Mr. President, part of our required reading, as I was going through college, was to read George Orwell's book, ``1984,'' which was looking into the future. Of course, looking at 1984 now, it is looking in the rearview mirror. But when I was in school we looked at ``1984.'' It was George Orwell's classic book. The main focus of the book is how societies would be in the years to come, in 1984. It appears he was fairly prophetic because one of the things that George Orwell talked about is that there would come a time when people would stand and talk, and whatever they said, the direct opposite would be true. That is what we have going on from my friends on the Republican side of the aisle as it deals with Wall Street reform, as it deals with what we have been doing legislatively. We have a situation where people sometimes forget where we were. Let's talk about where we were for just a short time. During the 8 years of the Clinton administration, 24 million new jobs were created. During that period of time, we were paying down the national debt. We were being criticized for paying it down too fast, too quickly. Now comes 8 years of George Bush. Let's remember where we were. Privatization of Social Security was the cry of the Bush administration. Then we had a war of choice--and, by the way, there is a new book out by Evan Thomas of Newsweek. He talks about the rush to war, and I heard him interviewed. That war was a war of choice.…
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