[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 10 (Thursday, February 3, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S918-S920]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS
Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, the State of the Union Message has
become a great moment in American political theater. Originally, State
of the Union Messages, which are called for in the Constitution, were
submitted to the Congress in writing. Perhaps it is a demonstration of
the fact that we have gotten into the world of modern communications
that it has now become not just a presentation to the Congress, but,
through the medium of television and radio, it has become a speech to
the Nation.
So the Nation gathers around electronically to listen to its elected
leader describe what is going on in the country and in the world. We
had that experience last night. Last night's was one of the better
State of the Union Messages we have had.
In today's world we have instant polling, we have instant results.
This morning's hotline reports there are two polls out, one saying that
86 percent of those who viewed the speech liked it; the second poll--
CBS, less favorable to the President--says it was only 80 percent of
the people who viewed the speech liked it. And according to the Gallup
poll, 77 percent of those who liked it now believe President Bush is
leading the country in the right direction.
This is a home run, for a speech to have that kind of a reaction and
make that kind of an impact on those who listened to it. It was a
departure, in my view, from the traditional format that has settled in
on State of the Union Messages--not a complete one but a partial
departure in that State of the Union Messages have become laundry lists
where Presidents have made a one-sentence or one-paragraph reference to
the issues that are of great importance to a variety of special
interest groups, so that each member of a special interest group can
wait anxiously in the hope his or her moment will come when the
President will say something nice about what he or she thinks is
important.
There was some of that in the speech last night. You cannot have a
modern State of the Union Address without it. But there was far less
than we usually see because last night's speech was primarily a
thematic statement of the President and his world view, both domestic
and international.
As I listened to the speech unfold and caught that theme, I realized
this is a President who has a truly broad and far-reaching world view.
His primary focus was on the future. His primary concern, both
domestic and international, was on the benefit of what we might do that
would accrue to our children and our grandchildren.
We have had a lot of conversation so far about Social Security. The
President did spend a good deal of time on Social Security. While I am
praising the President, I will join with my friends on the Democratic
side of the aisle to say that I think he made one mistake in his
presentation. He used a word which, if I had been in conversation with
him and his speechwriters, I would have recommended he drop. The word
was ``bankrupt.'' The Social Security system will not go bankrupt.
If we do nothing, what will happen if we follow the impulse of those
who say there is nothing that needs to be done will be that when the
account balances currently listed under the heading of the Social
Security trust fund run out, there will still be money coming in in the
form of payroll taxes. It will simply not be enough to cover the
obligations going out that have been laid there. So the Social Security
Administration will have to adopt some kind of strategy to deal with
that. Maybe it will be like the gas lines. If your birthday is in an
even numbered year, you get a check this month. If it is an odd
numbered year, you have to wait until next month. Maybe it will be some
kind of alphabetical choice, or maybe everybody will just be told: We
can't send out any checks this month. Wait another 30 days and we will
do the best we can.
By technical accounting terms, that is not bankruptcy, but by any
standard, that is not a result we want. So while I would say to the
President, don't use the term ``bankrupt'' because, as an accounting
term, that is
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not directly correct, I do say to the President: Thank you for having
the courage to lay out the facts that virtually everyone understands
and knows.
The fact is that Social Security is under irreducible pressure from
the demographic trends in which we find ourselves today. There are
trends that we like. We are all living longer. We are all healthier.
The Nation is seeing more and more of its workers survive into old age.
Who could be against that? But the references that have been made in
the Chamber about 1983, why don't we just do what we did in 1983, which
was basically to kick it down the road so it could get dealt with later
on, don't apply now, because we are on the verge of the retirement of
the baby boomers.
As I was driving in this morning, I heard the radio talk about 77
million baby boomers and when do they start to retire. When do they
start to put the pressure on the system? It is not 2048, when all of us
are dead. It is not 2018, when the projection is that the lines will
start to cross between money coming in and money going out. It is 2008.
It is within the term of those of us who just got elected. Within our
next 6-year term the pressure on Social Security will begin to build.
In 2008, it won't be overwhelming pressure. In 2009, it won't break the
system. But it will begin, it will continue, and it will grow. We need
to do something about it now or future generations will look at us and
say we were the ones who were irresponsible, we were the ones who
buried our heads in the sand, and we were the ones who said: Let
somebody else take care of it somewhere down the road. If we want to do
the responsible thing, we act in this Congress.
What struck me about the President's proposal is that he did not lay
down an edict and say: This is what it has to be or I won't sign it. He
listed a bunch of different solutions, most of which have been proposed
over the years by Democrats, and then made the statement: They are all
on the table. In other words, let's talk. And the boos that came in the
Chamber--and I have never heard that in all of the State of the Union
Messages I have ever heard--the boos that came in the Chamber as the
President laid that down said: We are not willing to talk. We are not
willing to talk to you, Mr. President. We are so offended by the idea
that you say there is something that has to be done that we will not
even engage in this dialog.
They are making a tremendous mistake when they take that position.
