[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 157 (Friday, December 3, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8468-S8472]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE NEW PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I just returned from the Hudson
Institute, a distinguished think tank downtown where I made an address
called the New Promise of American Life--Less From Washington and More
of Ourselves. It included a panel of the following people: Kate
O'Beirne of the National Review; Christopher DeMuth, who was formerly
the head of the American Enterprise Institute; Chester Finn, who runs
the Fordham Foundation; Bill Kristol, the founder of the Weekly
Standard; and William Schambra, who is a fellow at the Hudson
Institute. They commented on what I had to say. It was one of my most
enjoyable experiences because it was a reprise of something we did in
1995.
In 1995, I was a fellow at the institute and I was also touring the
country trying to persuade Americans that I was the next logical choice
for President of the United States. That didn't work out exactly right.
In fact, when I lost, my brother-in-law, who is a preacher, said I
should think of that political loss as a reverse calling. I have always
tried to think of it that way. Nevertheless, during that time, Chester
Finn and I edited a book called ``The New Promise of American Life.''
We selected that title because Herbert Croly,
[[Page S8469]]
in 1909, had written a book called ``The Promise of American Life''
which really was the progressive manifesto that launched the thinking
of President Wilson and more recently President Obama.
Our thought then, in 1995 and 1996--Mr. Kristol, Mr. Schambra, and
Mr. Finn were all contributors to our volume--was that progressivism
had gone too far and that we needed less of Washington and more of
ourselves. That is what we said in 1995. Looking back over that volume,
that was pretty good advice, but obviously nobody took it. So today the
Hudson Institute sponsored another forum about the new promise of
American life. I talked about it, and the people I just mentioned
commented.
It was interesting for me in a variety of ways. I ask unanimous
consent to have printed in the Record the address I made at the
institute today as well as excerpts from ``The New Promise of American
Life'' published in 1995, namely, the introduction, the preface, and
the first chapter.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed the
in Record, as follows:
Less from Washington and More of Ourselves: The New Promise of American
Life
(By Senator Lamar Alexander, Hudson Institute, Dec. 3, 2010)
A wise political candidate, like a good composer, listens
for words and music that resonate with audiences--and then
repeats those phrases and melodies over and over again.
For the phrases that resonated during the 2010 election, we
might listen to the senators who were successful.
In a year when television screens displayed anger, these
politicians often talked about hope.
There were Rand Paul and Pat Toomey evangelizing about
spreading free market prosperity instead of dwelling on
government austerity.
Rob Portman and Kelly Ayotte and Roy Blunt and Ron Johnson
using their experience to describe ways to make it easier and
cheaper to create new private sector jobs, rather than just
wringing their hands about ten percent unemployment.
And Marco Rubio affirming with his life's story America's
exceptionalism, instead of lamenting America's decline.
To be sure, the issues that fired up voters this year were
about too much spending, too many taxes, too much debt and
too many Washington takeovers.
But the senators who voters elected to fix these problems
are mostly American dreamers who believe that in this country
anything still is possible for anyone who will work for it.
Europeans and others find this to be an irrational view
held by citizens in no other country in the world. Yet most
of American politics is about setting high goals and dealing
with the disappointment of not meeting them and then trying
again--all men are created equal, pay any price to defend
freedom, no child left behind.
This is not an enforced Americanism where the government in
Washington tells you what to believe. It is a spontaneous
patriotism of the kind you get reading Lincoln's second
inaugural address, or the oath of allegiance that George
Washington's men swore to at Valley Forge, or David
McCullough's 1776, or attending citizenship day at any
federal courthouse when new citizens from all over the world
become Americans.
The vitality of that dream is why Herbert Croly's book,
``The Promise of American Life,'' written in 1909, still is
powerful today. The first chapter of Croly's progressive
manifesto could be read with enthusiasm at any Tea Party. But
it is the rest of the book that we propose to discuss and
dispute in this forum, for in his remaining chapters Croly
argues that for individuals to realize the promise of
American Life the central government in Washington must play
a much larger role. His book launched the progressive
movement, featuring first President Wilson and most recently
President Obama. His is a strategy of made-in-Washington
policies, grand schemes to solve big national problems based
upon the assumption that these are things that individual
Americans can't do for ourselves.
