[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 71 (Wednesday, May 19, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5743-S5744]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            OREGON'S ECONOMY

  Mr. SMITH. Mr. President, yesterday I had the privilege to sit in 
that chair during much of the morning hour and I heard many of the 
speeches of our colleagues and friends on the other side. The theme of 
the day was, Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago? Those 
are the words of Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Now they are being 
applied to George W. Bush. I can say as an Oregonian that the answer in 
my State is yes, we are now better off than we were 4 years ago.
  When I watched George W. Bush take his oath of office on a cold and 
rainy January day 3\1/2\ years ago, I was very mindful that Oregon was 
not going into recession; we were deep into recession. We had spent 8 
years of the Clinton administration watching the dismantling of 70,000 
family-wage jobs in many of the natural resource industries in my 
State, specifically, timber industry, fishing, farming, and others.
  We were told we did not need low tech, we had high tech. But the 
bubble of high tech had already popped in Oregon. Billions of high-tech 
values, equities, were disappearing because they were no more than the 
blue sky in the end than they were in the beginning.
  Then we should have known it, but the tourism industry that we were 
told would take the place of our basic industries was in risk of peril 
that maybe we could not have imagined. When September 11 occurred, 
tourism evaporated, as well. And my State, because of the policy of the 
1990s, coupled with the incredible shocks of the high-tech bubble 
popping, September 11, corporate scandals, began to register some of 
the highest unemployment rates in America.

  Today those rates are falling and falling fast in Oregon. They are 
nowhere near as good as they ought to be, but with lower taxes, healthy 
forest initiative, an effort to preserve our hydroelectric dams in the 
Pacific Northwest, Oregon is coming back, tourists are coming back, 
high-tech is being restabilized, and trade is being advanced. These are 
all issues that will be and are part of the Presidential election.
  As one Oregonian, I ask, Are we better off than we were 4 years ago? 
By most indicators, the answer is emphatically, yes. The rule of thumb 
is it takes 6 months between the kind of economic news we are beginning 
to enjoy now before that news is fully understood by the American 
people. If that holds true this time, a majority of Oregonians will be 
able to answer with me that, yes, we are better off now than we were 4 
years ago.
  It is not perfect. Gas prices, as my colleague from Oregon, Ron 
Wyden, pointed out, are too high. There are many reasons for that. I 
don't know that they will ever come down to what they were. But I do 
know the contender for the Presidency does not have the answer on this. 
The truth is, we have to explore for more and we have to conserve more. 
It is not all one and it is not all the other. It is both.
  I understand he is complaining he does not see the President 
jawboning down the prices. Yet I think what Mr. Woodward said, that the 
President was talking to Prince Bandar, the men and women would not 
stand for it. You cannot have it both ways all the time.
  The other half of the equation of, Are you better off now than you 
were 4 years ago, is the whole issue of our foreign policy and our 
domestic security. Having spent 6 years on the Foreign Relations 
Committee, I watched President Clinton, well motivated in foreign 
policy, trying to reconcile what to do with American power in a world 
in which we were the only superpower.
  I learned a great lesson from him as it relates to Kosovo. I was one 
of the few Republican Senators who voted with him on Kosovo, 
consistently believing it was in American interests because it was 
consistent with an American value that we end genocide in Europe's back 
door. But for our intervention, at the urging and pleading of our NATO 
allies, they would have lost Kosovo to Mr. Milosevic without American 
power, President Clinton's leadership, and the support of this Congress

