[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 18]
[House]
[Page 24578]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             ``GREENSPAN''

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Sarbanes). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, the former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan, 
has recently released his memoir for the years of his time in public 
service. And it comes as a surprise to many that President Bush and the 
Republicans in Congress do not fair particularly well.
  Reuters said the Fed chairman, Mr. Greenspan, in his book, ``sharply 
criticizes the President, President Bush's administration and 
Republican congressional leaders for putting political imperatives 
ahead of sound economic policies.'' The New York Times said of Mr. 
Greenspan's book: ``The Bush administration was so captive to its own 
political operation that it paid little attention to fiscal 
discipline.''
  And the irony here is that when President Bush took office and the 
Republicans had control of the House and the Senate, they were left 
with $5 trillion in surplus. And in a short period of time, they've 
added $3 trillion to the Nation's debt; $3 trillion, the fastest 
accumulation of debt and greatest amount of debt in the shortest period 
of time in American history.
  Now, this is what he goes on to say about this administration, which 
I find almost intriguing, and also about the Republicans. He looked 
forward, he says, to working with this administration because at least 
he worked, as he said, with some of the best and brightest of this 
administration. And he shared memorable experiences with Dick Cheney, 
Don Rumsfeld, among others. And on a personal basis, that is how it 
worked. But on policy matters, I was soon to see my old friends veer 
off in unexpected directions.
  He was disappointed, he says, from the start. Mr. Greenspan notes 
that ``little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or 
weighing the long-term consequences.'' He says that in George W. Bush's 
White House, the political operation was far more dominant.
  Now, I will mention, since it's only fair, that he is quite 
complimentary of what President Clinton and the Democrats did in the 
1990s of basically a pay-as-you-go process, weighing long-term economic 
consequences to their decisions, and always putting America's long-term 
economic consequences before political considerations. And he praises 
what was then the fiscal discipline that was adopted in the 1990s that 
led to unprecedented economic growth.
  Now, Mr. Greenspan does not put all the burden of the $3 trillion of 
debt on President Bush. He puts that burden also on the Republicans in 
Congress for what they did in conjunction with this President. And, 
again, let me read from his book. Greenspan says that ``for many of the 
Republican Party leaders, altering the electoral process to create 
permanent Republican-led government became a major goal. House Speaker 
Hastert and House Majority Leader Tom Delay seemed readily inclined to 
loosen the Federal purse strings any time it might help add a few more 
seats to the Republican majority.''
  Alan Greenspan notes that the Republicans led an earmark explosion 
and says Congress was too busy feeding at the trough. In the end, Mr. 
Greenspan says again, ``The Republican Congress lost their way. They 
swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither.'' Mr. 
Greenspan praises the pay-as-you-go spending rules and the fiscal 
disciplines of the 1990s that resulted in the surplus I just mentioned.
  That is exactly what this new Congress has done is adopt the pay-as-
you-go rules, the fiscal discipline that put us on a path to again 
putting our fiscal house in order and in balance with our priorities as 
we go.
  But Mr. Greenspan's book, I don't think any time soon will be on the 
best seller list or talked about in Republican clubs or Republican book 
circles, lays bare what a number of us have been saying about this 
administration and the Republican Congress, that they, or as John 
McCain quotes, ``spend like a bunch of drunken sailors.'' And they have 
now left America stranded with mountains of debt.
  The one thing that we can say about President Bush and the Republican 
Congress when it comes to the economy and the fiscal mess that they've 
left is that we will forever be in their debt. That is one thing that 
you can always say. But I find it most intriguing that Greenspan, who 
is a life-long Republican and served and worked with President Reagan, 
President Bush, President Clinton, President Bush, and President Ford, 
saw that this administration and this Republican Congress and cohorts, 
when they worked together for 6 years, left this country in a worse 
fiscal shape than the one they inherited. And all of us will be judged 
in our public life for the country we inherited and the country we left 
behind. And what we got left behind is nothing but a fiscal mess that 
those of us who have taken the tough votes and the tough decisions put 
America's long-term economic interests at the center of our economic 
policy.

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