[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10677-10678]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        PERFORMANCE OF THE MEDIA

  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, my theme today has to do with our friends 
in the media, or the fourth estate as they like to call themselves. 
There are two items I wish to call to the attention of the Senate and 
anyone else who might be listening with respect to the performance of 
the media. The first one is highlighted in an editorial that appeared 
this morning in the Wall Street Journal entitled ``Frist's 
Vindication.''
  All of us in this Chamber know Senator Frist. We know him as a man of 
integrity, intelligence, and grace. He presided over the Senate as the 
majority leader for 4 years. He has a long history as a humanitarian, 
as a scientist, as a skilled doctor who pioneered procedures in the 
process of heart and lung transplants.
  We also know him as the target of media attack for insider trading, 
and we know groups that are self-anointed as watchdogs of the public 
consciousness that picked that up and kept the drumbeat alive. Our 
friends in the media also kept the drumbeat alive saying, over and over 
again, Dr. Frist was a hypocrite, Dr. Frist engaged in insider trading, 
Dr. Frist used his position to enrich himself while he was here in the 
Senate.
  Well, the Securities and Exchange Commission was sufficiently aroused 
by those attacks that they entered into an investigation of Dr. Frist's 
activities with respect to his stock. That investigation is now closed. 
I did not realize the investigation was closed because there has been 
no hue and cry whatsoever in the media. There has been no mention that 
came to my attention in the media, until I picked up this morning's 
Wall Street Journal and saw this editorial.
  I would like to quote from it. Under the title ``Frist's 
Vindication'' and the subhead ``So much for that `insider trading' 
smear,'' here is what it says:

       When insider-trading allegations against former Senate 
     Majority Leader Bill Frist surfaced back in 2005, they were 
     splashed on the pages of major newspapers from coast to 
     coast. Now that Dr. Frist has been vindicated, the silence is 
     instructive. Is anybody out there?

  It goes on to describe the allegations against Dr. Frist. I shall not 
repeat them. Basically, it says he used his position in the Senate to 
get insider information and started selling his stock in HCA in advance 
of a drop in the stock that occurred because of earnings reports.
  The editorial says:

       Thanks in part to his meticulous email archives, Dr. Frist 
     was able to show that he had begun the process of selling his 
     HCA stock in April of 2005, months before he was alleged to 
     have received the inside whispers.

  It goes on to discuss the groups that attacked him. Again quoting:

       For years he was harassed by such liberal lobbies as Public 
     Citizen, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in 
     Washington, which alleged conflicts of interest. These groups 
     objected even to those stocks he held in the blind trust he 
     had created to avoid the appearance of a conflict of 
     interest. Yet when he sold those stocks, with a possible eye 
     on higher office, he was pilloried for doing what the 
     ethicists had asked him to do all along.

  The editorial indicates that while this absolution is a relief to Dr. 
Frist, ``it's impossible to undo the damage to his political career. 
Despite flimsy evidence, the media storm cast a shadow over his office, 
derailing any thought of a Presidential bid this year. The Nashville 
heart surgeon chose instead to `take a sabbatical from public life.'''
  A great deal was made out of this. The editorial quotes American 
University professor James Thurber as saying that Dr. Frist ``came in 
like Jimmy Stewart and was leaving like Martha Stewart.'' That is a 
great line. That gets headlines. The press loves things of that kind.

[[Page 10678]]

