[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 21680-21681]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           RESPECTING REALITY

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, we are working this week, many of us 
working very hard this week--none harder than my friend and senior 
colleague from Rhode Island, Jack Reed--to address a paroxysm in the 
financial markets, one that has been a long time coming. During that 
long time, people in Washington, over and over, missed opportunities to 
prevent it. Make no mistake, this whole episode we are going through 
now was preventable. This is a human failure not some natural disaster, 
not economic inevitability. A political sellout to financial interests, 
a sellout given intellectual cover by a toxic ideology of deregulation 
appears to be at the heart of what happened. I was not here to see it, 
but all the clues point to that.
  This crisis is now past preventing. We have to fix it. It is a shame 
on those responsible that it happened in the first place, but it is a 
shame on all of us if we do not learn its lesson because there is more 
to come.
  In his famous ``Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death'' speech, Patrick 
Henry also noted:

       We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and 
     listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into 
     beasts.

  We should heed these words from the earliest days of our democracy 
and not shut our eyes to the painful truth of what has happened and not 
shut our eyes to the painful truths that still lie before us. Folks 
here have too often told Americans what they want to hear and too 
rarely told them what they need to know.
  There is no painful truth that Americans cannot deal with; there is 
nothing Americans cannot solve--but not if we are not told what we need 
to know. So we are now borrowing $700 billion because people here 
refused to face a painful truth about our financial markets, about the 
folly of deregulation. But that is just one of many painful, in some 
cases inconvenient, truths that we confront today.
  I remember sitting with the Presiding Officer, the distinguished 
Senator from Minnesota, in the Environment and Public Works Committee 
hearing the president of the Association of Health Directors of all the 
States and territories across the Nation deliver the unanimous 
statement of that association on global warming. It was a strong 
statement, a stern and sobering statement. But most important, it was 
unanimous. Yet in this Chamber some still ignore or deny the painful 
truth of the changes befalling our planet.
  Our capacity for denial, for artifice, and for self-delusion has 
become dangerous. Phony doubts about global warming may hide the facts 
of our planet's condition from our people, but the Earth doesn't care 
about doubts. She will behave the way nature dictates, and the 
consequences will be on all of us.
  Phony theories of deregulation may have obscured the facts of the 
financial

[[Page 21681]]

markets from us, but the markets don't care about our theories. If we 
let them come to failure, they will fail. And now the consequences are 
on all of us.
  The painful experiences we are going through today are, for the Bush 
administration, a rendezvous with reality. It is not the only one we 
have coming, if we don't begin to govern in a reality-based 
environment.
  The $7.7 trillion debt that George W. Bush has run up as President--
there will be a rendezvous with reality on that. The $34 trillion 
Medicare liability, which is just one symptom of our bloated and 
unstable health care system--there will be a rendezvous with reality on 
that. The $740 billion annual trade deficit the United States of 
America is running--there will be a rendezvous with reality on that. An 
energy policy that hemorrhages $600 billion a year to oil-producing 
countries and puts us on the losing end of the biggest wealth transfer 
in the history of humankind, all to keep big oil happy--there will be a 
rendezvous with reality on that. There will be a rendezvous with 
reality on the tons of carbon and greenhouse gases we are pumping into 
our thin and delicate atmosphere. These rendezvous with reality will 
come.
  The only question for us is on what terms will we meet them. We can 
decide: Will we be prepared or be caught flat-footed? Will we tackle 
problems while they are still manageable or wait until they overwhelm 
us? Will we address difficulty or face calamity? These are choices of 
ours and they pose the question, Are we capable of reality-based 
governing.
  I ask these questions because there is a common narrative through all 
these problems, and it is a perilous one to our democracy.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. REID. I would like, through the Chair, to ask my friend from 
Rhode Island if I can ask a unanimous consent?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I gladly suspend for the majority leader.

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