The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“POPULISM” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the Senate section on pages S1291-S1294 on Feb. 23, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
POPULISM
Mr. DORGAN. There is an old axiom in politics, when your adversaries are having a healthy feud, never walk across the street and get involved in it. I will not do that this morning. I am tempted to. However, I wanted to discuss, at least a bit, the issue of populism. I will not discuss so much the details of the feud that is going on in the Republican Party and in the primaries, but I do want to talk about the issue of populism.
What propelled me to do that today was Time magazine. There is a picture of Pat Buchanan in a hard hat and work shirt, and Lamar Alexander peeking over his shoulder in his plaid shirt, and then Bob Dole and Steve Forbes behind them.
It says, ``Grand Old Populists.'' So I am presuming, I guess, that GOP means ``Grand Old Populists.'' I wanted to talk a little about this issue of populism. It is a fascinating concept to see these, as one of my colleagues in the Senate calls them, Grey Poupon-eating-, Jacuzzi-, country-club folks, wearing hard hats and work shirts and calling themselves populists.
Let us put all this in perspective. About 80 or 90 million years ago, the brontosaurus and triceratops and tyrannosaurus rex were running across southwestern North Dakota. They are digging some of them up, by the way. Then we skipped and fast forwarded, and it was about 5,000 years ago that we discovered there were people around, and about 2,000 years ago Jesus was alive. About 500 years ago Columbus was relatively lost and stumbled onto the southern part of this continent, and despite the fact that the folks who were living here greeted his boat, he was credited with discovering something or another.
And 200 years ago our country was born. Then 100 years ago we created planes, trains, and automobiles, roughly speaking. And 75 and 50 years ago it was the radio, then television. And 25 years ago we put a man on the Moon. Then 10 years ago the computer became something that you could have in your home and then later carry on your lap as you traveled. And now in the Republican Party ``GOP'' means ``Grand Old Populists.'' And it is causing quite a stir, actually.
I noticed in this morning's paper one of the strategists, William Kristol, who speaks more often than most on politics from the conservative side, spoke of this issue.
He is speaking now about the turmoil that is going on in the Republican primaries. ``William Kristol,'' according to the story this morning as a result of something he wrote recently--I guess this week--
``sees no need for the Republican Establishment to succumb, in Pat Buchanan's phrase, to `terminal panic.' A junior member of that Establishment, Kristol doesn't cower when the high-riding presidential contender thunders about the terrified knights and barons of the GOP,'' et cetera, et cetera.
``Someone needs to stand up and defend the Establishment,'' says Kristol, a sometime strategist, party ideologist and editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine. ``In the last couple of weeks, there's been too much pseudo-populism, almost too much concern and attention for, quote, the people--that is, the people's will, their prejudices and their foolish opinions. And in a certain sense, we're all paying the price for that now . . . After all, we conservatives are on the side of the lords and the barons.''
He says there is ``almost too much concern and attention for the people * * * we are on the side of the lords and barons.''
Well, what to make of this: The grand old populist with the hard hat and the honest conservative who says, ``Wait a second, there's too much attention being paid to the people here, the people and their foolish opinions,'' Mr. Kristol says. ``We are on the side of the lords and the barons.''
God bless the lords and the barons. They are a good group of folks, but it is the people who run this country. It is the people for whom elections are held, because the Constitution gives the people in this country the right to grab the steering wheel and decide in Montana or North Dakota or Nevada or New York or Texas in which direction they want America to move. They nudge that steering wheel by collectively voting. It is the people, not the lords and barons, the people who grab the American steering wheel every even-numbered year. That is part of the miracle of the American Constitution. It is a miracle guaranteed every even-numbered year to the people in this country.
What of this issue of populism? It is interesting to me, coming from a State where populism had its roots. In North Dakota, in the early 1900's, nineteen teens, there was a legislator named Treadwill Twitchell who stood up in the chamber of the State legislature and told the farmers to ``go home and slop your hogs with great arrogance.'' He was someone who represented one of the big cities in our State. ``Go home and slop your hogs,'' he said.
They went home all right, and 2 years later, they organized section line by section line all across North Dakota. They came back and took over in North Dakota in the 19 teens. They were populists. There is a book written about it called ``Prairie Fire,'' in which the people took hold and said, ``This is our destiny.''