In 1995, at the Hudson Institute's request, Checker Finn
and I edited a book, which we called ``The New Promise of
American Life.'' Checker and I then both were fellows at
Hudson and I was touring the country hoping to persuade
Americans that I was the logical choice for President of the
United States. (The public didn't agree with my logic,
prompting my preacher brother-in-law to suggest that I should
think of that political loss as a ``reverse calling.'')
Our book was an attempt to provide intellectual context for
the anti-Washington fervor of the moment, a fervor that
surges throughout American history. We chose the title ``The
New Promise of American Life'' because we believed that
progressivism had been carried too far and that what our
country now needed was a reverse mirror image of Croly's
vision--``Less from Washington and more of ourselves.'' Our
idea of America was one created by states, operating
community by community, depending upon civic virtue, valuing
individual liberty--a nation simply too large and too diverse
to be managed successfully by an all-knowing central
government in Washington, D.C.
Speaking of phrases that resonate, my best political one
liner at the time was ``Cut Their Pay and Send Them Home''
(referring to Congress), which made few friends in the
world's greatest deliberative body in which I now serve.
Reading what we published 15 years ago, I have been
impressed with the prescience of the essays from contributors
such as William Kristol, Paul Weyrich, Howard Baker, David
Abshire, Francis Fukayama, William Schambra and Diane
Ravitch. Their advice resonates as well today as it did then.
Reading their advice also reminds me of how little of this
advice anyone took. Republicans who were elected in 1994 on
the cry of ``No more unfunded federal mandates'' soon were
promulgating conservative big-government rules to replace
liberal big-government rules. Since 1995, the size of the
federal budget has grown 140 percent, the federal debt has
grown from $5 to $14 trillion.
Within the last two years, the progressive solution
symphony has been playing in Washington again, reaching a new
crescendo with budgets that double the debt in five years and
triple it in ten, with government bailouts, and, as one
blogger has suggested, the appointment of more new Czars and
Czarinas than the Romanovs ever had.
Seeing the inevitable anti-Washington surge rising again to
counter the excesses of progressivism, I suggested to Checker
about six weeks ago that we ask Hudson to revisit our 1995
book. This forum is the result of that suggestion. After this
luncheon address we will hear from a panel that includes
three contributors from the 1995 volume--Checker, Bill
Kristol and William Schambra--as well as from Chris DeMuth
and Kate O'Beirne. Our hope is the same today as it was
fifteen years ago: to provide an intellectual context for the
latest anti-Washington surge--with the additional hope that,
this time, more elected officials listen to and act on our
advice.
To begin the discussion, let me renew a suggestion that I
have made before: the new Congress should proceed step-by-
step in the right direction to solve problems in a way that
re-earns the trust of the American people rather than invent
comprehensive, conservative big-government schemes in an
attempt to correct comprehensive, liberal big-government
schemes.
To make this point, I thought of hanging up in the
Republican cloakroom photographs of Nancy Pelosi and Henry
Waxman because they symbolize what the federal government has
done wrong during the last two years: not just to head in the
wrong direction, but to try to go there all at once. This has
been government by taking big bites of several big apples and
trying to swallow them at the same time, which has had the
effect of enraging Republicans and terrifying the independent
voters of America.
During the recent health care debate, I heard a number of
times from friends on the other side of the aisle this
question: What are Republicans for? My answer was that
Democrats would wait a long time if they were waiting for the
Republican leader, Sen. McConnell, to roll into the Senate a
wheelbarrow filled with a 2,700-page Republican comprehensive
health care bill, or, for that matter, a Republican version
of a 1,200-page climate change bill or an 800-page
immigration bill.
Congressional action on comprehensive climate change,
comprehensive immigration bills, and comprehensive health
care have been well-intended but the first two fell of their
own weight and the health care law has been subject to
multiple efforts to repeal it since the day it passed the
Senate a year ago on Christmas Eve in a driving snowstorm.
What has united almost all Republicans and a majority of
Americans against these bills has not only been ideology but
also that they were comprehensive. As George Will might
write, ``The. Congress. Does. Not. Do. Comprehensive. Well.''
