Barbara Boxer: “I want to thank publicly the majority leader, Tom Daschle. Yesterday, Leader Daschle took to the floor and talked about…”

“I want to thank publicly the majority leader, Tom Daschle. Yesterday, Leader Daschle took to the floor and talked about something that, frankly, is just not talked about by this administration, and that is the very sad state of our economy. Somebody needs to focus on that because, while we must devote much of our time to the war against terrorism, while we must devote much of our time to figuring out the best way to meet the threat that Iraq poses in terms of her weapons of mass destruction and the frightening prospect of those weapons being used, while we address those issues, I think we know very well that an administration must also pay attention to domestic needs, to the job needs, the educational needs, the health care needs. We must do both things in a great nation like this. So as the Democratic leader made his statement yesterday, it is stunning to see that, in some categories, this economy under this administration is the worst we have seen in more than 50 years. It is very serious. We must address it. We must have a plan to address it. We must look back at the success of the Clinton administration and other administrations, Democratic and Republican, which had good economic records. We are seeing record stock market losses because there is a loss of confidence. There is a decrease in earnings and there are massive layoffs. We have seen a maiming or loss in private sector jobs--the worst in 50 years--and the weakest economic growth in 50 years.”