Byron Dorgan: “we will begin, following the President's State of the Union Address, hopefully a thoughtful and aggressive debate about…”

“we will begin, following the President's State of the Union Address, hopefully a thoughtful and aggressive debate about this country's fiscal policy including tax cuts, the budget, and related matters. These are very important issues. I wish to speak about some of them today, not from the standpoint of politics or polls, but more from the standpoint of what I think the choices ought to be for this country's future. I know there is a heavy dose of politics surrounding all of this. That is not my interest. I am much more interested in trying to think through what would be good for this country, what is going to keep us on track for the next 5 and 10 years to provide an economy that expands and provides jobs and opportunities for our children and their children. Having said that, I want to make a couple of comments to set the stage for where we are. There are a lot of people who continually complain about this country, and it is hard to complain about this country with a straight face. This is the most remarkable place on the face of the Earth. We are the country that created a system of public education, saying to every child in this country: You can go to school and be whatever you want to be. We are not going to move you off in one direction or the other. Universal education. It is us, our country, that has spawned an educational system that has created the scientists, engineers, and the thinkers. We split the atom and spliced genes. We have cloned animals.”