Two recent articles help to explain the trouble with the
Democratic comprehensive approach. The first, which appeared
in National Affairs, was written by one of our panelists
today, William Schambra, who explained the ``sheer ambition''
of President Obama's legislative agenda as the approach of
what Mr. Schambra called a ``policy president.'' Mr. Schambra
wrote that the President and most of his advisers have been
trained at elite universities to govern by launching ``a host
of enormous initiatives all at once--formulating
comprehensive policies aimed at giving large social systems--
and indeed society itself--more rational and coherent forms
and functions.''
Or, in the terms of today's forum, this is the latest
outburst of Crolyism or progressivism. Mr. Schambra notes
that other most prominent organizational feature of this
Obama administration is its reliance on Czars to manage broad
areas of policy. In this view, systemic problems of health
care, of energy, of education, and of the environment can't
be solved in pieces.
Analyzing Mr. Schambra's article, David Broder of the
Washington Post wrote this: ``Historically, that approach has
not worked. The progressives failed to gain more than a brief
ascendancy and the Carter and Clinton presidencies were
marked by striking policy failures.'' The reason for these
failures, as Broder paraphrased Schambra, is that ``this
[[Page S8470]]
highly rational comprehensive approach fits uncomfortably
with the Constitution, which apportions power among so many
different players.'' Broder then adds this: ``Democracy and
representative government are a lot messier than the
progressives and their heirs, including Obama, want to
admit.''
In a memorial essay honoring Irving Kristol--Bill Kristol's
father--in the Wall Street Journal last year, James Q. Wilson
wrote that the law of unintended consequences is what causes
the failure of such comprehensive legislative schemes.
Explains Wilson: ``Launch a big project and you will almost
surely discover that you have created many things that you
did not intend to create.'' The latest example of the truth
of Mr. Wilson's observation can be seen by anyone watching
the new health care law increase premiums, add to the federal
debt, cause millions of individual policy holders to lose
their policies, cause businesses to postpone adding new jobs,
and inflict huge unfunded Medicaid mandates on states--all
consequences the sponsors of the law strenuously argued were
never intended (although, I have to say, they were all
predicted by Republicans).
Wilson also wrote that neoconservatism, as Irving Kristol
originally conceived of it in the 1960s, was not an organized
ideology or even necessarily conservative but ``a way of
thinking about politics rather than a set of principles and
rules. It would have been better if we had been called policy
skeptics.''
This skepticism of Schambra, Wilson and Kristol toward
grand legislative policy schemes helps to explain how during
the 2010 election the law of unintended consequences made
being a member of the so-called ``party of no'' a more
electable choice than a member of the so-called party of
``yes, we can.''
James Q. Wilson also wrote in his essay that respect of the
law of unintended consequences ``is not an argument for doing
nothing, but it is one, in my view, for doing things
experimentally. Try your idea out in one place and see what
happens before you inflict it on the whole country,'' he
suggests.
That is why if the Republican Party aspires to be a
governing party rather than merely an ideological debating
society, the question ``What are Republicans for?'' still is
a question that must be answered.
If you will examine the Congressional Record you will find
Republican senators tried to answer the question by following
Mr. Wilson's advice, proposing a step-by-step approach to
confronting our nation's health care and other challenges 173
different times on the floor of the Senate during 2009.
On health care for example, we first suggested setting a
clear goal: that is reducing Americans' costs so that more of
them could afford to buy insurance. Then we proposed the
first six steps toward achieving that goal: 1. allowing small
businesses to pool their resources to purchase health plans;
2. reducing junk lawsuits against doctors; 3. allowing the
purchase of insurance across state lines; 4. expanding health
savings accounts; 5. promoting wellness and prevention; and
6. taking steps to reduce waste, fraud and abuse.
We offered these six proposals in complete legislative
text, totaling 182 pages for all six steps. The Democratic
majority ridiculed the approach as ``piecemeal,'' in part
because our approach was not comprehensive.
Take another example. In July of 2009, all 40 Republican
senators announced agreement on four steps to produce low-
cost, clean energy and create jobs: 1. create the environment
for 100 new nuclear power plants; 2. electrify half our cars
and trucks; 3. explore offshore for natural gas and oil; and
4. double energy research and development for new forms of
clean energy.
