January 18, 2008

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Speech on the Latest News from Washington
Dublin Rotary Club

Thank you very much Mr. President.

It is a privilege to be in Dublin and Laurens County, and it’s great to be with the Rotary today. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you. I can’t help but reminisce since your president was kind enough to mention my relationship with Louie Livingston. Louie was just one of the truly unique people in our state. He meant so much to this area, but he meant so much to the state of Georgia. He was a dynamic leader and a person that just accomplished a great deal in a short period of time in his life. But that’s characteristic of this community. Every time I come here I am so impressed by the vibrance, the vitality, the commitment to education, to economic development, to the community. It’s a great place to be, you’re lucky to live here and I feel very fortunate to be asked to come here and speak to you today.

I’m delighted to see my old friend Charlie Garbot. Charlie and I met some twenty five years ago. He had redder hair and not as much grey, and I had blonder hair and not as much grey, but times have changed. We’re both still lucky to be here. Senator Hugh Gillis, who, as I said earlier in another meeting – and I’m not trying to gild the lily or pander here – is really an inspiration to me politically. I don’t know of anybody I’ve known in my thirty years of elected office that was a better role model than Hugh. He was an outstanding state Senator, an outstanding representative, an outstanding member of the Port Authority, but on top of that, a singularly fine human being. It’s just great to be with him today. It’s great to be with the Fordham family, Mark makes sure I get everywhere I need to get on time and have the right thing to say, which is a tough job with someone like me and I appreciate the Fordham’s and all they’ve done. It’s great to see General Goddard, and his wife Judy who are here today, really all my friends in this part of Georgia, it’s good to be with you.

I’ll take a few minutes and talks about things that I hope are of importance to you and interests, then I want to be sure and leave enough time to answer any questions you might have of me. Last thing I will say though is, Mr. and Mrs. Zienner, as a second generation Swedish-American, I am so glad to be with another Scandinavian family here today. Welcome to this great community. Ingrid, thank you for coming and sharing a year here with the people of Dublin.

As a member of the Senate, everywhere I go in the state the first thing I talk about is the thing I feel obligated to talk about, and that is the war on terror; what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think when our sons and daughters are deployed in harm’s way, and when our nation is in conflict, and I’m the one up there voting day in and day out on issues that relate directly to that conflict, that I give you a report as best I can on the circumstances on the ground and which way we’re going. And I’m very pleased that I just got back nine days ago from being in Baghdad, in Iraq, in Kurdistan, and in that part of the world. Each year that I’ve been in the Senate I’ve gone every January to Iraq because I feel like it’s important for me to see with my own eyes what’s going on. And I think it’s critically important for me to go and put my arms around those men and women from the 3rd ID, the 48th Brigade, and all the Georgia units that are serving in Iraq and thank them for what they are unselfishly doing for their country.

And I am very pleased to tell you that this year’s trip to Iraq was totally different. And I’ll describe it just in the way I was handled. Before when I’ve gone to Iraq, we’ve landed in a C-130 in the Baghdad airport, then put in an Apache helicopter and flown in a diversionary path into the Green Zone in Baghdad. When it gets to be about 5:30 p.m. and the sun’s about to set, they take us out to spend the night in a Sheraton hotel in Kuwait then fly us back in the next morning.

The chance of getting outside the Green Zone was impossible. There was no way to travel on the ground, because it was entirely too dangerous.

This year when I went to Iraq, we landed in Baghdad and drove in to Baghdad in a Chevy Suburban, escorted by military personnel. When we got to the center of Baghdad, into the Green Zone, where we were usually escorted out by night, I stayed and spent the night in a visitor’s headquarters in Baghdad. The next morning I got up and went with a Rifle Patrol into the neighborhood of Ghazaliya , which two years ago was completely destroyed by terrorists. Everybody left and became refugees in their homes, and the central marketplace was destroyed. I went back this time and the refugees were moving back and reclaiming their homes, and eighteen of the twenty shops in the market in Ghazaliya were open and operating.

And I had the chance to stand on the corner of one end of the market and talk to two nineteen year-olds; one a Sunni, the other a Shi’ia and both had joined The Awakening. The Awakening is something that started in the Al Anbar Province, and has now spread to Diyala and Baghdad, where Iraqis who had previously had, out of fear or intimidation, shared intelligence with Al Qaida and pretty much been opposed to America finally saw the light. They formed CLC’s, Community Leadership Councils, where they take up arms. They defend the neighborhood after the Iraqi and American forces come through and protect the refugees as they come back into the neighborhood – a remarkable change and a remarkable experience.

