Tina Smith: “I find myself wanting not to be silent, though, in response. He has a perspective that is not one I share with respect…”

“I find myself wanting not to be silent, though, in response. He has a perspective that is not one I share with respect to President Bush and the job he is doing as our Commander in Chief and as the leader of the free world. When I was elected to this body in 1996 I was given membership on the Senate Budget Committee. Being given membership on that committee, I remember President Clinton presented his first budget. We were coming through a period of great deficits and President Clinton projected deficits for as far as the eye could see. But something happened to our economy, something entirely unrelated to Government, something entirely unrelated to the Clinton administration. We saw what has happened periodically in the great civilizations, and that is a speculative bubble, irrational exuberance, and we saw the stock market surge with stock values wholly unrelated to their book values. We began to witness a great bubble.”