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Pryor: Next president should walk into White House with economic plan Thursday, Mar 20, 2008 By Jason Wiest Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - In light of a $9 trillion federal debt and the country's recent economic woes, the next president should enter office with an economic plan like former President Clinton did, U.S. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said Wednesday. "My hope is that when the new president comes in, whoever he or she may be, I would hope that newly elected president will take a page out of Bill Clinton's play book and convene an economic summit," Pryor said Wednesday in a speech to the Little Rock Founders Lions Club. Pryor, a Democratic super delegate, has endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., for president. After winning the presidency in 1992, Bill Clinton called economic experts to Arkansas for a weeks-long conference out of which he structured a national economic plan. "When Bill Clinton was sworn in, he hit the ground running with an economic plan and he stayed with that economic plan for eight years," Pryor said, noting that the country had its largest and longest economic expansion in history under Clinton. The nation had $2.7 trillion in national debt when Clinton left office, but the debt has grown to $9 trillion under the Bush administration and is "crushing this country," Pryor said. When discussing anything from trade issues to human rights issues with countries that hold a lot of that debt, the U.S. has little leverage, he said. The next president needs to focus on the "out of control" federal budget, Pryor said. In the meantime, lawmakers are working on a follow-up to a $168 billion economic stimulus package that would deal with housing, but the details are still being formulated, Pryor said. Pryor said he is eager for Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who are locked in a tough race for the Democratic presidential nomination, to return to the Senate full-time from the campaign trail. "They're really missing a lot of votes, and you know, it's hard for us to function without a full slate there," Pryor said. |
