[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 20962-20966]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          UNFINISHED BUSINESS

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I mentioned yesterday that the two most 
powerful words in the Senate are ``I object.'' They have been used 
repeatedly in recent months, and especially in recent days, as we have 
tried toward the end of this Senate session to pass legislation that 
really does need doing. We are discovering that we have a number of 
people in the Senate who just don't want to move forward on some of 
these issues.
  I think the American people wonder, from time to time, whether this 
Government is very relevant in their lives. I think prior to September 
11, 2001, people wondered. Then, when the terrorist attacks occurred, I 
think people understood that on homeland security and a range of other 
issues, they do rely on the Government to do certain things to protect 
them.
  We have come to a point now where there is so much unfinished 
business, so much left undone, as we near the end of this session of 
the Congress. I think the American people have a right to ask some 
pretty tough questions about who is doing what and who is objecting to 
what. Most families sit around the supper table--or the dinner table in 
some parts of the country--and talk about their lives. What they talk 
about are not statistics or abstractions; they talk about the things 
that are important in the lives of their families. They wonder, do we 
have good jobs? Do our jobs have good security? Are we paid a fair 
wage? Do grandpa and grandma have access to good health care? Do our 
kids go to good schools? Do we live in a safe neighborhood?
  These are the issues that people care about in our country, and 
families want something done about them. One of these critical issues 
is health care. We tried to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights in this 
Congress and could not get it done. The Patients' Bill of Rights is 
pretty simple, actually. It is, with the growth of the managed care 
industry, trying to give a voice to consumers so they have a say in 
their own health care.
  For example, a woman falls off a cliff in the Shenandoah Mountains 
and is taken into a hospital on a gurney, in a coma. She is very 
seriously injured, with broken bones and internal injuries. She 
ultimately recovers after a long convalescence. She is told by her 
managed care organization that they will not cover her emergency room 
treatment because she did not have prior approval to access the 
emergency room. Now, this woman was carried into the hospital on a 
gurney while in a coma, yet the managed care organization said she 
should have gotten prior approval for emergency room treatment.
  So we tried to pass a piece of legislation that gives patients a 
voice in their own care, legislation that says patients have a right to 
know all of their medical options for treatment, not just the cheapest; 
patients have a right to emergency care when they have an emergency; 
patients have a right to see the doctor they need for the medical help 
they require. Pretty straightforward. We could not get it through. We 
could not get it through a conference committee and to the President 
for signature. Why? Because too many people in the Congress said: Let 
us stand with the insurance companies and the managed care 
organizations on this subject.
  We also face urgent issues dealing with Medicare and Medicaid. 
Yesterday, we were on the floor of the Senate talking about that. 
Everybody in this Chamber knows we have to do something to provide fair 
Medicare reimbursement for physicians, hospitals, nursing homes, and 
other providers.
  We now come to the end of this legislative session, and we know the 
Medicaid reimbursement for our nursing homes on October 1 was cut. That 
cut is going to be accentuated with an even deeper cut in 2004, beyond 
the fiscal year 2003. We know we have to do something to deal with that 
situation. We know it has to be done, and yet some act as if there is 
no urgency at all, this will be just fine.
  It is not just fine to have a cut in the quality of care of nursing 
homes in this country. That is exactly what is going to happen. And it 
is not just fine if the Medicare reimbursement is not adequate to keep 
rural hospitals open and keep some of the hospitals in inner cities--
that are stretched so thin and whose reimbursement was cut so deeply 
during the Balanced Budget Act--open. It is not just fine to say: Let 
that go.
  We are talking about the quality of health care delivered in 
hospitals through Medicare, delivered in nursing homes through 
Medicaid. It is not fine with me when we try to fix this at the end of 
the session, not having received the cooperation to get it done during 
the session, and people stand up and say: I object.
  What is their plan? What do they propose? Just diminished health 
care, diminished quality of care in our hospitals and nursing homes? Is 
that something the American people believe they want? Is that something 
families say: We aspire to nursing homes that provide diminished care 
because we would not meet our obligation under Medicaid? We aspire to 
have hospitals close their doors because we will not own up to our 
requirements under Medicare? I do not think that is what the American 
people want or expect of this Congress.