Because the President said, once again: Here are the various proposals.
He quoted a number of Democrats as to the proposals. He put forward his
own proposal in general fashion, but he made the specific quote: It is
all on the table. The reaction that came back from a portion of the
people on the other side of the aisle was: We are not willing to talk.
We are not even willing to have the conversation.
The message that sends to the young worker just graduating from high
school who is saying: I don't want to be there in my career when the
Social Security Administration has to decide which checks to send out
or which months to pass up or which benefits to say we can't afford, I
want the Congress to start doing something now so when I retire, I can
see certainty--I think the people in that situation will look at what
happened last night and say: The person we must depend on to lead to
the solution of the problems that we will have in our lifetimes is
President Bush.
Let's leave Social Security to make one other comment about the
speech. I thought this was very much a theme speech. The theme was the
future, and the underlying force behind the President's theme was his
optimism and his conviction that the future can be better, better
domestically, better for workers who are looking forward to a career
and then retirement. The same sense was included in his statement about
foreign affairs. The future can be better.
He talked about Afghanistan. The future is already better in
Afghanistan. I have a high school and college classmate who does
business in Afghanistan. Can you imagine that--a businessman from Utah
who is doing business in Afghanistan. He says to me: Bob, you can't
believe how marvelous it is, as an American, to walk up and down the
streets of Kabul and have people grab you and hug you and thank you and
say: What has happened in Afghanistan is magnificent. The future of
Afghanistan is much brighter because of what George W. Bush did.
We ignore that because it is overwhelmed by events in Iraq. But as
was pointed out by the President, what happened last Sunday makes it
clear that the future in Iraq is much brighter because of what George
W. Bush did.
As he talked about the future and his optimism and his conviction
that what we do now is important for the future, it all came together
in the most dramatic moment of the speech, when the woman from Iraq,
with her ink-stained finger, embraced the mother of the dead marine who
demonstrated America's resolve to bring freedom and liberty to the
world. I don't think there were many dry eyes in the Chamber when that
happened. And it was not scripted. It could not have been scripted.
I once said to Karl Rove: George W. Bush is as good a President as
Ronald Reagan, but he is not as good an actor. Last night he wasn't
acting. We saw the real George W. Bush, and we saw the real emotion as
the woman from Iraq reached out to comfort and thank the mother of the
dead marine.
Freedom is on the march in the world, and the future looks brighter
than it otherwise would have been if it had not been for the actions of
George W. Bush.
I close as I began: These speeches have become American political
theater and fairly predictable. Last night's was an exception. Eighty-
six percent of the people who watched it liked it. To get that kind of
support from the American people is an extraordinary accomplishment,
and the President deserves congratulations for having brought it off.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I congratulate my good friend from
Utah on his evaluation of the President's outstanding State of the
Union speech last night. I was just thinking that this probably is the
20th State of the Union I have had the privilege to witness and observe
in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. None have been finer.
Indeed, the moment that captured the evening was, of course, the
embrace between Janet Norwood, mother of the marine who was killed in
Fallujah, and the Iraqi woman whose father was killed by Saddam
Hussein. The junior Senator from Utah has it exactly right: There was
not a dry eye in the House. I watched a lot of really tough customers
shedding tears on the floor of the House during that moment. But it
summed it up, what this has all been about.
Of course, we went to war in Iraq to make ourselves safer, but there
was another sort of collateral purpose. The President believes deeply--
and I think the American people are beginning to get it--that when
democracy takes root, the world is a safer place. And just look at the
sweep of democracy in the last few months in the most unlikely places.
I had the opportunity to go back to Afghanistan a couple weeks ago.
It was my second trip there. On my first trip driving from the airport
to meet with President Karzai in downtown Kabul, the streets were
largely silent--not many people out, almost no commerce visible. But 15
months later, in January of 2005, there are little stores springing up
everywhere, traffic jams in Kabul. And people are clearly on an
emotional high as a result of the extraordinary election they had last
October 9 which included a virtual 80-percent turnout, including 82
percent of women in Afghanistan, of all places, where little girls were
not even allowed to be in school a few years ago, a huge success story
in one of the most backward and devastated countries in the world.
On the heels of an election in Georgia, which has had its problems
getting started in the wake of the end of the Soviet Union, and the
literal uprising in Ukraine, when there was an attempt to steal the
election, to deny the will of the people, the Ukrainians rose up and
even a supreme court in Ukraine, obviously beholden to the President
who was in cahoots with those who were trying to steal the election,
ruled against those trying to steal the election and said: We are going
to have another election, which they did the day after Christmas. The
forces of democracy rose up and took control of
[[Page S920]]
Ukraine for the first time since its freedom from the Soviet Union.
And the Palestinian territory--Palestinians used to Saddam-type
elections, where there was a 99-percent turnout and no choice--had a
real choice of who to lead the Palestinian Authority in the wake of
Arafat's death. A man got elected who appears to be a reasonable
leader, working hard with Prime Minister Sharon to try to achieve a
lasting peace.
