Bush promises to take on wrongdoers in corporate America

WASHINGTON -- The gathering scandals in big business brought harsh words from President Bush for a third straight day Friday, even as Democrats accused Republicans of creating "anything goes" corporate standards ripe for fraud.

In a stern, scolding tone, the president pledged that his Justice Department would prosecute miscreant executives.

"Corporate America has got to understand there's a higher calling than trying to fudge the numbers, trying to slip a billion here or a billion there and maybe hope nobody notices," he said at a campaign fund-raising lunch for Rep. Connie Morella, R-Md.

Following WorldCom's disclosure earlier this week that it misrepresented $3.8 billion in expenses, Xerox announced Friday that it, too, had overstated revenue by billions.

Majority Leader Tom Daschle opened the day's business on the Senate floor with a denunciation of "a deregulatory, permissive atmosphere that has relied too much on corporate America to police itself." He listed companies that have been in hot water, including Halliburton, where Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive.

The Bush administration and its "laissez-faire attitude" toward business helped create today's problems, Daschle, D-S.D., said afterward.

With internal Republican polling showing that Bush and his party are vulnerable on the topic, the president was using his Saturday radio address -- and the Democrats were using theirs -- to speak about corporate responsibility. Bush also was preparing a speech for July 9 on Wall Street.

Tracing the roots

In the House, Minority Leader Richard Gephardt traced the roots of today's corruption to the deregulation of corporate America that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich championed in the 1995 Republican takeover of Congress.

Democrats are on a "desperate search for a silver bullet issue in 2002," Carl Forti, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a memo to Republican House candidates Friday.

The White House is already unspooling its countercampaign.

Twice in two days at this week's summit of world leaders in Canada, Bush lashed out at WorldCom and demanded better of corporate America. And in private summit talks, Bush tried to reassure British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Russian President Vladimir Putin that there was no reason to be anxious about the United States economy despite severely shaken investor confidence.

As Bush told Friday's campaign contributors: "I'm not concerned about the fundamentals of our economy."