iraq. They 
have a jobs program. They have a health care program for Iraq. They 
have an energy program for Iraq--all paid for by the American taxpayer. 
Is that what we ought to be doing?
  Iraq has the second largest reserves of oil in the world. I had a 
soldier tell me he was standing on some sand in a low spot one day in 
Iraq and his boots got black with oil. It was seeping out of the sand. 
They have the second largest reserves of oil in the world. I believe 
the Iraqi people ought to sell Iraqi oil to pay for Iraq 
reconstruction. That is not the job of the American taxpayer. Yet this 
administration again, even on this issue, says: Let's borrow money and 
let the kids pay for it in order to provide a domestic program to 
reconstruct Iraq. In my judgment, it is fundamentally wrong. It means 
fewer jobs in our country, less economic growth, and less opportunity 
here.

  Unless we get our hands around these issues, a reckless fiscal policy 
that has now given us the largest budget deficit in history and a trade 
policy that seems oblivious to fairness for American producers and 
workers, when you hear people talk about trade policy who espouse these 
things, you wonder whether the tongue is in any way connected to the 
brain. What on Earth could they be talking about, setting up trade 
policies with other countries that undercut our producers and undercut 
our workers?
  I could give you examples. I have done it in recent weeks. Huffy 
bicycles are made in China; the little red wagon, that is made in 
China, not in America. You want to buy Mexican food, go buy a Fig 
Newton. Fig Newton used to be an all-American cookie. That is now made 
in Mexico; Fig Newton is Mexican food. You wear Fruit of the Loom 
underwear? You are not wearing American underwear anymore. It is made 
in Mexico and China. And Levis, that isn't all-American. They are gone, 
too.
  This country has to have a trade policy that begins to ratchet these 
huge deficits down. Instead, they are going up. This administration 
doesn't care. Their interest? Go do another trade deal with another 
country, just do another deal. It undercuts the interests of our 
country. It is perfectly appropriate, as the Democratic leader said, to 
ask: Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago? The answer with 
respect to this country's economy and long-term outlook is, no, we are 
not.

  The answer to John Adams' question, Where will the leadership come 
from, is the leadership needs to come from an administration that says 
we have to pay for that which we consume. Why are we not asking in this 
country that we begin to pay for that which we are spending? If we want 
to increase defense spending $100 billion a year, as the administration 
has done and Congress has approved, should someone pay for that? If 
homeland security needs, in order to deal with the threat of terrorism, 
have increased, we must increase spending in homeland security, should 
someone pay for that, or is this all the obligation of our children?
  We need leadership, and we need it now. This administration 
understands, or should understand, that in fiscal policy and trade 
policy, these large deficits--large, abiding, and growing deficits--
will choke this economy, and that is not what we should aspire to want 
for our country's future. We can do better than that.
  Mr. President, how much time is remaining on our side in morning 
business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). There is 10 minutes 45 seconds 
remaining.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I yield back that time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.

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