Watson Coleman: “before I arrived here, I read many times about the Senate as the ``world's greatest deliberative body.'' Over my first…”

“before I arrived here, I read many times about the Senate as the ``world's greatest deliberative body.'' Over my first 10 months, I would say that I have not experienced as much deliberating as I'd hoped. And I am glad my colleague, Senator Allen and I are doing this today--and that we are doing it deliberately. The subjects of jobs and the economy are very personal and important to every American family. With the lone exception of maintaining national security at home and abroad, we have no greater responsibility as a government. I note to my colleague from North Dakota that, by the way, consumer spending is up 6.6 percent in the last quarter. Confidence is up. It must tell you something about the way the American people are thinking. I want to begin by making a general observation. It seems to me that as a country we are awakening to a set of stark realities after what I'd call a decade of unrealism in the 1990s. In the 1990s we came to believe that somehow we had conquered the business cycle--that we had ended the age old rise and inevitable fall of economic activity. In the 1990s we came to believe that we are safe behind our borders from the violence and chaos that is a daily reality of many in the world because of the scourge of terrorism. We have had a rude awakening. The speculative bubble of dot com industries burst. Revenues generated by our highly progressive tax system fell rapidly at the national and State level.”