This step-by-step Republican clean energy plan was an
alternative to the Kerry-Boxer national energy tax that would
have imposed an economy wide cap-and-trade scheme, driving
jobs overseas looking for cheap energy and collecting
hundreds of billions of dollars each year for a slush fund
with which Congress could play.
Here is still another example, a bipartisan one. In 2005 a
bipartisan group of us in Congress asked the National
Academies to identify the first 10 steps Congress should take
to preserve America's competitive advantage in the world so
we could keep growing jobs. The Academies appointed a
distinguished panel that recommended twenty such steps.
Congress enacted two-thirds of them. The America COMPETES Act
of 2007, as we call it, was important legislation, but it was
fashioned step-by-step.
This style of governing squares with my experience as
governor of Tennessee during the 1980s. My goal was to raise
family incomes for what was then the third-poorest state. As
I went along, I found that the best way to move toward this
goal was step-by-step--some steps larger, step steps
smaller--such as changing banking laws, defending the right-
to-work, keeping debt and taxes low, recruiting Japanese
industry and then recruiting the auto industry, but also
building four lane highways so that suppliers could deliver
parts to the auto plants just-in-time, and then a 10-step
Better Schools program--step one of which made Tennessee the
first state to pay teachers more for teaching well. I did not
try to turn our whole state upside down at once, but working
with leaders of both political parties, I did help it change
and grow step by step. Within a few years, Tennessee was the
fastest growing state in family incomes.
What do this approach and these examples have to suggest to
Republicans as we look toward a new session of Congress? As a
result of the 2010 elections, we have enough clout to stop
risky, comprehensive schemes featuring more taxes, debt and
Washington takeovers replete with hidden and unexpected
surprises. And we have enough clout to suggest alternative
approaches for the most urgent problems of the day. In fact
we have an obligation to do so if we want to be able to
persuade independent voters as well as Republicans that we
ought to be the governing party in American after 2012.
It is no mystery what our country's focus should be: jobs,
debt and terror. Jobs and debt dominated the 2010 election.
Applying the step-by-step, rather than comprehensive,
approach our first goal therefore should be to make it easier
and cheaper to create private sector jobs. A quick list of
steps comes to mind: don't raise taxes on anybody in the
middle of an economic downturn; repeal one-by-one the
mandates on job creators in the health care law; reduce the
corporate tax rate; reduce or eliminate the tax on capital
gains; defend the secret ballot in union elections; defend
states' ability to protect the right to work; create the
environment for 100 new nuclear power plants; double research
and development for clean energy; build a first class
transportation system; repeal the so-called consumer
protection agency in the financial regulation law; and enact
Korea, Colombia, and Panama free trade laws.
I would add repeal the health care law entirely, although
this might seem to be a comprehensive act violating the
Wilson-Kristol-Schambra step-by-step doctrine. Such a
comprehensive undoing carries the risk of scaring
independents, but as a practical matter there is no good way
to deal with that historic mistake other than by repealing
and replacing it with a step-by-step approach reducing health
care costs. In addition, most of its provisions do not take
effect until 2014.
The same step-by-step approach can be applied to the second
goal: making annual spending come as close to revenues as
soon as possible. Trying to eliminate the annual deficit in
the first year would turn the nation upside down. It is at
points like this that the photographs of Pelosi and Waxman in
the cloakroom become useful.
But for a nation that is borrowing 42 cents of every dollar
to wait one day longer to begin to address its debt is
suicidal. There are steps that can and should be taken
immediately, while larger steps are being fashioned:
For example, step one could be no new entitlement automatic
spending programs. In other words, don't dig the hole any
deeper as would the President's budget proposal to shift a
half trillion dollars in Pell grants over ten years to
mandatory spending.
No more unfunded federal mandates on state and local
governments. The Democratic governor of Tennessee, which has
a $1.5 billion revenue shortfall this year, estimates that
the new health care law will impose $1.1 billion in unfunded
Medicaid mandates on our state between 2014 and 2019.
Caps on discretionary spending. While this is only one-
third of the budget, even non-defense discretionary spending
increased by an average of 6.2% each year under President
Bush and by an average of 15% over the last two years under
President Obama. These dollars add up.
Take the half trillion in Medicare savings that the new
health care law spent on new entitlement programs and use it
to make Medicare solvent.