Part of our job in going back, the three of us that were sent by the Foreign Relations Committee, was also to deliver a message to the Iraqi Government. And that is now that is there is ‘relative’ peace and security, and I use the word ‘relative’ in quotation marks, as Iraq is still a dangerous place. But now that there is relative security, it is time for the Iraqi Parliament to move forward on those steps and benchmarks that are essential for that fledging democracy to take hold: reconciliation between the Sunni and the Shi’ia, debathification, and a hydrocarbon law. Little did I have any idea of knowing, that on January 9, when I was talking to the Kurdish, Sunni, and Shi’ia leaders about that particular issue, that I’d be standing before your club today and telling you that they’ve already begun their movement on reconciliation.

As many of you saw on the release from Secretary Rice a couple of days ago, that looks like that’s gonna take hold. I personally believe that the hydrocarbon law will be in place before too long, and if both those things take place, in the months ahead, and as we begin to withdraw from the surge levels we now have on the ground, and with the Iraqi five hundred thousand to protect their own democracy themselves, we have an opportunity for a great success. When you’re in a war against terror, declaring victory is almost never possible because terror is a tool of an individual.

However in what we’ve confronted in that part of the world both Afghanistan and Iraq, to come from where we’ve been, to where we are, I think is a great tribute to the men and women in our military who have sacrificed to give the Iraqi people a chance to have a fledging democracy. And if successful, and now that chance is there, it will be very helpful to the United States of America, to have a free democracy in a very dangerous part of the world.

So my prayers and hopes, day in and day out, are with our soldiers and with our troops. And I can just tell you, when I went this past week I did the same thing this time that I do every time, I told them thank you from the bottom of my heart. Everybody there is a volunteer, and everybody there is committed, everybody there wants it to succeed, and everybody there knows, despite what they may see on national television and read in national media, that we, God bless our troops, we love them very much, and we appreciate them for what they do.

Unfortunately, the President made his speech at 11:50 this morning on the Economic Stimulus and I was talking and not listening because I was doing some things here in Dublin. So, I’m going to address the Economic Stimulus issue, the question of whether we’re in a recession issue, the economic issue, and whatever I say you can attribute solely to me, because I didn’t have the benefit of hearing the inside remarks.

I can tell you, after having meetings with Secretary Paulson in December, and Mr. Bernanke, and some of the comments he has made, I subscribe to what Bernanke has said. And that is, while we might not be in a recession we certainly have some economic difficulties that if not addressed, could cause some problems in our economy. And I’m glad to see the president, and quite frankly members of both parties coming together to try and look at an economic stimulus package early in the year.

The best way to prevent economic difficulties is for people to have a positive attitude to the situations that they’re in. I’ve always thought that recessions were 90 percent state of mind, 10 percent state of being, and still believe that. So what I think they president said at 11:50 a.m. or will be coming forward next week, is predicated on a couple of things. One is infusing some cash into the system by giving tax rebates, similar to the one that was done back in the 1990s. How much it would be, I don’t know and how long it would last I don’t know, but to get cash back in the economy to boost the consumer.

In the United States the great period of prosperity we have enjoyed in the late 90s and all throughout he first decade of 2000s has been basically driven by the consumer. And it’s driven in part also by the values of real estate going up, by home equities increasing, and by homeowners being able to use their home equity lines of credit as a source capital to buy in the marketplace. With the subprime crisis on mortgages putting a downward pressure on the value of houses and suppressing equity, it’s taken some disposable or spendable cash out of the marketplace, which in turn is taking it out of the economy. So I hope what we do as a government is help put some money back in the pockets of the consumer, so the consumer can help revitalize the economic slow down that is going on. The government can never do it. We take the other route which is by taxing one group and giving money to another group of people which will only compound the difficulties in our economy.

It’s my particular hope that before the tax cuts we now have in place expire that we’ll finally be able to make them permanent. I think what President Bush did in 2001 and 2003 has been demonstrated, not by any individual but by the economy as a whole, to be absolutely what was the right thing to do. You know, I tell everybody my three role models as the Presidents of the United States will probably surprise you – they are John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. And the reason they are all the same is that all three of them cut taxes, all three of them were strong on the defense of United States of America, kept our military strong, and all three of them were tough and believed in what believed and were able to stand up to pressure. I think each one of them in their unique time did the right thing and in this unique time I think that tax cuts that were made in the early 2000s are tax cuts we should see to it are made permanent, by the end of this decade, when all of them are set to expire. I don’t know what the final outcome will be but I do know that the first 90 days of this year will be all about an economic stimulus package more so than anything else.