  Senators Baucus and Grassley have introduced legislation, S. 3018. It 
is bipartisan. It addresses these issues--Medicaid, Medicare, 
hospitals, nursing homes, physician reimbursements.
  The provider reimbursement we know we have to do, and what happens? 
The two most powerful words in the Chamber once again: ``I object,'' 
they say. ``I object.''
  It is the easiest act in the world to do, but we are faced with very 
significant challenges in health care, Medicaid, and Medicare, and 
everyone in this Chamber knows we have to fix it.
  Here we are on a Thursday at a time when the Congress should have 
been adjourned, trying to finish some of these last items, and we have 
people on the floor of the Senate singing the third verse of the same 
old tired tune: I object; I object.
  I have told my colleagues often about Mark Twain who, when asked if 
he would engage in a debate, very quickly said yes.
  ``But we have not told you the subject.''
  He said: ``It doesn't matter, as long as I can take the negative 
side. The negative side will require no preparation.''
  He is right. The question is: What are we building here? What are we 
doing here? What do we aspire for the American people to create here? A 
better country, a stronger country.
  We have spent a great deal of time talking about national security in 
this Chamber. That is deadly serious business. I would never suggest 
that ought to be a subject on which we should not

[[Page 20963]]

spend a great deal of time. It is deadly serious business to talk about 
our Nation's national security.
  It is also important, in my judgment, to spend some time talking 
about this country's economic security because our capability to defend 
ourselves, our capability to spend the money to deal with national 
security challenges and issues relates directly to this country's 
economy, our ability to create an economic engine that produces growth 
and opportunity, that provides improvement for the lives of the 
American people, produces the tax revenues that allow us to have a 
standing army and have a military capability of dealing with national 
security issues.
  Yet we are in a situation these days where it is as if nobody wants 
to talk much about economic security. We cannot find the 
administration's team. We had an economic forum last Friday. We invited 
the Administration to participate. We said: Won't you come and sit with 
us and talk about the economy? Let's talk about what kind of challenges 
exist.
  There is no Republican or Democratic way to go broke. There is no 
Republican or Democratic way to lose a job. It is not partisan when one 
comes home and says: Honey, I have worked for this company for 18 
years, but they told me today my job is over; it wasn't my fault; the 
company is cutting back because the economy is not good. There is no 
Republican or Democratic way to filter that through to your family for 
a man or a woman who has been in the workforce.
  There is no Republican or Democratic way for us to fix this either. 
We have to fix it by trying to get the best ideas of what both parties 
have to offer and by sitting down and talking about the issues. We have 
a fiscal policy which we put in place 18 months ago, before the 
recession, before the war on terror, before September 11, before the 
corporate scandals. That fiscal policy is not working.
  Huge projected budget surpluses have turned to very large projected 
budget deficits. More people are out of work. Confidence is down. 
People are worried about the future. Yet the economic team at the White 
House does not want to show up and talk about the economy. They will 
not come to an economic forum to talk about what is working and what is 
not, what is wrong and what is not, about how we fix this economy. They 
want to have nothing to do with that.
  I do not think we ought to be ignoring economic security issues. That 
is at the heart of what we ought to be talking about these days.
  We are trying very hard to say to our colleagues in the Senate on the 
Republican side: Join us; join us; forget the ``I object'' language; 
let's join together.
  How about saying: Include me. We would say: Absolutely. Yes, let's 
include everybody here. Let's get the best of what both have to offer 
this country.
  It appears to me the refrain now for the rest of the session is: I 
object. I object.
  I come from farm country, and our farmers have suffered a disastrous 
drought, not just in the southern part of my State but in a very wide 
region of this country.
