[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23516-23517]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         FINDING COMMON GROUND

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I listened closely to the comments made by 
the majority leader, Senator Frist, a man whom I respect and with whom 
I have worked over the past several years and look forward to working 
with again in this new Congress.

[[Page 23517]]

  The Presidential election is completed. The people have spoken. A few 
moments ago the Democratic Senators gathered just a few feet from this 
Chamber in the Old Senate Chamber where we had an election of our new 
leaders for the upcoming Congress. In that meeting was Senator John 
Kerry, who was our standard-bearer in the last election. We are all 
extremely proud of the job he did. Both he and Senator Edwards covered 
the United States, crisscrossed it from every corner, taking their 
message to the American people. The outcome was very close. When it was 
all said and done, President Bush had emerged the clear winner. The day 
after the election Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards conceded to the 
President and Vice President.
  We now have a question before us as to which direction this Nation is 
headed. It is a question that is going to be dramatized even more by 
the recent resignations of key members of President Bush's Cabinet. It 
will now be up to the President and his close advisers to decide the 
team that he will put on the field for the next 4 years to serve and 
represent the American people.
  The President will also have an opportunity and responsibility to 
develop an agenda, an agenda of issues to bring before the Congress.
  At an early point the President will have to make threshold 
decisions. Will he make decisions in terms of his leadership team, an 
agenda where we will try to find a bipartisan approach to solving our 
problems, or will we separate as we have in the past? I sincerely hope 
the President chooses the former and not the latter. It will be a 
better service to our country if we sit down on a bipartisan basis and 
address some of the serious issues we face.
  On foreign policy, we can't escape the stubborn realities. We still 
have the ongoing threat from terrorists. The war in Iraq and 
Afghanistan is far from over. We face a nuclear North Korea. Our 
military concerns stretch across the world from Saudi Arabia to the 
Philippines. Our military is stretched to the limit, and our resources 
are constrained by record deficits which we have seen during the last 
several years in the Bush administration.
  On the home front, the President's policies raise questions about the 
future of Social Security and whether we can trust it to continue to 
pay as it has in the past, and our ability to invest in America and the 
many freedoms we value which Senator Frist talked about earlier. That 
is an issue that is front and center in my State of Illinois.
  As I traveled across the Nation, I heard concern about the cost of 
health insurance from business leaders, families, and individuals 
alike. In the last 4 years absolutely nothing has been proposed from 
the administration to deal with the cost of health insurance. I hope 
the President will come forward with a good, sensible plan. A good 
starting place might be the Federal Employees Benefit Health Plan, a 
plan that covers millions of Federal employees and which offers them an 
enormous variety of options for health insurance at reasonable costs. 
That is a model we should use to offer the same insurance to small 
businesses and the American people.
  Senator Frist spoke of the Medicare prescription drug plan. This plan 
has been very coldly received by seniors across America. They cannot 
understand why Congress couldn't pass something that was understandable 
and which would truly help them. The Medicare prescription drug plan as 
passed by the Congress is so bad that we postponed its effective date 
until after this election. Those who wrote it knew if seniors saw 
exactly what we had proposed, they would rise up in opposition to it. 
They are learning that when you give everything to the pharmaceutical 
companies and you don't protect the seniors, you don't solve the 
problem.
  We have a lot to do in the months and years ahead. I hope we can do 
this on a bipartisan basis. It would be a value to this country to see 
us come together. But it will start with leadership from the White 
House, and decisions by the President which can bring us together.
  We have stood together, Democrats and Republicans, on the declaration 
of the Afghanistan war, No Child Left Behind, intelligence reform, 
Sarbanes-Oxley, a bill to reform corporate governance, and also the 
approval of 201 of the President's proposed 211 judicial nominees. 
There has been good cooperation in many areas. If the President's party 
expects Senate Democrats to walk away from their basic values, I don't 
think that is going to occur.
  I listened in this caucus we left and I wondered if some of the 
writers who said since the election the Democrats were adrift listened 
to the Democratic Senators. We understand their values. They are 
American values, and they are values which we take to the American 
people in each of our own States.
  I look forward to working with our friends on the Republican side of 
the aisle in trying to find common ground, which is so important. We 
believe that on critical matters of personal responsibility and freedom 
we should have an honest resolution. We also believe that caring for 
the less fortunate is a moral value and most major religions should be 
respected. I look forward to the upcoming Congress and I hope we can 
find the common ground.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Mexico is recognized.

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