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[Page: S9006]  GPO's PDF
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   Mr. REID. Mr. President, my friend, the senior Senator from New Mexico, has a chart. He talks about when the downtown started. The fact is, it is here. To try to divert attention from the problems of this country by trying to talk about when this problem started really doesn't do the trick. Presidents are blamed or given credit for what happens during their 4 years of office. That is the way it is, and that is the way it should be. The fact is, during this administration the economy has gone downhill every month the President has been in office.

   To talk about when a problem started, we had problems during the 8 years that Clinton was President, but he was able to respond to make sure the country went on an upward path after that. The fact is, President Bush, no matter what he received when he was President, has done nothing to alleviate the problem. He has made it worse.

   I would say to my friend from New Mexico, if he read the rest of Stiglitz's article, I find Stiglitz blames much, if not all, of the problems of this economy directly on the President, President Bush's economic policies. We just had Stiglitz appear before the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and he spent all afternoon telling us what was wrong with the Bush economic policies. Joseph Stiglitz has won a Nobel Prize in economics. He is one of the most renowned economists in the world. He places the blame at the foot of the President of the United States, President Bush, for the economy we now have.

   There may have been some corporate problems that started

   many years ago. But, remember, this White House wanted to bring corporate America to the White House--and they did. There is no better example of that than the fact that when the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission was having his confirmation hearings, he said he wanted to bring a kinder more gentle SEC to America. That is what we have had at this White House. They simply have been kinder and gentler. They brought corporate America to the White House. The American people do not want that.

   My friend also mentions in passing the United States of Representatives, which is controlled by the Republicans by just a few votes. Those of us who have served in the House of Representatives know the party that controls the House of Representatives controls the agenda over there. That is the way it works. It has always worked that way. One reason we have gotten nothing done in the Congress is because the Republican majority in the House of Representatives decided a long time ago they were not going to have anything happen this year. That is why we have every conference report stuck in a dark hole in the House of Representatives. They won't let us do anything on bankruptcy. They won't let us do anything on terrorism insurance . They won't let us do anything on election reform. They won't let us do anything on the Patients' Bill of Rights. They won't let us do anything on our generic drug bill, and on and on.

   Whether it is 1 or 100 vote, it doesn't matter in the House of Representatives. It works like the parliamentary

[Page: S9007]  GPO's PDF

   For the former chairman of the Budget Committee to come here and blame the problems on the budget--we don't have a budget because they won't let us have a budget--the fact is, the Appropriations Committee, under the leadership of Senator Byrd and Senator Stevens, made sure that all appropriations bills were under the budget numbers, even though we didn't have budget numbers. The budget numbers are good numbers. They will not let us do the budget bills because of the same reason--the same reason. The House of Representatives has not moved appropriations bills.

   You see, the Senate passed out of committee every appropriations bill. It has been done long since. But the House refuses to move on the bills. Therefore, we cannot do them. We are going to have a cloture vote on the Interior bill, which the Presiding Officer has worked on, not for hours, not days, but weeks, trying to come up with a compromise to meet the needs of the American public in the western part of the United States on firefighting but has been unable to work anything else. But that Interior appropriations bill is extremely important. It is not as if there is no money going to firefighting. There is 800 million extra dollars in this Interior bill to fight fires.

   But they only want them to be fought--in the minds of the Republicans--the way they want to fight them. Do you know how they want to fight them? Take all environmental standards and go out and start chopping and burning anything in the forest that a lot of lumber companies want.

   I say to my friend--he is my friend--the distinguished Senator from New Mexico that this won't sell. To come and say the problem started before President Bush became President is to blame it on somebody else. The President of the United States is stuck with an economic standard in this--his--administration, and for 2 years this economy has been going downhill, downhill, downhill. You can't blame it on September 11. The Afghanistan war caused about 25 percent of the problem. But all economists indicate that the other problem is right at the foot of this administration--whether it is tax policy or their other economic policies--which is responsible for 75 percent of our downturn.

   We have all been affected. People in Nevada--in fact, people in every State in the Union--have been affected by the downturn in the economy. Many Nevadans, and people who live in all 50 States, have seen their retirement savings disappear in the wake of corporate crime, accounting abuses, and stock market declines.

   The Las Vegas Review-Journal, the largest newspaper in Nevada, which has a circulation of a quarter million--to say it is conservative is a gross understatement; it is really conservative. It really focuses on government a lot. However, as conservative as that newspaper is, they wrote an editorial one day last week--in fact, the day after Senator Daschle gave a speech on the floor with the charts that he had--under the headline ``Daschle is right.'' I thought they made a misprint when I picked up that newspaper. But they had not. They believe TOM DASCHLE is right.

   This newspaper with a conservative bias, and which seldom has kind words for Democrats or the majority leader, said in this editorial that America needs a new economic direction and President Bush's policies have failed.

