Inauguration

INAUGURATION -- (Senate - January 20, 2005)

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I will speak for a moment about the inauguration we just attended. First, I address an issue of style which was brought to my attention earlier this week in Chicago. One of my acquaintances is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. His name is Neil Steinberg. Mr. Steinberg recently wrote ``Hatless Jack.'' It is the story about men wearing hats in America. It was a good conversation we had about his book.

It starts with the premise that some 44 years ago today with the inauguration of John Kennedy, there was a change in fashion in America and men stopped wearing hats. Mr. Steinberg debunks that notion but goes into a very interesting history of not only John Kennedy wearing a hat but also hats in America.

People remember that inauguration 44 years ago. Seven inches of snow fell the day before. Some 3,000 soldiers were on the street overnight shoveling the snow, using flamethrowers to try to melt the snow to make way for the inauguration the next day.

The inauguration started an hour late. Senator Kennedy, of course, became the President and gave his famous speech: Ask not what America can do for you but what you can do for your country. Robert Frost was at that occasion. People seem to remember there were no hats there, that John Kennedy did not wear a hat. They mistakenly blame him for killing an industry.

I wish those same people could have been out today for the inauguration and seen my colleagues in the House and Senate. There were some amazing hats being worn. There are very few other times my colleagues would wear one. We had Senator Baucus and Senator Hatch in cowboy hats, Senator DeWine in his bowler, Alan Greenspan with his Yankees baseball hat--quite an array, not to mention Justice Scalia's hat, which I cannot describe.

I say this by way of introduction. There is a style issue here that someone should report. I thank Mr. Steinberg for bringing this historical notion to our attention, that the inauguration today raises questions which

I am sure an enterprising journalist will follow up on.

Let's go to the substance of the speech and what happened today. Clearly, there were disappointments on the Democratic side of the aisle. Many Members worked long and hard for our colleagues JOHN KERRY and Senator John Edwards on their candidacy. I served as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee and traveled to many of the battleground States on their behalf. I saw an outpouring of volunteer support for that campaign that I had never seen before in any previous campaign. There was also an outpouring of small donations, an indication of the interest the American people had in that campaign.

Of course, there was a bitter disappointment among those on the Democratic side with the outcome on November 2. I am glad Senator Kerry came forward on November 3 and said, clearly, that he was conceding the election and that America should move on with its new President, President George Bush, who was then reelected.

Many people contacted me and expressed the sadness and bitterness and disappointment, as you might expect, after a hotly contested election. It is a fact of life that America is very closely divided politically. Had one State, the State of Ohio, gone the other way and the electors pledged to JOHN KERRY rather than to President Bush, we would have sworn in JOHN KERRY today as President of the United States. The margin in Ohio was 118,000 votes. So still we see our Nation divided, blue States and red States, though there is a lot of commonality within those States on issues of importance.

I listened to the President's speech today. It was a good one. Many people mistakenly believe the inaugural address is the State of the Union. It is not. Most Presidents use the inaugural address to make a statement that will stand the test of time, that will last through history. It does not address the morning paper so much as the summation of what has happened in America over the last year, two, three, or four. That is what President Bush did in his speech today.

I thought the direction of that speech toward freedom was an important point. It is one that every American and every American President would share--not only that we value our own freedom but want to see other nations reach that same goal. I agree with the President completely.

He also spoke about what the freedoms would mean to Americans. He is not the first President to address that issue, of course. We can all remember the famous speech by Franklin Roosevelt, the ``Four Freedoms'' speech, in his address to Congress on January 6, 1941.

Franklin Roosevelt, in that speech, laid out what he considered to be the four essential human freedoms: first, freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world; second, freedom of every person to worship God in his own way, everywhere in the world; third, freedom from want, which translated into world terms means economic understandings, which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world; and the fourth, freedom from fear, which translated into world terms means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor anywhere in the world.

That speech of the Four Freedoms was given about 12 months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. As we read about the freedom from fear, we put it in the context of what followed: one of the bloodiest wars in the world. What President Bush spoke to was the freedom from fear from terrorism, recounting our tragic national experience on September 11. He also talked about the freedom from want, which President Roosevelt raised, as well. We all want the people of this country to have the best. We all want to do our part to make that happen.

We just heard an extraordinary exchange between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate on the issue of education. What struck me in listening to Senator Alexander of Tennessee, Senator Enzi of Wyoming, Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Senator Wyden of Oregon was the commonality, so many things they agreed on, the importance of education. We will see in a few weeks how important education really is. This administration will present to Congress its budget resolution. We can give a lot of speeches in the Senate, we can pledge that we have great interest in issues, but the real test is if we put our resources and our energy behind those interests.

The budget resolution is the first test. We can look to that budget resolution to see if the values of the inaugural address are expressed in the budget of the President. It is one thing to speak of those values on January 20; it is quite another to present a budget resolution which meets that test.