  Now that it is clear he behaved in an absolutely ethical way--
documented everything he did, turned over all of his e-mails--and has 
been completely cleared, after 18 months of careful examination by the 
Securities and Exchange Commission, we hear nothing in the press, we 
hear nothing in the way of an apology from Public Citizen or Citizens 
for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Maybe ethics does not 
apply to them when it comes to apologizing for smears against 
legitimate and responsible public servants. Maybe we will now hear that 
Dr. Thurber has something else to say besides his quick quip about Dr. 
Frist being the same as Martha Stewart as she went to jail. But I doubt 
we will hear any of that. I doubt the press will even notice. I doubt 
there will be a sidebar anywhere.
  I am grateful to the Wall Street Journal for pointing this out to us, 
and I appreciate the opportunity on the floor of the Senate to speak on 
behalf of a man whom I consider a friend, I think whom all of us 
consider a responsible Senator, a devoted leader. He deserves better at 
the hands of the press and those self-appointed leaders of ethics who 
are quick to criticize but slow to apologize.
  Now, Mr. President, the next issue I would like to raise with respect 
to the media has to do with the hysteria over America's trade deficit 
with China. I have some charts I would like to put up to show some 
historical evidence with respect to this issue.
  Let's talk about China and the trade deficit and the rise of China. 
This chart has two lines on it, one in red, which is American exports 
to China, and one in blue, which is American imports from China.
  Let's go back to 1975, before people were all excited about China and 
how China was destroying us in the age of globalization, how China's 
cheap labor was taking all of our jobs, and we were flooded with 
Chinese imports. We notice on the chart there was a gap between 
American exports to China and American imports from China. No one felt 
that gap was ready to threaten and destroy the American economy. No one 
got excited about it. All right.
  You go to 1990, and you find that neither line has moved up very 
much, but the gap remains virtually the same. Now, the Chinese economy 
started to take off and we started to buy things from them, and at the 
same time we started to sell things to them. Both lines started moving 
up. We saw, yes, imports from China were going up, but exports to China 
were going up. By 2002, 2003, both were up significantly over where 
they had been in 1975. But the gap remained roughly the same. All 
right.
  Interestingly enough, as we get toward 2005 and so on, there are 
moments when the gap disappears, when our sales to China were greater 
than our imports from China. Why would that be? It would be because the 
improving Chinese economy now has enough money to buy American goods. 
They want to buy our airplanes. Boeing does well in China. The last 
time I was in China, I met with the manager of General Motors in China. 
General Motors was having a very bad year in the United States, but 
they were having a good year in China. They were making money in China. 
They were selling Buicks and other automobiles in China.
  The red line started to move up, and, as I say, at one point they 
actually crossed the blue line. OK, the blue line opened up again, not 
as great as the gap back in 1975, but it began to open up. Once again, 
we saw the gap closed. Sales to China reached the same level as 
purchases from China. And then it opened up again. It appears if we 
want to project from this period on into the future that the pattern of 
our importing slightly more from China than we sell to China is likely 
to continue.
  I doubt this historic demonstration of facts comports with the way 
the media is talking about China. They are telling us China is going to 
overtake us. They are telling us China is going to destroy us. They are 
telling us China is the nation of the future. We have heard in the 
media statements about the 20th century being the American century; the 
21st century is going to be the Chinese century.
  Well, let me put up another chart that I think will demonstrate that 
might be a little bit premature.
  Let's look at the size of the two economies. The size of the economy 
is measured in gross domestic product. The gross domestic product of 
the United States in 2000 was $9.8 trillion. The gross domestic product 
in China in 2000 was $1.2 trillion. This is the beginning of the 
Chinese century? The Chinese are starting off pretty far behind in this 
race if they are going to turn the 21st century into the Chinese 
century. They are at $1.2 trillion and we are at $9.8 trillion. We have 
sprinted into what the media is calling the Chinese century now for the 
first 6 years.
  Where are we? These statistics are for the first 5 years, the first 5 
percent. In that period of time, our annual GDP growth has been 3.2 
percent. The Chinese has been 10 percent. Those are the numbers that 
say they are going to overtake us. Ten percent is clearly better than 3 
percent.
  I would make this one footnote with respect to the 10 percent. I am a 
little suspect of these numbers because the Chinese released their 
annual figures on December 31 of the same year. We don't know our 
annual figures for months afterwards. Then, when more data comes in, we 
revise them upward or downward, based on additional information. 
Somehow they know on New Year's Eve exactly how they have done during 
the year. If they were a corporation required to report to the SEC, 
there would be some investigations about the possibility of ``cooking 
the books.'' I think they make the determination of where they want the 
number to be and then report it thusly, either too high or too low for 
whatever their political purposes might be.
  So all right, let's take these numbers at their face value. These 
numbers mean from 2000 to 2005 the Chinese GDP grew from $1.2 trillion 
to $2.2 trillion, a $1 trillion increase. That is not a slouchy thing 
to do. That is clearly a tremendously impressive performance--almost 
doubling a $1 trillion increase. How about the United States. We are 
just limping along at 3 percent, 3.2 percent, but we went from $9.8 
trillion to $12.4 trillion.
  In other words, they went up $1 trillion, and we went up $3 trillion. 
How is that possible if they are growing another 10 percent, and we are 
only growing at 3 percent? It is because they are starting from a very 
low base. Those who say the 21st century will be the Chinese century 
and the Americans are through need to pay attention to what the real 
numbers are.
  If we are going to have a game and we start out the game with one 
team having almost 10 times as many points as the other, and then add 
on to that on a percentage basis rather than an absolute basis, we see 
in terms of the gap between the size of the American GDP and the 
Chinese GDP the gap is actually widening rather than shrinking. Yes, 
they can have a higher rate of growth, but their higher rate of growth 
is on a much lower base. Our growth on a higher base is unprecedented 
in world history.
  My message today is we need to hold the media accountable as well as 
all of the others. We have had two examples I have highlighted this 
morning where the media has misled us: the first with respect to one of 
our respected and beloved colleagues, Dr. Frist, where he was smeared 
and then when he was vindicated, that fact was ignored. The second has 
to do with telling us where the world is going. For whatever reasons, 
there are those who are constantly panicked about China and its impact 
on the United States who need to pay attention to the reality of the 
numbers.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas is 
recognized.

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