[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 460-462]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              REFLECTIONS

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, Benjamin Franklin once said:

       Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your 
     neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.

  This year, I know all 100 Senators will work to enable the words of 
Franklin to be meaningful, to make us each a better person and, in a 
cumulative effort, a better Senate.
  Having come back from my time in Nevada, I think it is an opportunity 
for me to reflect briefly upon 2007, the first year of the 110th 
Congress. This past year made one thing clear: We in the Senate are at 
a constant crossroads, with two paths from which to choose. One path is 
bipartisanship. The other is obstructionism. One path leads to change, 
the other to more of the same. This is not directed toward Republicans 
only but certainly Democrats also. Bipartisanship is a two-way street 
and we have to understand that. One path leads to change, the other to 
more of the same; the other to finger pointing.
  When we chose bipartisanship last year, we made real progress. For 
whom did we make real progress? We made it for the American people.
  With bipartisanship, we passed the toughest ethics bill in the 
history of our country to ensure a government as good and as honest as 
the people we represent. With bipartisanship, we finally passed the 
recommendations of the 9/11 Commission to support our first responders 
and secure our most at-risk cities. With bipartisanship, we provided 
our veterans with the largest health care funding increase in history.
  When we sought and found common ground, we passed the first minimum 
wage increase in 10 years to help the hardest working Americans make 
ends meet. When we sought and found common ground, we helped struggling 
homeowners, a few--we have a lot more to do--to at least be aware of 
and avoid foreclosure. When we sought and found common ground, we 
enacted the largest expansion of student financial aid since the GI 
bill. When we sought and found common ground, we passed an energy bill 
that will lower gas and electricity prices and begin to stem the tide 
of global warming. Could we have done more with that Energy bill? Of 
course, we could, and we are going to try in the next few months to 
enlarge upon it.
  Time and time again, we have proved that bipartisanship works. Far 
too often, unfortunately, others chose the other path--the path of 
being an obstructionist. We saw that on Iraq. Most Republicans chose to 
stick with the President's policy that has devastated our Armed Forces, 
compromised our security, and damaged our standing around the world. We 
saw it on Medicare drug prices. We were unable to get done something 
that is so common sense. The American people say: Why couldn't you do 
that? What we wanted to do was allow Medicare to negotiate for lower 
priced drugs. We couldn't get it done. We saw it on children's health. 
We tried, and we had good bipartisan cooperation. We passed it, but the 
President vetoed it, and we were unable to override that veto. It is 
often we see how destructive partisanship can be. So let's hope the old 
way of doing business is no longer this year's way of doing business.
  Many of last year's problems have grown worse--all we have to do is 
look

[[Page 461]]