   The Las Vegas Review-Journal said:

   The economy is showing an anemic 1 percent rate of growth, the majority leader charged. Under the Bush administration the Nation has lost 2 million jobs and $4.5 trillion in stock market value--much of it melting out of individual Americans' retirement acts. Foreclosures are up, and the government is once again spending Social Security surpluses to pay for other programs ..... it would be a mistake to dismiss the statistics he cites. They are real, as are the economic doldrums they describe.

   They go on to say:

   President Bush has indeed failed to do all that he could and should have done to put America back on the path to vibrant economic growth, opportunity and prosperity.

   That is about as direct as you can get.

   It doesn't stop there. Robert Novak--I have great respect for Robert Novak. I consider him a friend. But I have to tell you that he has rarely said anything nice about me, and rarely has anything nice to say about Democrats. He is a very conservative political pundit, and he is a good one. I have appeared on his show on a number of occasions. He is hard, but he is fair. You always know where he is coming from. But rarely does he join with us in criticizing Republicans and what they are doing. But he did yesterday. I think it was yesterday. I read about it in the paper. It may have been Saturday. He said something very similar to what the Las Vegas Review-Journal said. But his column is printed all over America, and in the Washington Post, of course.

   In this piece, under the headline ``Avoidance Agenda''--and in other newspapers the same column had a different headline: ``Winning Without a Vision''--in this piece, Novak takes Republicans to task for offering no domestic alternative to the ``kitchen table'' issues which Democrats are discussing and working on: Prescription drugs and other health benefits, corporate accountability, pension protection, Social Security.

   According to Novak:

   Midsummer Democratic exuberance has vanished, and Republican anxiety has faded--thanks to Iraq's eclipsing economic issues six weeks before midterm elections. Yet, beneath the surface, thoughtful Republicans ask: What will it mean for the party to sneak by on November 5 without a vision and, indeed, without an agenda?

   George W. Bush is committed to being a war President, unwilling to use the bully pulpit to press domestic programs, especially without support from Congress.

   He continues:

   The crowding out of corporate corruption by war against Iraq unquestionably has brightened Republican prospects for winning both houses of Congress, saving President Bush from electoral disasters frequently visited on new presidents at midterm. However, apart from the war on terrorism , the Republican Party flinches from standing for much of anything in the 2002 election.

   The problem is that Republicans--including Bush himself--do not pursue a domestic alternative.

   This is a matter of concern for the future and perhaps even for this election among a variety of wise old heads in the GOP. One early GWB-for-president backer voiced displeasure with Bush's handling of an economy in which corporate profits are low, investor confidence has been shattered and consumer confidence is in jeopardy. ``He does not seem worried enough about the economy, does not express himself forcefully enough.'' The president does not share his father's boredom with domestic affairs, but there is no doubt he sees his destiny as winning the war against terrorism and not as reformer of the tax system.

   There are officials inside the administration who signal their concern by suggesting it is necessary to come up with new domestic initiatives.

   Bush and the Republican Party actually risk a lot tying themselves to the limited goal of maintaining a House majority. By accepting the caution urged on him by Capitol Hill, the president abdicates a vital responsibility of the president as a party leader. Any new initiatives await passage of an Iraq resolution or perhaps even congressional adjournment, leaving a Republican voice that is muted on everything but Iraq.

   I started saying a couple of weeks ago, as others have said, that this country is a big country; we can have a big political agenda. We can focus on Iraq, as we should, but we can focus on other things. The administration is focusing only on Iraq. Let us talk about the other issues. Let us talk about the stumbling, faltering economy, which we must address.

   If you were planning on retiring, Mr. President, this year, you would have to wait, on average, 7 years before you could retire. You would have to work an extra 7 years because you have lost that much--mostly in the stock market. People who were going to retire can't retire. If you started out with $100 in savings, you now have about $65 in savings. That is it. You multiply that, and you will see what it does to somebody who is building for retirement.

   The Las Vegas Review-Journal has not changed its political philosophy; they have had the same political philosophy for decades. Also, I would say that Robert Novak hasn't changed; he has had the same political philosophy for 30 or 40 years.

   The Republicans' proposed solution to economic woes plaguing Nevada and

[Page: S9008]  GPO's PDF

   I have no doubt that Republicans will continue to criticize and even mislead readers about our policies, and that is too bad. To come here today and to say the problems of this country are the result of something that started a long time ago is ridiculous. I have no doubt we must continue to address the problems that face this country, and we must continue to address them focusing on more than Iraq. This country has more ability to do that.

   I am very disappointed that my friend, the distinguished Senator from New Mexico, would come here and cite Joseph Stiglitz as supporting the policy of this country going back to the last administration when, in fact, if you read anything that Stiglitz writes, he talks about the economy being bad as a result of what happened with this administration's economic policy.

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