They built themselves in North Dakota a bank saying, ``We're tired of having public money put in private cronies' banks. We will have our own bank which belongs to people.'' My State is the only State in America that still has a Bank of North Dakota, and all public money goes into that bank used for the public good. It is not a case in our State where some of the State's money goes into some crony's bank someplace. It goes into the bank the populists created in the 19 teens.
They built a mill and elevator because they were sick and tired of the big mills in the East taking advantage of our farmers. They said,
``We are going to build a mill and elevator.'' They passed a farmers bill where they said, ``We want farmers, not corporations; we want yard lights where families live on the farm.''
The populist legacy in our State is a legacy about people having power. Part of what I find heartening these days is the discussion in the political system, especially in the Republican primaries, but also in our party, the Democratic Party, a discussion about what kind of economic system does this country have. For whose benefit does it operate? Who reaps the rewards of this economic system?
There are some things I have heard and seen in recent weeks that trouble me greatly, and I am sure that is true of many in this Chamber: Top advisers to campaigners out there who give speeches to white supremacist groups and use code words. Those kinds of things really bother me a lot, because there is a dark tinge to some of this discussion, and that ought to be rejected, and rejected quickly, by the American people.
But there is also, in my judgment, an arrow headed straight to the center of what ought to be the economic debate in this country, and the center of the economic debate is how are American families doing? Are they advancing? Is their standard of living improving? When they sit down for dinner with the family to talk about their circumstance, are they able to say, ``Our jobs are secure; we have good jobs with good incomes; we have decent health care at affordable prices; we go to good schools''? Are they able to say that? Or do they say, ``Too often these days, we're not so sure about our job security. We worked for the same company for 22 years, but the company just reported record profits, the CEO makes $4 million, just got a $2 million raise and laid off 8,000 people, because they call that progress.''
So, too many families now sit down at dinner and understand the companies they have worked for for 20 years see them like they see a wrench or a punch press: As a tool, perfectly expendable and completely expendable once the company has decided it is in their interest to decide to get rid of them now and hire another tool or another worker.
All too often in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, somewhere where they can hire someone without the restrictions on age--
you can hire a kid if you wish--without the nettlesome restrictions that you have to pay a living wage--you can pay 14 cents an hour to someone who makes tennis shoes in Malaysia--without the restriction that you have to have a safe workplace, without the restriction that you cannot dump chemicals into the air or dump chemicals into the water.
So people now understand that they are expendable, and that is the sadness of the lack of security in the job place in America. Not only do they see they have less security, they also see that they make less money; they work harder, but they make less money. If one adjusts their wage for inflation and goes back 20 years and measures it, what has happened is they are working harder and 20 years later they are making less money and have less purchasing power than they had 20 years ago.
Is there any reason that the American people have some anxiety about that? We can talk forever that the GDP numbers are up, America is on the move, our economy is growing, and it does not matter if the standard of living for American families is not advancing.
I have spoken on the floor previously about this--I know it is repetitive--but it is important to say you do not and cannot measure America's economic health and its future promise by what it consumes. I am just flat sick and tired of hearing the news reports that the Commerce Department said this, the Federal Reserve Board this or that, car sales are up, home sales are up, shoes sales are up. At issue is not how much we bought, how much we consumed.
The issue is what did we produce in this country? It is production that gives you good jobs. Good jobs come from our productive sector and, as our manufacturing jobs are moving, we are losing manufacturing jobs. They are being moved by international economic enterprises who do not say the Pledge of Allegiance and they do not sing the national anthem. They are interested in international profits. They do not care whether they produce in Pittsburgh or Malaysia. They will produce where it is the most profitable to produce, and manufacturing jobs are leaving America in droves. Witness the trade deficit we have.
Last year, the trade deficit was larger than our budget deficit. There is nobody saying much about it, and it is almost a conspiracy of silence. The trade deficit means we buy from abroad more than we sell abroad. What that means is jobs that would have been here are instead somewhere else in another country.
Corporations that are producing are producing elsewhere, and the American people have some role in this as well. It is not unusual to find somebody wearing a Chinese shirt, slacks from Taiwan, shoes from Italy, shorts from Mexico, driving a Japanese car, and then saying,
``Where on Earth have American jobs gone?'' You are wearing where it has gone. So there is enough responsibility to go around.
But the center of the economic debate in this country has to come to this issue about what is fair trade and how do we construct a circumstance in which we have a healthy, vibrant growing manufacturing base in our country.