Adopt a two-year budget--this would allow Congress to spend
every other year on oversight, repealing and revising laws
and regulations that are out of date or wasteful.
Give the rest of the government's General Motors stock to
every American who paid federal income taxes last April.
I also support a 2-year earmark ban--Earmarks have become a
symbol of wasteful Washington spending; there are too many of
them and too many for less-than-worthy purposes. This process
needs to be cleaned up, but this is more about good
government than saving money since even unworthy projects are
paid for by reducing spending in other places; and long-term
it turns the checkbook over to the president at a time when
most Americans voted for a check on the presidency.
Fifteen years ago Republicans captured control of Congress
during one of those recurring outbursts when American voters
announced that they wanted less of Washington, and more
freedom for themselves. That advice was not well heeded, and
now we find ourselves the political beneficiaries of another
such outburst and an opportunity to lay the groundwork to be
a governing party within two years.
My hope is that this time, Republicans heed the advice of
Wilson, Schambra, and Kristol, that rather than attempt
comprehensive conservative schemes, we keep our eye on the
goals that matter most--making it easier and cheaper to
create private sector jobs; reduce spending closer to
revenues; and dealing in a tough, strategic way with
terrorism. And that we proceed step-by-step toward those
goals in a way that re-earns the trust of the American
people.
We should give Hebert Croly credit for reminding us in 1909
in the first chapter of his Promise of American Life that
this is still the one country in the world where most people
believe that anything is possible and that anyone can succeed
if he or she works hard. This is a country where your
grandfather can tell you, as mine did, ``Aim for
[[Page S8471]]
the top; there's more room there,'' and really believe it.
Hopefully, Republicans who were elected in 2010 will follow
their instinct not just to oppose the excesses of Croly's
progressivism but to offer a new promise of American life.
That they will continue to remind Americans that this debate
is not some dry, dusty analysis but a contest of competing
governing philosophies about how to realize the dream of an
upstart, still new nation in which most people still believe
that anything is possible. Our argument is that our country's
exceptionalism is best realized by the largest number of
Americans when we expect less of Washington, and more of
ourselves.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the premise of my remarks was that we
don't do comprehensive very well in the U.S. Congress. That was
challenged by some of the conservatives on the panel today. That was my
point. My suggestion was that those who were elected in the 2010
election not make the same mistakes as those elected before made,
which, in my opinion, was not just to head in the wrong direction but
to try to do it all at once. It is one thing to think comprehensively;
it is another thing to act comprehensively. There have been multiple
attempts to repeal the health care law from the day it passed. Our
efforts at comprehensive immigration and comprehensive climate change
fell of their own weight.
I am tempted, as I am sure most people are, to make comprehensive
changes. We talked about some examples with the panel. Take education.
I suppose I have had about every position on education reform possible.
I have been for abolishing the Department of Education. I have been the
U.S. Department of Education Secretary. I have been both.
I remember as a Governor in 1981, I went to see President Reagan and
asked him to swap all of elementary and secondary education for
Medicaid. In other words, the Federal Government would take all of
Medicaid and the States would have all of elementary and secondary
education.
The Presiding Officer is from the State of Minnesota, where there is
a high value placed on education. My own view is that the high value
placed on education by the communities of Minnesota does much more to
assure quality education than anything we could do here. I thought if
we got rid of the idea that Washington could make our schools better,
those in the communities of Tennessee would feel more responsibility.
President Reagan liked that, but it didn't get anywhere. Most big
comprehensive schemes don't. Our country is too big and complicated and
too diverse. Our constitutional system separates power into too many
places. And on top of that, we just are not smart enough to figure out
a solution for all the many different things that are happening in this
country.
My advice in this address is that those who were elected in 2010 head
in a different direction. We talked a lot about less government, less
taxes. We talked about fewer Washington takeovers. We don't like all
the czars and czarinas. There are more of them than the Romanovs ever
imagined. But as we head in a different direction, I suggest that we go
step by step to attempt to re-earn the trust of the American people.
There used to be signs that said: Think globally, act locally. I
think we might think comprehensively but act step by step. Because if
we don't, there are two dangers. One is that we won't succeed. It will
be a lot easier, for example, to fix No Child Left Behind, the
education law, than it will be to comprehensively reauthorize it. It is
a 1,000-page law filled with provisions backed by those with vested
interests--Members of Congress, teachers unions, principals, people all
over the country. Comprehensively reauthorizing it will be hard to do.