at the morning newspaper--and many new ones have arisen. Last year, the 
subprime lending issue was not part of our mantra. Now it is in every 
speech anyone gives in the political world. We can no longer turn to 
the old playbook of political posturing. We must end that. We have to 
do better.
  What are the new and growing challenges? We don't need an economics 
professor or philosopher to tell us: A walk through a neighborhood most 
anyplace in this country to see the sea of for sale signs, foreclosures 
are all over this country. All it takes is a trip to a gas station or 
even drive by a gas station to see people are paying over $3 a gallon 
most everyplace in this country.
  All it takes is a glance at the headlines in the newspaper to see the 
rising violence and turmoil all across the globe.
  Like all of my colleagues, I spent a lot of time back home, and we 
talked about that. Mr. President, in Nevada, things have changed. But 
to show you, in a sparsely populated State such as Nevada, similar to 
the State of my colleague, the Presiding Officer--Nevada is a sparsely 
populated State. To show how people are so concerned about this 
country, in an hour and a half on Saturday, 30,000 new Democrats 
registered to vote in Nevada. In an hour and a half, during the 
caucuses we had, 30,000 new Democrats registered to vote. Think about 
that. In the State of Nevada, there were 30,000 new Democratic 
registrants in an hour and a half. Why? Because we have an economy that 
is sliding toward recession. Hundreds of thousands of families are at 
risk of losing their homes--millions, really, not hundreds of 
thousands. The price of gas and heating homes is skyrocketing to 
alltime highs. New threats of violence, war, and terrorism are emerging 
at home and abroad.
  Regarding the war in Iraq, it is debatable now how much we are 
spending there. Is it $10 billion or $12 billion a month? And now we 
have, during this break we have had, a Republican frontrunner for the 
Republican nomination for President who says we will have to be in Iraq 
for as long as 40 more years. This war will soon be going into its 
sixth year. We are now an occupying force in Iraq.
  So together we must address these growing challenges, both foreign 
and domestic.
  At home, the first thing we have to work on is the economic stimulus 
package. During the break, I spoke to the Secretary of the Treasury at 
least eight or nine times. He is concerned, and we are all concerned. 
To be effective, this stimulus plan must be timely, targeted, and 
temporary. It must be timely because America needs relief right now. It 
must be targeted because for too long the Republican approach has been 
to put money in the pockets of corporations and the wealthy rather than 
the working families who need it most. It must be temporary because, as 
important as it is to help people right now, we don't do ourselves or 
our economy any favors by saddling our children and grandchildren with 
mountains of debt, as has happened over the past 7 years.
  If the President and congressional Republicans work together with us 
to pass this short-term stimulus plan that follows these principles, we 
can make a real and immediate difference in people's lives and perhaps 
stave off this looming recession. I call upon all of my colleagues--
Democrats and Republicans--to come together to pass the stimulus 
package this work period. We have 4 weeks, and we must do it during 
this 4-week work period. We will meet with President Bush today to 
continue working out this plan.
  While we await the results of the discussions on the stimulus 
package, we will begin this year by addressing other important issues, 
such as Indian health. We have to do this. The sickest and worst health 
care in America is on Indian reservations. That is why we are doing 
this. Native Americans all over America have the highest rate of 
diabetes, tuberculosis, and other dread diseases. We must address the 
health care of the poorest of the poor. They are the poorest of the 
poor--Native Americans.
  This legislation will allow Indian and tribal health providers to 
offer long-term health care services and even hospice care and will 
provide diabetes and youth substance abuse programs to urban Indians 
and will encourage State-tribe agreements to improve health service 
delivery. We would like to finish that as soon as possible. After we 
finish that, we will return to the foreign intelligence surveillance 
bill.
  Mr. President, we must pass a FISA law that gives our law enforcement 
officials the tools they need to fight terrorism, without infringing on 
the fundamental rights of law-abiding Americans. We have always been 
willing to work with the President to give him the constitutional 
authority to meet the post-9/11 challenges. All he had to do was tell 
us what he needed. It wasn't until we read in the New York Times that 
he was doing things that were contrary to law that we decided we had to 
do something legislatively. If he had come to us, we would have done 
anything we could to maintain the framework for a constitutional form 
of government to help whatever problems there might be.
  With the current law set to expire soon, Democrats are resolved to 
replace it with a new and stronger one. Senator Rockefeller, Senator 
Leahy, and their committees--both Democrats and Republicans--believe 
the law needs to be changed. Hopefully, we can do that. Last month, I 
requested a 1-month extension of the current law to allow lawmakers 
additional time to do just that. The present law expires in just a few 
days, on February 1. That request I made to extend the law was objected 
to. With just a few days left before the expiration, I will renew my 
request for an extension. After we act, the House has to act on this 
bill. They have not done that. The failure to extend the present law 
for 1 month could lead to the law no longer being something that guides 
what happens in this country. Some may want that. I think the majority 
of the Senate doesn't want that. We need time to do that.
  The Defense authorization bill--we have to finish that this work 
period. Hopefully, we can do it by unanimous consent. I personally 
thought the veto was unnecessary. I think the Iraqi Government, which 
we have funded with hundreds of billions of dollars, should stand up 
and be responsible for what has taken place in that country in years 
past.
  I have had one serviceman from Nevada, who was tortured in the first 
war, who sought compensation in court, and the Bush administration 
joined in fighting the relief he sought. We tried to do things 
legislatively to help, and the Bush administration stopped that. He did 
veto it. We are where we are. Iraq's treatment of American servicemen 
during the first Gulf war was important. The bill should not have been 
vetoed. It was.
  We will be as agreeable as we can be to get this money. Hopefully, 
today we can finish this legislation. It is something we need to do. 
The Wounded Warrior legislation is in here and an additional pay raise 
for the troops. We will do what we can on that.
  There are other things we look forward to this coming year. We want 
to make sure we do something about product safety legislation. We want 
to have toys, for example, that are sold that are safe and that don't 
make kids sick. We will also look at patent reform.
  So we have a work-filled legislative session that I have outlined. We 
have a number of things we cannot put off, and we are going to have to 
spend some long hours here in the Senate. Hopefully, we won't have to 
work weekends. I hope that is not the case. FISA, for example--I have 
had a number of Senators say they want to go to these very important 
discussions in Doha that start this week. We cannot do that unless we 
somehow resolve this FISA legislation, either extending it or 
completing our work. We may have to finish that work this weekend. We 
have energy legislation on which we have indicated we are going to move 
forward. We won't do it this work period, but we have a bipartisan 
piece of legislation that came out of the Environment and Public Works 
Committee dealing with global warming; it is the Lieberman-Warner 
legislation. We need to get to

[[Page 462]]

that. We have to be concerned about children's health and what we can 
do in that regard.
  Can we accomplish these goals? Yes, we can. It won't be easy, and it 
cannot be done if we resort to the same business as usual. We have a 
shortened time period. We have the Presidential election coming up, and 
we have contested Senate seats that take a lot of the time of incumbent 
Senators and the challengers. Last year, my colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle broke the 2-year record of filibustering in just 1 
year. I hope that isn't the case this year, that we don't break another 
record.
  Our work has begun in this new year and new legislative session. Hope 
springs eternal, and I repeat what I have said before: If we accomplish 
things here, there is credit to go around to both Democrats and 
Republicans. Everybody can claim credit for what we do. If we are not 
able to pass legislation, there is blame to go around for everybody. I 
hope we can move forward on the important legislation that faces this 
country and needs to be done.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader is recognized.

                          ____________________