[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 1532-1533]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         BUSH ADMINISTRATION SUFFERING FROM CREDIBILITY DEFICIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Beauprez). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, last week we learned the administration's 
budget projects a $521 billion deficit. What we also have learned, 
based on that budget, is that not only are they running a budget 
deficit, or a fiscal deficit; they are also running a credibility 
deficit. It is impossible to wage three wars with three tax cuts and 
expect a different result. They have, time and again, whether we are 
dealing with the issue of weapons of mass destruction, the benefits of 
their tax cut, or with the issue of Medicare, on point after point, 
they are running a credibility deficit.
  The other day, Time Magazine ran a cover story about the growing 
credibility gap for the President of the United States. It is all 
because of the actions he has taken. Let us take the issue of Medicare. 
We debated here whether we were going to charge the taxpayers $400 
billion for a prescription drug benefit; and before a single benefit 
has been issued, which is questionable, but before a single benefit has 
been issued to a single senior citizen, the taxpayers were charged 
another $150 billion, and the administration knew all about it all 
along. We did nothing to bring down the price of prescription drugs, 
which are going up next year 15 percent and are going up the following 
year another 15 percent. Yet they knew all along, while we were 
debating a prescription drug benefit that will not be seen by a single 
senior citizen for another 2 years, they knew the bill was actually 
$550 billion. That is what our seniors and our taxpayers are going to 
be charged, and we did nothing to drive down or bring down the prices, 
which will continue to go up. That was the beginning of a credibility 
deficit.
  Now, the President has submitted a budget with a $500 billion to $520 
billion deficit that his administration calls ``manageable,'' ``within 
acceptable range.'' Yet the International Monetary Fund said it is the 
single largest drag on the economy. Goldman Sachs, the respected firm 
of Goldman Sachs where the President's Director of the Office of 
Management and Budget comes from, referred to the budget that the 
President submitted as ``not credible'' and ``an accounting fiction.''
  And we learned recently in Ron Suskind's book on ``The Price of 
Loyalty'' that the President of the United States knew all along the 
reason for the deficit. Mitch Daniels said, Mr. President, if you pass 
this tax cut, you are going to have deficits for the entire first and 
second terms of your administration. Yet now he wants to blame it on 9-
11. He wants to blame it on an inherited recession, which was not a 
recession, and he wants to blame it on corporate scandals. Yet he was 
told by his own Director of the Office of Management and Budget that 
the reason for deficits are his tax cuts, which have nothing to do with 
economic recovery. But the President of the United States had the 
wisdom to ask, appropriately: Have we not done enough for the top rate? 
Have we not taken care of the very wealthy yet?
  He knew that his economic program and his first tax cut had taken 
care of the wealthy, but he went along and decided to once again repeat 
a tax cut to the very wealthy in this country at the expense of middle-
class families who are seeing no increases in assistance in college 
education, who are seeing no increases in health care, 33 million 
Americans who work and who have no health care. And he knew that that 
tax cut was going to take care of the wealthy and drive us into a 
deficit. Yet he went along and tried to pass it for something it was 
not, and then accused every Democrat who raised the same question the 
President of the United States raised as waging class warfare. The 
President of the United States went along with a tax cut that was 
skewed to the wealthiest.
  On the issue of weapons of mass destruction, the issue is not whether 
Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. The issue 
was whether he was an imminent threat, and we were told he was an 
imminent threat. Now we learn, after having derided and belittled the 
United Nations, that the President of the United States went out on TV 
and said one thing, knowing the facts to be something else.
  That is why this President now has with the American people, for the 
first time in his Presidency, when he had the benefit of the doubt from 
what happened to this country, to all Americans after 9-11, he has a 
growing credibility deficit. If we listen to what he says and we see 
what he does, the two things are not the same, from tax cuts to the 
deficit to Medicare, to weapons of mass destruction. Let us take the 
issue of the weapons of mass destruction. We will have to have the 
countries of the

[[Page 1533]]

world be on our side when we face North Korea and our word must be 
important.
  Then, and let me read one last thing and I will finish, as Time 
Magazine reported, ``Any of those challenges might have been manageable 
alone. The problem was that each news cycle brought a new question 
about Bush's judgment and candor, which Democrats lost no time 
exploiting. Fiscal conservatives have been howling for months about a 
budget that seemed totally out of control.''
  Mr. President, this country now is facing a credibility gap, not only 
around the world, but your administration is, because of its words and 
its actions.

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