  One of my colleagues made a point that I think is interesting: We 
ought to give droughts a name. We do not ever call them anything. At 
least with hurricanes we name them. Then pretty soon, Hurricane Andrew 
starts moving around and people talk about Hurricane Andrew. We need to 
start naming droughts as well. It is a natural disaster. It is 
something farmers cannot help. They did not create it. They cannot 
control it. Yet they plant the seeds in the spring and come out to 
harvest it, and it is a moonscape. There is nothing there. Nothing 
grew, and they lost everything they had because they put it all in the 
ground in the spring hoping they would harvest a crop in the fall, and 
there is no crop. That is a disaster.
  We passed a disaster bill with 79 votes in the Senate--79 votes, 
Republicans and Democrats.
  It is October 17 and no disaster bill. Why? The White House does not 
want one. The House of Representatives will not do one.
  According to today's news clips, a House Republican source said that 
Republican members seeking more money for drought relief, or for any 
number of projects, were simply told no and encouraged to be good 
Republicans and to wait until next year. They are taking the circus 
tent down.
  I do not know, if after 79 Senators have voted for drought relief, 
recognizing there is a very big problem, if somehow there is a curtain 
that prevents information from coming into the other body to tell the 
Speaker of the House we have a big problem in this country, if he 
somehow missed the evening news week after week, somehow missed the 
story that there was a protracted, devastating drought in this 
country--I do not know how we would tell him on October 17 if there is 
a problem.
  You had better believe there is a problem. Why no disaster relief 
after the Senate passed it on a bipartisan basis, 79 votes in favor of 
it? Why? Why no disaster relief? Because ``I object,'' they say; ``I 
object.'' They object at the White House; they object in the U.S. 
House; they object.
  There are so many issues that it is almost hard to know where to 
start. I want to describe one other issue, if I may. There is a young 
man named Jonathan Adelstein. Jonathan Adelstein is a nominee to the 
Federal Communications Commission. The FCC has a number of Republican 
seats and a number of Democratic seats. That is the way the seats are 
apportioned. This is a Democratic seat. It was vacated a year ago last 
month. For 13 months, this seat at the Federal Communications 
Commission has been open.
  Senator Daschle went to the White House, described the nominee. The 
White House announced its intent to nominate him on February 8. They 
sent it to the Senate in July. On July 16, the Commerce Committee held 
a hearing, reported out of the Commerce Committee in July. Now the FCC 
is poised to make very serious and difficult decisions on a wide range 
of issues that will have a profound impact on this country's 
telecommunications policies, especially on rural States.
  This seat is vacant. Know why? Because we have people that are 
singing the same song: I object. I object to bringing his nomination to 
the floor of the Senate, they say. There is a hold on this nomination, 
and that seat on the Federal Communications Commission that is so 
critical to the interests of rural States in this country is now 
vacant.
  If this Senate does not confirm this nomination before we adjourn 
sine die, then there is something fundamentally wrong with the way this 
body works. This is not a normal case of, for example, a judgeship that 
may or may not be controversial.
  The Federal Communications Commission has Republican seats and 
Democratic seats. The nominees on each side, if they are qualified--and 
Mr. Adelstein is eminently qualified--ought to be confirmed by the 
Senate. It is nonsense to hold up this nominee.
  The chairman of the FCC, Mr. Powell, and others are poised to make 
very big decisions. I worry very much there is no one inside that 
circle who has rural America, smaller States, rural States, family 
farms, and small towns as their interest. These decisions will have a 
profound impact on the future of my State and others, and yet this 
nomination is awaiting action by the Senate, held up by some unnamed 
Senator who says, in effect, in a cloakroom, behind the cloak of 
secrecy, ``I object.''
  So much for the Federal Communications Commission nomination. This is 
another issue that Congress is being blocked from taking care of.
  A couple of days ago, my colleague from Nevada brought our attention 
to legislation the Senate has already passed and which is now in 
conference. He brought to the attention of the Senators the importance 
of something called concurrent receipt.
  Concurrent receipt sounds like a two-dollar word and probably does 
not affect anybody in this Chamber. It may not affect anybody listening 
to me at the moment. I do not know. But it is important because there 
is an obscure

[[Page 20964]]

Federal law that says the following: If you served this country in the 
Armed Forces and retired, and you spent 20 years, for example, in 
uniform serving this country of ours and you earned a retirement, and 
along the way you may have fought in a battle somewhere and been 
severely wounded and are entitled to disability payments, this obscure 
Federal law says, oh, by the way, you cannot have both the retirement 
you earned and the disability payments you deserve as a result of your 
disability. You cannot have concurrent receipt of those two payments. 