But if we want to fix it, we can probably pick four or five or six
things we need to fix and maybe, in a bipartisan way, go step by step
to do that.
If we want clean energy, comprehensive, economy-wide cap and trade
proved too much to swallow here. But we could create an environment for
100 new nuclear plants. We should be able to encourage electric cars.
We should be able to double energy research and development. Those are
steps in the right direction.
We took steps in the right direction with the America Competes Act.
We did that in a bipartisan way.
Our overwhelming priorities today are jobs, debt, and terror. We are
not likely to solve any of those problems all at once. We might think
comprehensively about how to do it, but we need to act step by step.
For example, our goal would be to make it easier and cheaper to
create private sector jobs. That should be the first goal. Especially
on this side of the aisle, we believe that raising taxes on anybody--
anybody--in the middle of an economic downturn makes no sense, because
it makes it harder to create private sector jobs. But that is only one
step.
If I were to make my list, I would add to that list: reducing the
corporate income tax so our corporations can be competitive in the
world, and I would say defend the right to work and the secret ballot
in union elections. I would also say build a first-class transportation
system. I would also say increase funding for research and development
at major universities because it is that brainpower that creates jobs
for us. So there are many different steps we would take to create a
pro-growth economy. Take the issue of debt. We have a debt commission
report today which has attracted all of our attention. We have a
horrendous problem with Federal debt. Mr. President, 42 cents out of
every dollar we are spending is borrowed. If we try to fix it all at
once, the country would collapse. But if we wait another day to begin
to fix it, we should be ashamed. We can take steps. We can say caps on
discretionary spending. That is a third of the budget. We can say no
new entitlement automatic spending programs. Let's not dig the hole any
deeper. We could say, let's have a 2-year budget so every other year we
can devote the year to reviewing the regulations we have and laws we
have and the rules we have, so we can get rid of some of them. We may
need some new laws, but let's get rid of some of the old ones.
I stood right here on the floor of the Senate a couple years ago and
voted against the Higher Education Act. Now, here I am a former
university president and Education Secretary and so-called education
Governor, and education is my passion--I say to the Presiding Officer,
if another Senator comes to the floor, I will be glad to yield the
floor--but I voted against the Higher Education Act. Why did I do that?
During the debate, I got permission to bring to the floor all of the
regulations that now exist under the current Higher Education Act.
You have to ask for unanimous consent to bring demonstrative evidence
on the floor. I had to do that once with Minnie Pearl's hat. I had it
here in the drawer, but I could not bring it out unless I asked
unanimous consent, which I got. And I got it to bring all these
regulations.
And what I said was that I am voting against this act because
reauthorization of the act would double the stack of regulations.
So all of these things have to do with debt, limited government, and
spreading prosperity and spreading freedom. So my argument is basically
that those of us who are in the Republican Party, those of us who this
year won more of the elections--we know what it is like to be on the
other side. Two years ago, we hardly won anything. Two years before
that, we got elected one Republican Senator. But those of us who are on
the winning side this time I think would do well to head in a different
direction. Yes, make it easier and cheaper to create private sector
jobs, get to work on the debt, be strategic and tough about terror, be
resolute about the direction we are going, but do it step by step. We
are more likely to be able to persuade people to do it. When we are
through, we may be more likely to persuade them to live under those
rules and regulations.
When you do it comprehensively, when you bite off more than you can
chew, when you offer a 2,000-page solution to anything--whether it is a
comprehensive liberal solution or progressive solution or whether it is
a comprehensive conservative solution--you are likely to frighten--
well, you are likely to make angry the people on the other side and
scare the independent voters half to death. As a result, you will not
succeed.
We as Republicans have a chance in the next 2 years to prove to the
Nation we deserve to be the governing party.
[[Page S8472]]
We are not today. There is a Democratic President and there is a
Democratic Senate and there is a Republican House. So if we want to
make progress, we have to work together when we can form a consensus.