Third, I promised Ross Tolleson that I would mention as we are speaking here today, that in Atlanta, they are probably debating the statewide water plan. As a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and the Ranking Member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee that oversees the Corps of Engineers, I spend a significant amount of my time on drought-related water management issues. We have had a significant problem in Georgia and I underline Georgia, from North to South. You had it three years ago, at the worst during the drought, and the Chattahoochee basin is experiencing it now because of their lack of rainfall. But it is time – we have had two early warnings – and it’s time that we develop a statewide plan focused on the management and conservation and retention of water in each watershed and in each region.

As far back as 1995, when I was on the governor’s growth strategies commission, we recognized that water problems were coming. And we recognized that there were three things that you could do. You could do nothing, you could retain and manage your water in your region, or you could play a very dangerous game called interbasin transfer. And that is where you move water from one watershed and one drainage basin to another. Because we have not done everything we should have done, when we should have done it, in particular in the northern third of the state in terms of retention, there is a temptation by some to look to interbasin transfer. But I don’t think that’s the right thing to do.

I think the right thing to do with this water control plan is develop regional councils within the watershed regions themselves to make the recommendations on the best way to impound and manage water within each region, to see to it that we are all self-sufficient based on our own growths, and our own expansion, and that we don’t ever confront this problem as dangerously as we have this year. We have been on a precipice as to whether we are going to start running out of enough water to cost you to constrict yourself. That would be very dangerous for economic development, for health, and very dangerous for our families.

So I am very pleased that a great Senator like Ross has taken the time to work so hard on it. I hope our assembly will get it passed and then I hope we’ll do now what we didn’t do in the mid-90s. In the mid-90s we defined the problem, but we didn’t take near the action that should have been taken, and we suffer today for it. I hope in the next few years ahead we’ll take the $80 million proposed by Governor Perdue for new reservoirs and immediately begin impounding the area within those watershed regions where we’ve had our droughts to see to it we have back up reserves, so that never again will we confront the issues that we’ve confronted in the last three or four months.

With that said, on the Corps of Engineers, one other thing I will say, is that I am working very hard, and Senator Chambliss and I will be meeting Monday with the Corps of Engineers to get our three governors to stay at the table, and I commend them for finally coming back to the table, to negotiate a successful tri-state water compact between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. We have gone nineteen years having the ACT and the ACF, basically the Etowah basin and the Chattahoochee basin operated by federal judges and run by endangered species, with no consideration for the human consumption or the economic vitality of the area. Alabama has its self-centered reasons, which I respect. Florida has theirs, which I respect. And we have ours, which I respect. But I think it is crazy to defer decisions that should be made by elected officials of a state to a federal judge either in Washington, D.C. or some other district based on continual law suits filed by one state to the other.

Governor Perdue came to Washington along with Governor Crist from Florida and Governor Riley from Alabama in the month of November for a meeting with the White House. They have had second meeting where they have scheduled February 15 th as a deadline for a preliminary agreement. I’m going to do everything I can to support that, so they can come forward and we can untie the hands of the Corps of Engineers from endangered species and the courts, and let the water ways of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida that are shared together be managed under common sense and under good principles. Not by some litigious judge in some court somewhere in the United States of America. It is critical that we get that settled.

Well lastly, I said I was going to leave time for questions. I hate politicians that say, ‘Oh I’m sorry I’m out of time, I’m not going to listen to what you’ve got to say.’ I’m just going to end by telling you something. Three years ago you gave me the opportunity to represent you in Washington in the United States Senate and it’s the greatest privilege that anybody can ever have. I don’t forget a single day that you’ve given me that opportunity and I’m very, very grateful for it. In our office, we have a slogan: We can’t promise you that we can solve your problem, but we can promise you any problem you have will never remain unsolved because of a lack of effort. We believe we are an extension of you. We are there to help you. You pay your taxes, which pays my salary. I hope you will call us anytime, any place, anywhere. We aim to please, and we aim to help. So with that said who’s got a question?