[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

[[Page S919]]

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.

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