Democrats Zing Bush on Market-Scandal Response

Democratic leaders said Tuesday they were winning the battle of ideas with Republicans, accusing President Bush of failing to respond to a wave of corporate scandals and investor uncertainty.

“George W. Bush seems to know that things aren’t working, so he talks about it and talks about it and talks about it, but he doesn’t do anything about it,” House Democratic leader Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri told a gathering of centrist Democrats.

“We can read this president’s lips, but we don’t hear any new ideas and we don’t see any real action,” said Gephardt, the last of five potential 2004 presidential hopefuls to speak at the Democratic Leadership Council’s annual meeting.

Democrats claimed credit for the new law sponsored by Maryland Democratic Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes that Bush signed Tuesday. They said Republicans supported the law, which cracks down on accounting fraud and makes it harder for company executives to deceive investors, only under public pressure.

“They felt the heat and saw the light,” Gephardt said.

North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who spoke earlier in the day, called for a new dedication to values, saying the greatest tragedy of recent stock and corporate collapses was “the drop in corporate values that led to the collapse.”

“We want an economy and a society that lives up to our values,” said Edwards, who called for a corporate “right-to-know” rule that would require companies to tell workers the pay of their chief executives and justify the size of their compensation packages.

“I know President Bush likes to steal our ideas--but Mr. President, if you’re not going to use this word ‘responsibility,’ we want it back,” he said.