But if we want the privilege of being more than an ideological
debating society and being actually a governing party, we have to re-
earn the trust of the American people. We have to say: What are
Republicans for? I am suggesting that when we say what we are for, we
pick our goals--make it easier and cheaper to create private sector
jobs, reduce spending closer to revenues, be tough and strategic on
terror--and then we go step by step in that direction, and we take
people with us and we gain their support.
I have mentioned on this floor before the example of the civil rights
laws. Slavery was the greatest injustice in our country's history. It
plagued us from the day of our country's founding. Our Founders punted
on the subject, and then we tore ourselves apart in a war, and then we
waited a century to do much about it. By any intellectual standard, by
any moral standard, we should have fixed that all at once. But Lyndon
Johnson, who was the majority leader at the time, knew better than to
try to do that. In fact, he knew he could not do that. So starting in
1958 and then in 1964 and then in 1968 and then in 1975 were the major
civil rights laws in the country. We went step by step to realize the
promise of American life: that all men and women are created equal.
Now, it is easy to sit somewhere and say: Well, that went too slow,
and a comprehensive approach toward civil rights would have been the
right thing to do. It would have been the right thing to do, but it
never would have happened.
There is one other problem with it: it would not have been accepted
by the country. The civil rights laws of 1964 and 1968, during a time
of Democratic majorities and a Democratic President, were written--
where?--in the office of the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate,
Everett Dirksen.
Now, why did President Johnson do that? Well, you can say he did not
need the votes. He had huge majorities in the House and in the Senate.
Well, it was a little more complicated than that because he had
southern Democrats, and they were against it. So first he needed the
votes to pass the bill. But the thing President Johnson understood so
well was that he not only needed to pass the bill, he needed the
country to accept it. And as controversial as the Civil Rights Act of
1968 was--the one written down the hall in the Republican leader's
office by a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress--as
controversial as it was, when it was over, Senator Russell of Georgia,
for whom a building here is named, went to Georgia and said: I fought
this for 30 years, but it is the law of the land, and we obey it.
Lyndon Johnson knew that going step by step in the right direction was
the right way to get where our country had to go.
So we have some big challenges ahead of us, and some of them we will
be able to do in a bipartisan way. I hope we can do that with No Child
Left Behind. Let's fix it with four or five or six steps. Arne Duncan
has some good ideas. They are very consistent with the ideas of a
number of Democrats and a number of Republicans. That would be a start.
The America Competes Act we should authorize at some point. That would
be another step we could take. I think we have some steps on clean
energy.
There are some areas where we will disagree. We are going to have
some Republican ideas about making it easier and cheaper to create
private sector jobs that our friends on the other side will honestly
disagree with. We are having one of those disagreements this weekend
because we believe it makes no sense to raise taxes on anybody in the
middle of an economic downturn if your goal is to make it easier and
cheaper to create private sector jobs, and they have a little different
view. So we will have votes on that.
So we will have our differences of opinion. But if we want to be
successful, we as a country--and if we as a party, the Republican
Party, want to be successful in earning the trust of the American
people to prove we are eligible, qualified, worthy of being a governing
party after 2012, then we better set our clear goal: make it easier and
cheaper to create private sector jobs and go step by step toward that
goal, explaining carefully what we are doing, attracting independent
voters, keeping independent voters, so that when we pass a law, the
country accepts it, and then we move on ahead.
So that is what our discussion was about today, and it is an
important discussion. It is not just some dusty, dry thing. Herbert
Croly's book in 1909, ``The Promise of American Life,'' is the
manifesto for the progressive movement that has ascended in this
country right now. And our idea of less from Washington and more of
ourselves is an intellectual context for the antidote to that. It is
for the resurgent movement in America that began with President
Jefferson's yeoman farmer, with his distrust in the Federal Government
and his skepticism of great big policy schemes imposed from Washington.
That is the grand debate of the last century, and it is the one we are
in the midst of today.
So I thank the Senate for giving me an opportunity to present my
thoughts. I thank my colleagues who attended the Hudson Institute
discussion today. And I especially urge my Republican colleagues to
remember that if we want to re-earn the trust of the American people,
we need to set the right goals and move in that direction, step by
step. We will have to be a little patient to get there, but that is a
good way to get where we want to go.
I see the distinguished Senator from the University of Arkansas on
the floor.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. McCASKILL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________