One will offset the other and you will lose your retirement or you will 
lose your disability payment.
  I put a statement in the Record the other day about some North Dakota 
National Guardsmen. These are the kind of people who are being affected 
by this foolish provision in Federal law that we need to change, and 
which the Senate is on record of wanting to change.
  Sixty years ago, on October 10, 1942, two thousand men from North 
Dakota embarked for war. They were from the 164th Infantry Regiment of 
the National Guard. They were people from small towns and family farms. 
They came from almost every city, village, and county in our State. 
They were ordered to the West Coast the day after Pearl Harbor, and 
arrived in the South Pacific in the spring of 1942.
  On the island of Guadalcanal, these North Dakota National Guardsmen 
were called to action. The United States Marines had begun the first 
offensive action against Japan on Guadalcanal, and by autumn of that 
year it was a precarious deadlock. At that point, these National 
Guardsmen arrived October 13. By noon, they had their first casualty 
from a bombing run by Japanese planes. As Japanese ground patrols 
tested the U.S. positions, the 164th Infantry advanced. They were the 
first unit of the U.S. Army to go on the offensive against the Japanese 
in World War II.
  On October 24 and 25, there was an intense Japanese attack, the 
largest battle fought on Guadalcanal. The ``Citizen Soldiers,'' as they 
were called, were called forward to reinforce the Marines. Despite the 
blackness of night, these National Guardsmen traveled with their heavy 
packs, in the rain, over narrow trails slippery with mud, following 
their Marine escorts to the front line, holding on to the backpacks of 
the man in front of them to avoid being lost.
  Fighting side by side with the Marines, the 164th Infantry poured 
relentless fire through the night into continuous waves of oncoming 
Japanese. At dusk of the next day, the Japanese attacked again. The 
situation was so precarious, they said, that cooks, messengers, and 
clerks manned positions and waited for the worst. Even the musicians 
from the band were pressed into service as litter bearers. Every member 
of the 164th had a role in the fiercest battle of that campaign.
  At the end of that night, by dawn, it was clear the enemy had 
suffered a disastrous defeat. In front of the 164th Infantry were 1,700 
dead Japanese. The North Dakota unit, meanwhile, suffered 26 killed and 
52 wounded. The commanding officer of the Marines sent them a special 
message for coming to the aid of the United States Marines. LTC Robert 
Hall received the Navy Cross for his leadership of the battalion in 
this action.
  The men of that regiment won a Navy Cross, 5 Distinguished Service 
Crosses, 40 Silver Stars, more than 300 Purple Hearts, and many 
Soldier's Medals and Legions of Merit. Its boast was it would leave no 
one behind, and indeed it had no men missing in action, although they 
had lost many.
  These survivors are now old men in North Dakota, living again in our 
villages, small towns, and family farms. Some of them are being told 
that, if they were wounded in this battle of Guadalcanal and they 
continued their service in the United States military and have a 
retirement and a disability coming, they cannot receive both. They 
might have earned their retirement and they might have taken a 
devastating wound in their body that took years of convalescence, but 
they cannot receive disability and retirement. That is terribly unfair, 
in my judgment.
  The Senate is already on record trying to correct this, and we are 
now hearing once again that the refrain of ``I object'' exists in the 
conference on the Defense Authorization Bill that can fix the problem.
  I hope that the conference will overcome those objections and do the 
right thing.
  Finally, the issue of corporate responsibility. I began talking about 
the economy and economic security. Let me talk for a moment about 
corporate responsibility. We have a great deal of unfinished business 
with this issue. We passed a corporate responsibility bill in the 
Senate, and it is a good bill. It falls a little short of what is 
needed, but it is a good bill and a step in the right direction.
