Heidi Alexander: “I thank the Senator from Kentucky for extending his time on the floor. On my own I wish to continue that line of…”

“I thank the Senator from Kentucky for extending his time on the floor. On my own I wish to continue that line of thinking a little bit. It is traditional that when we have a new President, a newly inaugurated President, that he has a pretty good opportunity to get what he asks; that it is a time of maximum leverage, it is a time to do important things, it is a time to do difficult things, it is a time to do things that otherwise might not get done. Presidents are defined by their skills--their communication skills, their electoral ability--but they are also defined by their capacity over a period of years to identify the hard issues that are important to our country and cause people, as the President said in his address day before yesterday, to work together to solve those problems. Now the problem is whether you want to raise taxes on the guy down the street with the biggest house. That is not so hard to do. The problem is to spend money that you do not have--because you can do it; that is not so hard to do. If the problem is to address a disaster to help people who are in desperate shape, there might be some debate about whether it is really a disaster or not but it is not hard to do because in the end it is going to happen. What Presidents are remembered for is dealing with important, difficult crises. President Clinton is remembered for a number of things but one of the things he did was challenge the conventional thinking in his own party to deal with welfare reform.…”