[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8260-8261]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


THE CREDIBILITY GAP AND LEADERSHIP PROBLEMS OF PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 20, 2004, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, there is a new section 
in libraries and in bookstores all across America. It is called the 
``credibility gap and the leadership problems of President George W. 
Bush.'' There are so many books being published now that maybe the 
Dewey decimal system will have to be revised for America's libraries.
  I recommend this new section to my colleagues and to the general 
public.
  Last week, the latest edition to this collection was published, 
raising again serious questions about the President. I predict that 
rather than directly confront the substance of Ambassador Joe Wilson's 
criticism in his book, ``The Politics of Truth,'' the White House will 
instead, as they have in the past, attack his motives, his character, 
as

[[Page 8261]]

they have done with the critics before him.
  Recent history is littered with the Bush White House smear campaigns 
against good and brave people, all of whom share one simple 
characteristic, loyalty to the truth.
  Let us start with John DiLulio, the White House's director of faith-
based programs in 2001. He said that the Bush administration was more 
focused on politics than on good policy, and he is gone.
  If that sounds familiar, it is because it is the same thing the 
former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, said in his book, ``The Price 
of Loyalty.'' O'Neill rightly warned that the massive Bush tax cut 
would wreak havoc with our fiscal system, and remember what the White 
House did after Paul O'Neill's book came out. They launched an 
investigation and tried to smear his credibility and his reputation. Of 
course, that investigation went nowhere and the book stands for what it 
says.
  How about Richard Clarke, a trusted, lifelong bipartisan public 
servant who was devoted to protecting Americans against terrorism? He 
wrote this book, ``Against All Enemies,'' which says the war in Iraq 
has diverted needed resources from the war on terror. He felt this 
Nation had a right to know.
  Do my colleagues know how the White House responded? With a shock and 
awe media campaign to try and discredit Clarke. They said Clarke was 
just angry because he wanted a more prominent position, that he was 
essentially a Democrat or that he was out of the loop. Out of the loop? 
He was the administration's top anti-terrorist official on September 
11.
  If we cannot trust Richard Clarke, why not General Anthony Zinni? 
Zinni served in Vietnam, commanded the troops in Somalia, directed 
strikes against Iraq and al Qaeda, and served as the Bush 
administration's Mideast peace envoy. He had the audacity to agree with 
Clarke that the war in Iraq undermined the war on terror. He has not 
been asked to serve on any more diplomatic missions.
  Then there was Larry Lindsey, former economic advisor to the 
President, who was fired when he correctly said that the war in Iraq 
would cost as much as 100 or $200 billion, but the President did not 
want to hear it. The administration did not want to hear it, and they 
certainly did not want Congress to hear it. Today, we are fast 
approaching $200 billion, all of it borrowed, all of it borrowed, for 
the war in Iraq. Too bad for his career, because the facts were 
important to him. Larry Lindsey is gone.
  General Eric Shinseki apparently had the same problem. He said that 
we might need several hundred thousand troops in Iraq to secure the 
peace, to secure the peace and provide for the force protection of our 
soldiers. The White House did not like that. Soon enough, Shinseki had 
stepped aside, but now we have 150,000 troops and asking for more to 
try and secure a peace that has been so badly compromised because of 
the lack of preparation by this White House. Too bad that General 
Shinseki decided that he had to tell the truth and was compelled to let 
the American people know.
  But there is more. The White House threatened to fire the Health and 
Human Services actuary, Richard Foster, if he revealed his higher 
estimates of what the Medicare prescription drug bill would really 
cost. Instead of having an honest debate in the Congress on the real 
cost of the prescription drug benefit, they said, no, keep the figures 
from Congress. Of course, Congress voted for the bill, and now we find 
out it is going to cost $140 billion more than we had anticipated. It 
is too bad. It is the law of the land, but it was done because of the 
intimidation by somebody in the administration who wanted to tell the 
truth.

                              {time}  1300

  Are you starting to see a pattern here, Mr. Speaker? Others have 
weighed in, too. Historian and political analyst Kevin Phillips says 
that Bush's self-interest trumps the national interest in his book 
``American Dynasty.'' Kevin Phillips is not a liberal, or a Democrat, 
he simply wanted to explain what was going on inside of the 
administration in terms of the self-dealing special interests, which 
brings us back to Joe Wilson.
  As Members will recall, in the President's State of the Union address 
in 2003, President Bush said that Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain 
nuclear material from Africa, even though he was told it was not true; 
but he came to the halls of Congress to tell the American people that 
is what happened. Wilson heard the speech and blew the whistle. 
Unfortunately for Wilson, his allegiance to the truth did not just 
result in the character assassination of Joe Wilson. In a particularly 
insidious and dangerous move, someone in the White house publicly 
revealed that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent, putting her life at risk, 
ending her career, and the people she worked with. That is what happens 
when you try to tell the truth in the Bush administration.

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