  It was fascinating to me to see what happened. We pushed the bill 
under the leadership of Senator Sarbanes. The Republicans pushed back 
and said: We do not want a bill. We do not want your bill. We do not 
want to do it your way.
  Finally, the President agreed, the Republicans agreed, and we passed 
the legislation. For 3 days before we passed that bill in the Senate, I 
was trying to offer an amendment and it was blocked by the Republicans. 
My amendment was very simple. It said if someone is running an American 
corporation and they are running that company into bankruptcy and are 
getting bonus payments and incentive pay as they run that company into 
the ground, we ought to be able to recapture that and require 
disgorgement of that money.
  A study was done and it shows of the 25 largest corporations that 
went into bankruptcy in the last several years, 208 executives took 
$3.3 billion out of those corporations as they went into bankruptcy. 
Let me say that again. Of the 25 largest bankruptcies, 208 executives 
took $3.3 billion in compensation as those companies were run into the 
ground.
  I don't need five reasons. There is not even one good reason we ought 
to allow one to keep bonus and incentive pay as they take a public 
corporation into the ground. There is no incentive for bonus that is 
justifiable for someone presiding over bankruptcy. We should have 
passed that amendment. We will someday. I will continue to offer it as 
part of our unfinished business.
  Another area of unfinished business is that we have a Securities and 
Exchange Commission without a leader who will lead. Mr. Pitt is the 
wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Senator McCain was the 
first to call for his resignation this summer. Larry Cudlow, Republican 
television personality on the Cudlow Kramer show, has called for his 
resignation, others have followed. The fact is, at this point we don't 
need a kinder and gentler SEC. We don't need a Securities and Exchange 
Commission that will bend in the wind of the political system to 
determine who should head an accounting reform board the American 
people could look up to and trust. What we need is a Securities and 
Exchange Commission chairman who does not care about the politics, who 
only cares about being a fair, tough, aggressive regulator. We need a 
chairman who will make sure we do not have additional Enrons and Tycos, 
who ensures that we do not have additional circumstances where the 
people at the bottom lose their shirts, the employees lose their jobs, 
and the people at the top walk off with pockets of gold to live in 
gated communities and count their money while everyone else is left in 
the wreckage.
  We need a head of the SEC who can inspire confidence in the American 
people that effective regulation will prevent accounting firms, law 
firms, or corporations from cooking the books and enriching the people 
at the top at the same time they are costing the people at the bottom 
their jobs and costing investors their life savings.
  I chaired hearings on the Enron issue in the Senate. One of my 
constituents in North Dakota is far removed from Houston, TX, but he 
worked for Enron, for a pipeline company. He wrote a letter and said: 
Mr. Senator, I had my life savings in my 401(k) plan invested in Enron. 
I am the first to admit it was

[[Page 20965]]

pretty dumb to do it, but I did it because I worked for this company 
for many years and believed in the company. Mr. Lay and other 
executives told us employees that if we invested in their company, our 
futures would be better and brighter. They told us that it was a future 
of growth.
  And I did. I put my 401(k) into Enron stocks. It was my life savings 
for me and my family. I had $330,000 in my 401(k). It is now worth 
$1,700. His question for me was: What do I do to provide for my 
family's security and retirement?
  Mr. REID. What were those numbers?
  Mr. DORGAN. This man put $330,000 into a 401(k) account and invested 
in Enron stock, a move that he felt would give he and his family 
security in retirement. He wrote a letter saying that 401(k) account is 
not worth $330,000 anymore; it is $1,700.
  It breaks your heart.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. You will recall during the Enron hearings that 
the Senator from North Dakota chaired, one of the witnesses, a former 
Enron employee from the Orlando, FL, area, where Enron has one of its 
subsidiaries, the Florida Gas Company. We remember the very sad story 
of that lady. Her life savings was in the pension plan of the company, 
$750,000, and because they would not let her get into that retirement 
account to sell it--while, by the way, the corporate executives were 
selling their stock--the value of that retirement fund for that Enron 
employee from Florida plummeted to $20,000. She lost her entire life 
savings.
