Tina Smith: “along with my colleague from the State of Idaho, I will talk in morning business about the economy. We have heard for…”

“along with my colleague from the State of Idaho, I will talk in morning business about the economy. We have heard for 2\1/2\, nearly 3 years of the Bush Presidency that President Bush is responsible for the economic downturn. Little is said about the economic facts that existed when he took his oath of office; specifically, that the economy was in a tailspin, that Wall Street had lost at least $7 trillion of equities, and unemployment was rising dramatically. Indeed, President Bush inherited a situation that was not of his making and frankly not even of President Clinton's making, because we had witnessed the bursting of a stock market bubble and the dashing of hopes of tens of thousands of pensioners all over this country. It is a fact of political life that politicians are given too much credit and too much blame for the natural, immutable cycles of a free market economy. The latest casualty in this judgment on politicians is probably Governor Gray Davis of California. I remember during the heydays, the bubble days, California was held up as the miracle model and Governor Davis was hailed as a hero. He accepted the credit. I heard, with some pain, frankly, the other day when he acknowledged how much economic trouble they were in and that he had gotten too much credit for the good times and now was getting too much blame for the bad times. Guess what. Governor Davis was right.…”