[[Page S5744]]

that ultimately turned around that policy of genocide toward a European 
Muslim majority.
  I remember asking President Clinton, Mr. President, can't you go get 
a Security Council resolution in support of this? He responded, 
Senator, I cannot because Russia and China have promised to veto.
  I learned then how wise is now-President Bush's policy that you do 
not go to the Security Council of the United Nations in pursuit of the 
security of the American people. You do not get a permission slip from 
an institution that in its very makeup is not democratic.
  It is a very interesting and historical observation that of the 191 
countries of the U.N. members, only 89 would be described today as free 
and democratic countries. I guess a little more than half of them would 
be counted as liberal democratic democracies that ensure political 
competition, respect for civil liberties, significant independence, 
civic life, and independent medias. This is the same institution that 
puts Cuba at the head of its human rights commission and Iran at the 
head of its disarmament commission.
  I say we should stay in it in a realistic way, even a skeptical way, 
using it as it serves America's interests because that is how other 
members of the U.N. use the U.N. But do not subject our security to a 
veto by the Security Council.
  So when I hear our colleague on the other side run television ads in 
my State saying the first thing he will do as President of the United 
States is to return American foreign policy to the international 
community, I wonder what he means. And then he clarifies, he will go 
back to the Security Council.
  I want the American people to know--I plead with Oregonians to know--
that there is no security in that. Understand that permanent members of 
the Council--France in particular; Russia as well; China; occasionally 
Germany is a member--these were the primary creditors of Saddam 
Hussein, and they were also significant beneficiaries of the food for 
fraud--I am sorry--the Food for Oil Program which enabled Saddam 
Hussein to rearm and to execute tens of thousands of his countrymen and 
to build palaces of great austerity and wastefulness.
  Regardless of the motives of other countries, the President did the 
right thing by going into Iraq and removing Saddam's murderous regime 
from power. We must remember that. He did the right thing for the 
people of Iraq, and he did the right thing for the American people as 
well.
  By liberating the Iraqi people, we have provided hope to people not 
only in Iraq, but throughout the Middle East, that democracy is an 
option available to them. Civic movements throughout the region have 
emerged calling for political change, even in countries such as Egypt 
and Saudi Arabia. The Washington Post has reported that the individuals 
involved in these movements have widely credited President Bush's 
democratization policy for allowing them the opportunity to operate in 
a climate that, up to now, has been unfriendly to their aspirations. 
This is a real accomplishment, one that is not often touted, but that 
serves as a harbinger of what is to come if the United States continues 
to press for democratic change in the Middle East.
  Unfortunately, the shameful images being broadcast around the world 
of a few American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners undermine the hard 
work and dedication of so many Americans who are serving honorably in 
Iraq. These abuses are abhorrent, and those who are responsible for 
them must be punished.
  But in no way should we equate the actions of a few Americans with 
the widespread, government-endorsed terror inflicted by Saddam upon his 
own people. The prisoner abuse was wrong, but the United States has 
laws and military codes that these soldiers violated--and under which 
they will be held accountable. You can hardly say the same thing about 
Saddam's Iraq.
  The tragic murder of Nick Berg should remind the American people of 
the kind of world in which we are living. People who are willing to 
brutally decapitate an innocent man for the crime of being an American 
citizen are not individuals who respect international law, or the 
founding principles of the United Nations. They respect force, and 
power, and resolve, and determination. President Bush understands this 
critical fact, and is willing to deal with these evil men in those 
terms, not under conditions that we wish existed but do not.
  I understand that to some, the burden of responsibility we have in 
the world may seem too much to bear. ``Internationalizing'' conflicts 
seems, on the surface, to be an appropriate way to reduce our 
commitments abroad. I disagree. The answer is not to abdicate our 
responsibilities, but to embrace them.
  Next week I am traveling to Madrid, Athens, and Bratislava to discuss 
these very issues with our NATO allies. It is my preference that we act 
in conjunction with them, but let me reiterate, we should act 
consistent with our principles. If in doing so we are at odds with our 
allies, that is a price I am willing to pay.
  I would simply say, as the Presiding Officer has noted, there is bad 
news, but there is much good news, and many of us would sure like a 
little equality of treatment because our goals in Iraq, our goals in 
the war on terrorism, are noble. Short of those goals, we are left with 
a more moderate tyrant in the Middle East governing Iraq.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.

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