  Mr. DORGAN. I say to the Senator from Florida, that Enron employee 
was locked out, as were the other employees. They could not sell, could 
not get rid of it even as the stock value was plunging. They lost their 
fortunes, and the folks at the top had all the flexibility in the world 
to sell their own stock.
  The board of directors called what they found inside this corporation 
``appalling''. More than anything, I am angry, really angry at the way 
the big shots treated themselves, like hogs at the trough, and the way 
they let everybody else dangle in the wind. The people at the bottom 
lost everything they had, including their jobs, in most cases, with the 
big shots never expressing remorse or regret.
  There is something fundamentally wrong about what has happened. Part 
of this we fixed in the corporate responsibility bill. However, there 
is, as of yet, much unfinished business to address.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. REID. A constituent of yours from North Dakota started out with 
$330,000 in his retirement account and wound up with $1,700. The 
Senator spoke on the floor before about Ken Lay at Enron and others. 
How much money did they take, separate and apart from whatever they 
made by selling their stock, just a reward for their malfeasance in 
running the corporation, does the Senator know?
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. Lay left with somewhere close to $300 million. All 
the folks at the top were very generous to themselves.
  Mr. REID. Did he get a pension of half a million a year for life, 
that is $450,000 a year, for life?
  Mr. DORGAN. It is pretty clear that at these corporations, Tyco or 
others, the folks at the top took very good care of themselves. As the 
folks at the bottom were losing their investments or jobs, the folks at 
the top were counting their money. That is what makes me so angry about 
all of this.
  Let me come back to where I started. I started talking about our 
agenda at the end of this session, and what we ought to have completed 
but is not yet done. When families began talking about their lot in 
life, they talk about simple things important to the lives of their 
families. Do I have good health care? Do grandpa and grandma have 
access to a good doctor? Do I live in a safe neighborhood? Do I have a 
decent job? Does my job pay well? Does it have security? Those are the 
things important in people's lives.
  I talked about what we have tried to do in this session of Congress, 
only to confront a mountain of objection from those who don't want to 
get it done. To so many things, ``I object,'' they say. These are 
people who never want to do anything the first time. I talked about the 
Patients' Bill of Rights which we never got done this Congress. We had 
a big debate and got it through the Senate and yet it is still not 
done. Why? Because ``I object,'' they say. Those who stand on behalf of 
the insurance industry and the managed care organizations are saying, 
``I object.''
  I held a hearing in the State of Nevada with Senator Reid. I will 
never, ever, forget that hearing, and nor will he, I expect. This is 
about managed care and why it is desperately necessary to get a 
Patients' Bill of Rights done. A woman stood at this hearing and she 
had brought to the hearing a color picture of her son that she had 
turned into a very large poster. Her son's name was Chris. He was 16 
years old. As she began to speak at this hearing, she held that picture 
of Chris above her head.
  She said: My son was 16 years old when he was diagnosed with cancer. 
She said: My son was denied the treatment he needed when he needed it 
to give him a shot at winning this battle with cancer. She said: Before 
my son died, he looked up at me from his bed and said, ``Mom, how can 
they do this to me? How can they do this to a kid?'' She was crying and 
crying as she spoke about her son.
  Her point was very simple. No 16-year-old boy in this country, ever, 
under any circumstances, ought to have to fight cancer and their 
managed care organization at the same time. That, by God, is an unfair 
fight. Everybody in this country knows it. We ought to do something 
about it.
  Do you think this is something that happens in just one circumstance? 
It is not. I have had hearings in New York, in Nevada, in Minnesota, in 
Chicago, and at every hearing we hear exactly the same thing. Men, 
women, and children are told: You go ahead and fight your disease. But 
then they must fight the managed care organization to get payment for 
the treatment. Or maybe they must fight to get the treatment that they 
won't get unless they win a fight with the managed care organization, a 
fight that too many people, too often, lose.
  It is not a fair fight. It is why we have decided to simply say that 
there are basic rights people ought to have when they deal with their 
managed care organizations. Every patient has a right to know all of 
their options for medical treatment--not just the cheapest. It is very 
simple.