We wish Secretary of State Rice well as she departs today to go to
the Middle East to meet with Sharon and Abu Mazen to see if they can
finally get the roadmap back on track at a meeting with Abu Mazen and
Ariel Sharon, not to mention last Sunday's inspirational election in
Iraq. Many Members of the House of Representatives last night had
inkstained index fingers themselves to sort of symbolize our enormous
admiration for the extraordinary courage that it took to go out and
vote in Iraq last Sunday.
The critics and naysayers will say the turnout was not what it should
have been in the Sunni area. But the overall turnout was about what we
had last year in this country. I am fairly confident almost nobody in
America thought they might get shot if they went to the polls. So there
was extraordinary courage, literally under fire, dancing in the
streets, the waving of those inkstained index fingers all over the
country. The Sunni turnout was not what it will be later, but the
people building a democratic Iraq understand and will include an
adequate number of Sunnis by appointment in the interim government.
And remember, there are going to be two more elections in Iraq this
year. A constitution will be submitted to the voters of Iraq in
October. It will not be ratified if only 3 provinces disapprove out of
18. At least four provinces are Sunni majority. That constitution will
have to be crafted in such a way that the Sunni population of Iraq is
comfortable with it, or it will not be ratified. The leaders of the
emerging democracy in Iraq are all acutely aware of the need to respect
the rights of minorities and to have proper balance in Iraq in order to
have a governing democracy.
If we had any doubts they would make it, we don't have any now. Our
friends and colleagues on the other side who have said the signal from
the election is to leave have it exactly wrong. The President made it
clear last night, and he was absolutely correct, that you never
announce to your enemy when you are going to leave. We will leave Iraq
one day, even though we are still in Germany and still in Japan some 60
years later; and we are nowhere in the world where we are not wanted.
We will leave Iraq some day, when the Iraqi democracy has taken hold
and when the Iraqi military and Iraqi police can provide for their own
security--and not a day before that.
I had a chance to be in Iraq 2 weeks ago, too, for the second time.
There was some nervousness, candidly, about this election. Nobody knew
for sure how successful it would be. Carlos Valenzuela, from the U.N.,
an elections expert, was there and he said: ``This election is going to
pass international standards, I am absolutely certain of it.'' This is
a man who has been involved in conducting elections 14 times in
difficult places around the world. He was totally confident 2 weeks
before the election. He was right and the naysayers were wrong.
Even those who originally were between skeptical and hostile to the
Iraq war we had an opportunity to sit down with on that same trip a
couple weeks ago. We went back to Brussels with the NATO Ambassadors
and a European representative. I think it is not an exaggeration to say
that even the Ambassadors from France and Germany to NATO believe at
this point that it is in everybody's interest for Iraq to be a success.
Who benefits by a failure in Iraq? No one but the terrorists. I think
the President will find on his upcoming trip to Europe more interest in
cooperating, in helping to move Iraq further down the road toward
democracy.
So last night was indeed a celebration of the march of democratic
forces in some of the most unusual places in the world over the last 4
months. The President went a step further, challenging our allies, the
Saudis, to begin the march down the democratic path. Even our staunch
ally, Egypt--he challenged them to begin a march in the democratic
direction. The President deeply believes--and we are increasingly
inclined to believe he is correct on a bipartisan basis--that the
spread of democracy will make the world indeed safer.
Now, the President was, of course, criticized initially on Iraq for
not being very multilateral, in spite of the fact that a majority of
NATO countries supported the war and helped us. Nevertheless, he was
criticized by some who, I guess, only feel that France and Germany are
Europe and no one else counts, saying he was not multilateral enough.
The President laid out last night a completely multilateral strategy
related to the two most obvious rogue states left in the world, Iran
and North Korea. The Germans, the French, and the British are leading
the talks with the Iranians; and working with the North Koreans, we
have the Russians, the Chinese, the South Koreans, the Japanese, and
ourselves. That is the definition of a multilateral approach.
So the President develops his approaches depending upon the
situation, and every situation is not exactly the same. He knows, and
the new Secretary of State knows, we need significant international
cooperation in order to achieve our goals in North Korea and in Iran.
North Korea and Iran can take a look at Libya and see the rewards for
going nonnuclear. To be welcomed into the community of responsible
countries means trade benefits, it means an opportunity for interaction
with the rest of the world, and a chance to improve the lives of the
citizens through trade. There are a lot of advantages that I hope the
leaders of North Korea and Iran will observe that Libya is going to
begin to benefit from as a result of making the decision that maybe the
Libyan people would be better off being engaged with the rest of the
world, rather than having some weapons of mass destruction sitting
there. For what purpose?
So enormous progress has been made in the last 4 years. The low point
was 9/11. We all remember it well. But extraordinary progress toward a
safer world and toward the spread of democracy has occurred under the
extraordinary leadership of our President. We had a chance last night
to celebrate that and to commend him for a job well done in last
night's State of the Union.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina is recognized.
____________________