To those out on the campaign trail these days wearing hard hats and preaching populism, I say to them, ``Come here and help us.''
I offered an amendment in the U.S. Senate, and it was as simple as could be. No one could misunderstand it and no one could even, in my judgment, mistakenly vote wrong on it. I lost on a partisan vote.
The amendment very simply was to say: Let us stop providing tax breaks so that companies can close their American plants and open up plants overseas. Let us stop providing tax breaks so that American corporations can move their jobs to foreign countries. Let us put an end to the insidious giveaway in our Tax Code that allows companies to do that: Fire American workers, hire foreign workers, become more profitable, and destroy job security in our country.
I could not even get that adopted in the Senate. Mr. President, to all of those who voted and voted wrong, they are going to get a chance 6, 8, 10, 12 more times, if I have my way, this year to rectify that, because this country should not and cannot continue to have economic incentives in its tax laws to say ``it is our aim to encourage you to move your jobs overseas.''
It is my aim to encourage American companies to invest here, to produce here, and to hire here in this country.
There are twin responsibilities that we have. The American worker has a responsibility, but productivity is on the rise. Workers are working harder. Workers do have a responsibility to be motivated, educated, dedicated, and to be good workers. But companies then have the responsibility, as well, to care about the people who make up that company, to care about the people who make the products that the company sells with that company's name on it.
About a month or so ago, I read a piece in the Minneapolis Tribune as I was going through the airport. I came to the floor of the Senate and told, briefly, about what I had read because it was so foreign to everything that is going on in this country. It was about a fellow who had owned the company that make inline skates called Rollerblades. He and his wife had purchased this company and built it into something substantial, an enormously successful company, making inline skates. Rollerblades is the name of the company. And then this fellow, named Bob, sold the company some months ago. He had made a substantial amount of money because the company was enormously successful. Of course, all of us understand what has happened with inline skates. At Christmastime, some of the workers at this company began getting in the mail a letter from the fellow who had owned this company. They began to open their Christmas greeting from this fellow and his wife, and it turned out that he had sent them money. He no longer owned the company, but he sent all of the employees--I think something like 270 employees who worked for that company in the factory lines, custodial, the painters, and everything--if memory is correct, he sent them $160 for every month they worked for the company.
In some cases, those folks on the factory lines, who had been there all the time he had the company, got up to a $20,000 check from this fellow and his wife. Do you know what else he did? He prepaid the taxes on it. So he said to them, ``This gift is for you. You owe no taxes on it. I have prepaid the taxes.''
I called him and said, ``This is remarkable, at a time when we hear about all of the selfishness and layoffs and moving jobs overseas. I want to tell you how remarkable it is to hear about what you did.'' What he said to me was perfectly understandable. He said, ``I made money with that company because all of those folks helped make that company work. They worked on the factory lines. They are the ones who made the company, it was not just me, it was them as well, and I wanted to share something with them. I wanted to tell them that they contributed something significant in the success of that company.''
I thought, ``What a hero.'' He did not have to do that. We do not hear many stories like that--stories that are unselfish, where the CEO says, ``You people really make this company work. When we put our company name on the product, we are proud because you helped make the product.'' That is almost unheard of these days. Nowadays it is,
``Well, you worked for us, but tomorrow you are like a used wrench. You might be out of here with no security, no health care, and maybe no pension. We might be hiring your replacement 6,000 or 8,000 miles away.''
Well, would it not be nice to hear more people do what that man did, and recognize that part of this country's success is to have a vibrant, expanding, growing manufacturing base, and to recognize the workers out there on the line producing products, doing good work, working hard, and are also part of the success and part of the competitive team?
I just think that we have kind of gone in a different direction in this country, in which we have had economists, CEO's, and others develop an economic model that says that it is fine if we produce elsewhere and sell here as long as we are buying cheap. That is not fine. Major jobs are gone, and a major future is gone with it. That needs to be the center of the economic debate. How could we create conditions in which manufacturing in this country expands again, in which there is fair international competition, in which we reduce the trade deficit, bring jobs back to this country, and rev up the American economy to a reasonable economic growth.
On a related but slightly different issue, yesterday, the President reappointed Alan Greenspan to head the Federal Reserve Board for another term. He is going to submit his name to us. Certainly, the Congress will accept that. I am terribly disappointed by that. I have great respect for Mr. Greenspan, but I have profound disagreements with him, as well. I agree with Jack Kemp on the issue of economic growth. The Federal Reserve Board sees itself as a set of human brake pads. That is their mission in life. They say America cannot have an unemployment limit below 6 percent because it is inflationary, or economic growth above 2.5 or 3 percent because it is inflationary. But wages are going down, not up, so that is nonsense.