  My point is that we have a lot of unfinished business. The Patients' 
Bill of Rights is just one thing we haven't gotten done. I have 
described four or five more things today.
  I regret that we are here at the end of this session, talking about 
the unfinished business. But the fact is, we have people in this 
Chamber who have become professional objectors. I object, I object, 
they say. It doesn't matter what the subject is--I object.
  This country has a very serious problem with its economy. As I said 
earlier, it is appropriate for us to have been talking about national 
security because that is a deadly serious issue. But it is also 
imperative we talk about economic security because that is an issue 
that is important in the life of every family and every American person 
as well.
  I would say to the President: You have had substantial cooperation 
from those of us in this caucus, here in this Chamber, on national 
security issues. Give us a little cooperation as well on economic 
security issues. Bring Air Force One back here to Washington, DC. Don't 
spend the next 3 weeks out on the road campaigning. Spend a little time 
here with us, talking about economic security, and fixing what is wrong 
with this economy.
  Eighteen months ago when the President proposed his fiscal policy, we 
were told that we were going to have budget surpluses as far as the eye 
could see. No problem, they said, we are going to have budget surpluses 
forever.
  Some of us felt that maybe it was our role to be a bit conservative 
then, and

[[Page 20966]]

ask: What if something happens? Can you really see 6 months out, or 12 
months or 2 years or 3 years out? Can you really see that far ahead and 
anticipate what might be? What if something happens? We think it is 
pretty unwise to commit ourselves to a fiscal policy that says let's 
have a $1.7 trillion tax cut over 10 years, anticipating everything is 
going to be really strong and positive for our economy.
  What happened is 5 months later we discovered we were in a recession. 
We discovered that terrorists hit New York City and the Pentagon, 
hijacking four airplanes. We discovered we are at war against 
terrorism. We discovered the most outrageous set of corporate scandals 
in this country's history. All these things converged at the same 
intersection, at the same time, all undermining the confidence of the 
American people in the future of this economy.
  You can say what you want about this economy. It is not an economy 
where there are dials and gauges and levers in the engine room of this 
ship of state, where all we have do is walk down there and adjust them 
to make the ship move right along without a problem. That is not the 
way the economy works.
  I know there are people in the Fed, in monetary policy, and people in 
fiscal policy, who really have an inflated sense of self-importance 
about their role in the economy. This economy is only about and all 
about people's confidence. People are either confident about the future 
or they are not. If they are confident about the future, our economy 
expands because they do the things that manifest that confidence: They 
buy cars, houses, take trips, they do the things that expand the 
economy. If they lack confidence, they do exactly the opposite and that 
causes contraction.
  The American people are very concerned about this economy. It would 
serve this country well, in my judgment, if the President would join 
us, all of us, and sit down and talk seriously about what we need to do 
to put this economy back on track, make this economy strong again, make 
this economy grow again and produce jobs and expand once again, and 
turn these budget deficits into budget surpluses and invest in the 
things that provide better lives for the American people: Health care, 
education--the things we know work to improve life for the American 
people. That is what we ask of this President.
  Let me conclude by saying there is not a Republican or Democratic way 
to fix all of this. There is only the opportunity for people to sit 
down and reason together and compromise and find the best of a series 
of good ideas. But you cannot do that when there is a one-lyric song or 
one-chorus song here in this Chamber that says to everything, every 
proposal, every suggestion: I object, I object, I object. That does not 
serve this country's interest at this point in time.
  This October 17, this country faces real challenges. It is time for 
all of us to take a deep breath, to ask the President to take a little 
time off the campaign trail to join us, and to work together to see if 
there is not a better way to deal with national security, improving the 
economy, and addressing the concerns of people across the country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I compliment the Senator from North Dakota 
for his brilliant statement. I also say not only should the President 
stop his campaign travels--or, if he wants to do them, they should be 
paid for by political parties and not by taxpayers. That is the concern 
I have with these travels.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senator from Florida be 
recognized for up to 20 minutes. I know Senator Gramm wishes to speak. 
His staff would now have an idea, as to when the Senator from Florida 
will be finished.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Florida.

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