|
|
In a one-on-one interview following the session, Mr. Dodd, who was initially elected in 1980 and has served longer in the upper body than anyone from Connecticut, preferred to focus on the pressing issues of the day.
"You would be terribly foolish or naïve" to not be concerned about the projected escalation in federal budget deficits under Democratic President Barack Obama, he said, but indicated, "What concerns me more is that our economy is stalled."
"I don't know of another president that has been handed so many problems as this president has," the senator added.
Mr. Dodd said that Republican President George W. Bush, Mr. Obama's immediate predecessor, accumulated "more debt in eight years that the other 42 presidents combined."
Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson has stated that Mr. Obama is engaging in "double talk" in his budgets, following in the footsteps of the presidents starting with John Kennedy nearly 50 years ago who "won't tax voters for all the government services they want," which has led to "budget deficits in 43 of the past 48 years."
In 1992, when he was seeking election to a third term, Mr. Dodd said that if voters wanted to understand why the country had record federal budget deficits and was beset by an economic recession they should read "The Triumph Of Politics."
The 1986 book was written by Greenwich resident David Stockman, the former director of the federal Office of Management & Budget, who was critical of the fiscal decisions made by former Republican President Ronald Reagan, under whom he served.
Mr. Stockman wrote that the former president and other elected officials were not willing to make tough decisions to curtail budget deficits that would result from his across-the-board tax cuts.
Mr. Samuelson has written that Democrats were critical of the deficit that Mr. Reagan had when he left office, which was 3.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
However, he has stated that after a projected surge in the federal deficit to more than $1.7 trillion during the next fiscal year, the shortfall is only projected to decline to $637 billion in 2016, which would be 3.2 percent of GDP.
"Obama imposes hard choices on others but has postponed his own," New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote. "He presented an agenda that bleeds red ink a trillion dollars at a time."
"I don't disagree with that concern," Mr. Dodd said regarding the recent columns by Mr. Samuelson and Mr. Brooks on the projected surge in federal budget deficits.
"However, if we don't get our arms around health care, those deficits will seem minor," he said regarding plans to expand federal spending in that area, which The New York Times has reported is Mr. Obama's current top legislative priority.
Mr. Dodd, who held a forum on health care this winter at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, said that he wants "75 or 80 votes" in the Senate in support of a package that would include universality, quality, cost and prevention but is willing to embrace Mr. Obama's strategy to circumvent a Senate filibuster and get a plan approved with as few as 51 votes.
"Economics is driving this," the senator said, noting that health-care costs on average have increased 40 percent for Americans in the last seven years.
"Businesses can't afford this," Mr. Dodd said of the Democrats' plan. "It's going to kill them financially."
"So there's a new argument that didn't exist 15 years ago," he said, making reference to the effort by former Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1994 to establish a national health insurance plan.
"I think choices should be part of this," Mr. Dodd said of the scope of the proposed package. "I don't want a British plan or a Canadian plan. I want an American plan."
On another topic, the senator said he agrees with car dealers in the state who have said that potential customers with good credit ratings can't get loans now even after the federal government approved a $700 billion economic rescue package last October for the major financial institutions.
"The banks are sitting there, and the regulators are telling them you better make credit-worthy loans because we're not going to make the mistake we did before on residential mortgages and other things that are not credit worthy," said Mr. Dodd, who is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.
"The regulations are very tough," he said, adding, "A lot of these institutions are still sitting on a lot of toxic assets."
The senator expects that Mr. Obama will submit a report within weeks on the stress test that his administration has conducted on the viability of the nation's major banks.
Mr. Dodd said he opposes a nationalization of America's banks, saying that, among other things, the federal government doesn't have the resources to do that.
He said that the comparison to Sweden's nationalization of its banking system in the early 1990s is not viable as that country only has nine banks, while the United States has 8,000 banks, with 19 of them holding 75 percent of all of the deposits.
"That point is not made often enough," Mr. Dodd said.
On a separate subject, he said that he is disappointed over the results of the Permanent Normal Trade Relations legislation between China and the United States, which he supported when it came before the Senate nine years ago.
Mr. Dodd said that at the time that he and other senators thought that "there would be greater likelihood that the Chinese would follow the rules and regulations" if there were permanent trade relations between the "two countries, which led to China's becoming a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001.
"Obviously the Chinese are not living up to those obligations," he said. "We still do not have the access to their markets."
"My hope is that the Obama administration will be much tougher in a responsible way," Mr. Dodd said.
"There is a difference between being an economic adversary and [being] an economic competitor," he said. "China has turned into an economic adversary."
Against the backdrop of pressing national and international issues, Mr. Dodd has been dealing with other problems. Washington Post columnist Chris Cillizza has stated that, politically, Mr. Dodd has been in "a free fall" for a year, as he has had to react to reports that he and his wife, Jackie, received favoritism on refinancing of a mortgage and that he denied but then later acknowledged that at the behest of the Treasury Department he included a provision in legislation that allowed for executives of AIG to receive bonuses after receiving federal money.
A Quinnipiac University poll last month indicated that former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons (R-Stonington) would defeat Mr. Dodd 50 to 34 percent if the 2010 election was currently held.
The senator also trailed in matchups from that poll with State Sen. Sam Caliguri (R-Waterbury) and former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley of Greenwich.
Mr. Cillizza has rated Connecticut's Senate race as the third most likely to have a change of parties in the 2010 election.
Democratic State Central Committee member Audrey Blondin of Litchfield, who helped coordinate the session with area Democratic leaders last Saturday, said she doesn't believe that any of the party members that attended the session would support Roger Pearson of Greenwich, a former congressional candidate who has formed an exploratory committee for a possible primary challenge to Mr. Dodd.
She said that she is not concerned about the senator's poor poll numbers.
"Not when you compare and contrast that to an opponent who is more of the same with the Bush administration," Mrs. Blondin, an attorney, said in an apparent reference to Mr. Simmons, who served for six years in the U.S. House.
"When people start paying attention to that, I am confident that the poll numbers will change."
Mr. Dodd, who has attended many events in Connecticut in the 15 months since he ended his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, said that he has received "a wellspring of support" from voters, some of whom are pleased with legislation that he has sponsored through the years, for example, on family medical leaves and voter polling place protections.
On a humorous note, he said that although he is a longtime Red Sox fan, he would accept campaign contributions from Yankee fans in the state, noting that he and his good friend and fervent Yankee fan, famed singer Paul Simon of New Canaan, attend one Red Sox-Yankee game each year at both Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium.
Mr. Dodd said that he has been to 101 Red Sox-Yankees games through the years, with the Red Sox winning 50 of them and the Yankees 51.
"It doesn't get any better than that," he said.
"I think they should give me double what a Boston Red Sox fan gives me," Mr. Dodd said with a laugh regarding possible campaign contributions from Yankee fans for his election to a sixth term.
"This is the price of being a Yankee fan." the senator said with a smile.