When you consign our economy to a meager growth rate of 2.5 percent, you consign an economy to an anemic future that is far less than what it should be for all Americans. It means fewer jobs and less opportunity. I am very disappointed the President has seen fit--not that Mr. Greenspan is a bad person, I have great respect for him. But I would have much preferred new leadership at the Fed--not leadership that says inflation is not important because, of course, it is. We have seen stable prices and a growing economy. Inflation has been going down--under 3 percent for 4 years in a row. Yet, the Fed has its foot on the brakes with higher interest rates than the producers in this country should be paying.
Mr. President, I notice my friend from Nevada on the floor. He has some things to say today. So let me finish with a couple of other brief comments. This issue of populism, or the power that people have in this country to affect their lives and to force this political system to debate what it ought to debate, is a very important concept. We just finished debating a farm bill in the U.S. Senate. A fellow named Robert Greene, an Associated Press writer--somebody who I think does an excellent job of synthesizing what we do with foreign policy in the Congress. He wrote a piece that is probably the best piece I know of describing what we did on the farm policy. We passed the so-called freedom-to-farm bill, which I fought against and voted against because I think it is a terrible piece of legislation. Here is what he said about it:
With a mix of luck, work and unusual organization, the lobby for the big grain companies, railroads, meat companies, millers and shippers scored a big win in the Senate-passed overhaul of farm programs.
The freedom-to-farm bill is a serious act of mislabeling. It is everything that big railroads wanted, that big grain trading farms wanted, that all the millers wanted, that all the food processors wanted. Guess what it means to the family with the yard light on at night trying to figure out how to operate the family farm? These large interests want lower grain prices. Talk about economic populism, about putting jam on the lower shelf so everybody can reach it. This sort of nonsense, the freedom-to-farm bill, which gives everything they want to the big grain trading firms, and shortchanges family farmers is the wrong way, not the right way, to address the issue of whether we should have family farmers in our future. If it becomes law, we will have large agrifactories from coast to coast, and you will see precious few yard lights on because family farmers will not be able to make a living.
I was going to talk about other economic issues that relate to the same thing--who gets, who gives, who has the power, and who does not. As Mr. Kristol says, ``Who are the lords and barons, and what do they get?'' I will end where I began with not so much surprise at the message, but at the candor in the article this morning where Mr. Kristol says, ``Someone needs to stand up and defend the establishment. In the last couple of weeks there has been too much pseudo-populism, almost too much concern and attention for `the people.' ''
Mr. Kristol has not served in the House or the Senate, but the people control the House and the Senate. This is their Chamber; it is their body. They, by their election, determine who serves here. I guess maybe some people, who have not run for county sheriff or Congress, for that matter, probably sometimes dismiss the interests of the people.
There is a desk here that I was assigned to the first day I came to the Senate, and I have since been reassigned. It was temporary. I opened the drawer and, as is the custom, deep in the drawers, in the history of the Senate, everyone carves their names in the desk. That is not a practice we recommend to schoolchildren, but the history is that we do that. The desk that I was assigned to the first day I was here indicates that Harry Truman carved his name in the desk. A desk I was assigned to later says that Warren Harding sat in that desk. He later became President. Below his name is the name of one of the great populists in this country, Robert La Follette from Wisconsin. He understood about economic power. He understood about the people, and he would understand when I express enormous surprise that there is anyone who comments on, is interested in, or is involved in politics, who believes that there is too much concern and attention being paid to the people in our political campaigns.
Frankly, there is not enough concern and attention being paid to the center issues that affect people, who, every day, are trying to figure out how do we get a good education, how do we afford decent health care, how do we find a good job that pays well, how do we find a company to work for that will value and trust us and keep us and appreciate our work? Those are the center concerns of a lot of people in this country, who believe that over two centuries of growth, through innovation and through hard work, America has succeeded beyond the dreams of most when you look at two centuries; but who also believe that the best days in this country are still ahead of us, if its best days are consigned to the interests of the people in this country, who still have the opportunity to control its direction and still have the opportunity to tell us what they think is important and what they think will make America a better country in which to live.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. REID addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Reid] is recognized.
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