We can look to several items. First, will there be more money for No Child Left Behind? This is a program I voted for, a program of accountability in schools to make certain that the kids are progressing. But there has been a real complaint from local school administrators, Governors, that we have created a Federal mandate for testing and accountability but no resources to take care of the problems. When we identify special ed students or students from struggling families or disadvantaged households who are not doing well on tests, what do we do as a Federal Government to help the school district?

In my home State of Illinois, we are in a desperate situation. School districts are bankrupt all over the State. We have had a terrible time because of the turn down in the economy. Our Governor is struggling to balance his budget. The amount of money for education certainly should be increased. Instead, the Federal Government identifies problems, creates this category of so-called failing schools, and then does not provide the resources to take care of the problem.

In a few weeks we are going to see a budget resolution from this administration. When it comes to education and all that we have heard on the Senate floor and the President's speech, the real test is, will we put the resources there? Will we put the money there?

Secondly, there is the whole question of health care. If you want to talk about what most families and individuals need in America, it comes down to basic health care. Ask any Governor in this Nation the importance of Medicaid. That is the program, of course, the Federal and State program, to provide health care to people who are disabled or in lower income categories. Ask them what their concern is. Their concern is that the cost of Medicaid is going up substantially and that the Federal Government is not providing the resources. As a result, many of these Governors worry that people today depending on Medicaid will not have the Federal funds to match the State funds to make certain that Medicaid is viable.

Seventy percent of all Americans in nursing homes today depend on Medicaid--70 percent. A substantial number of our children depend on Medicaid for their health care, and a substantial number of pregnant mothers about to deliver depend on that same Medicaid program.

Watch carefully when the President's budget comes forward. See what the funding for Medicaid is. See if the President's budget will also address this aspiration of freedom from want when it comes to health care.

Another issue that is very timely in the news is the future of Social Security. We are still waiting. We have heard some generalities from the President, his general goals, his general aspirations when it comes to Social Security reform. There is an ad playing on Washington, DC, television that shows Franklin Roosevelt signing the bill into law to create Social Security in the 1930s and then quickly switches to a color photo of President Bush working at his desk saying we need his leadership to make certain Social Security will last into the future.

Well, that is a good thing. Each President should address that. But we need to see the particulars, and we need to ask ourselves, is this President proposing a privatization, even a partial privatization, of Social Security which will in fact cause a cut in benefits to Social Security recipients? If that is the President's proposal, I think he is in for a struggle.

Many of us view Social Security differently than some on the other side of the aisle. We understand there is a challenge in Social Security. But keep this in mind: If we do nothing on Capitol Hill in Congress about Social Security, absolutely nothing, Social Security will continue to make every single payment every year with a cost of living adjustment until at least 2042, 37 years from now, and perhaps 2052, 47 years from now. Those are the estimates from the experts. So we have between 40 and 50 years of Social Security making every payment if we do nothing today.

I believe, and many share it, that we can do something today. We can make commonsense changes in Social Security that are modest, which would, when played out over 40 or 50 years, much like the miracle of compound interest, make Social Security strong, not just for 40 or 50 years but 60 or 70 years or beyond. That is what I believe we should do.

The reason I believe it will work is I have seen it

work. I served in the House of Representatives in the 1980s. President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, came to Tip O'Neill, the quintessential Democratic leader, and said: We have a problem. All of the babies born after World War II, the baby boomer generation, will show up for Social Security, and we will not have the resources. We need to make changes today in the mid-1980s to take care of a problem we can foresee in 2010, far into the future. And we did it on a bipartisan basis. We made changes, some popular, some not, some very modest in nature, and look what happened: Social Security bought more longevity and more stability because of those changes.

If President Bush is coming to us and saying, make the modest changes so that Social Security can be strong in the future, then I will sign up for that. On a bipartisan basis, we owe that not only to those who are to retire, working today, but to future generations. But if the goal here is to privatize Social Security, is to take from the Social Security trust fund resources we are already counting on to pay to retirees and to put it into the stock market, which some are suggesting, I think the President is in for a battle because if we are going to privatize Social Security at the expense of cutting benefits to Social Security recipients, then I am afraid there is going to be a great resistance on both sides of the aisle.

Wait for the President's State of the Union, wait for his budget resolution, wait to see if the promise in values that were articulated in the inaugural address will be played out in the actual budget presented to Congress in the future. That is what we have to do.

There are a lot of hungry people in America today. There are a lot of families anxious to find work. There are a lot of people who have jobs today that are not quite what they were a year ago. We have lost manufacturing jobs across this country. We have health insurance costs going up dramatically, not only hurting businesses but labor unions as well. Schools are struggling to do their job. We are in a much more competitive world.

But I think what the President said today was a message of hope; that if we can come together as a nation, regardless of our political persuasion, that if we can be honest about the challenges, and if we can give a little on both sides to work out compromises, the country can, in the future, as it has in the past, rise to the occasion. I look forward to being a part of that process.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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