[Senate Document 105-32]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
105th Congress, 2nd Session - - - - - - - - - - Senate Document 105-32
Dale Bumpers
U.S. SENATOR FROM ARKANSAS
TRIBUTES
IN THE CONGRESS OF
THE UNITED STATES
S. Doc. 105-32
Tributes
Delivered in Congress
Dale Bumpers
United States Senator
1974-1998
---
Compiled under the direction
of the
Secretary of the Senate
by the
Office of Printing and Document Services
CONTENTS
Biography............................................. vii
Proceedings in the Senate:
Tributes by Senators:
Boxer, Barbara, of California.................. 45
Burns, Conrad, of Montana...................... 18
Byrd, Robert C., of West Virginia.............. 14
Cochran, Thad, of Mississippi.................. 1
Daschle, Tom, of South Dakota............... 11, 23
Dodd, Christopher J., of Connecticut........... 41
Domenici, Pete, of New Mexico.................. 7
Ford, Wendell H., of Kentucky.................. 22
Hutchinson, Tim, of Arkansas................... 2
Feingold, Russell D., of Wisconsin............. 31
Ford, Wendell H., of Kentucky.................. 22
Harkin, Tom, of Iowa........................... 29
Jeffords, James M., of Vermont................. 4
Kempthorne, Dirk, of Idaho..................... 20
Lautenberg, Frank R., of New Jersey.......... 8, 17
Leahy, Patrick J., of Vermont.................. 43
Levin, Carl, of Michigan....................... 6
Lott, Trent, of Mississippi.................... 36
Mikulski, Barbara A., of Maryland.............. 47
Nickles, Don, of Oklahoma.................... 4, 14
Sessions, Jeff, of Alabama..................... 28
Thurmond, Strom, of South Carolina............. 5
Farewell address of Senator Bumpers................ 48
Order for printing of individual Senate documents.. 56
Proceedings in the House:
Tributes by Representatives:
Berry, Marion of Arkansas...................... 59
Articles and Editorials:
Seniority Bites, Roll Call......................... 63
Bumpers Presses on Toward Legacy of Changes on
Hill, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.............. 64
Senators Extol Bumpers' Candor, Constancy, The
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette........................ 67
It's Bumpers Big Day, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 70
Amid Tears, Bumpers Says He'll Quit in 1998, The
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN).................. 71
Bumpers Calls an End to Political Career, The
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette........................ 72
Exodus From Politics, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 75
What Dale Bumpers Says, He Believes, The News and
Observer (Raleigh, NC)........................... 80
Bumpers Retirement Statement, The Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette................................. 81
BIOGRAPHY
First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1974, U.S. Senator
Dale Bumpers is serving his fourth term as a Democratic
Senator from Arkansas. He was reelected in 1992 with more
than 60 percent of the vote.
Before joining the U.S. Senate, Bumpers served two terms
as Governor of Arkansas, where he reorganized State
government and trimmed the number of State agencies from
69 to 13; doubled the number of State Parks; started the
State Kindergarten Program and launched an initiative that
doubled the number of doctors trained at Arkansas' only
medical school.
Before entering politics, Bumpers lived in his home town
of Charleston, where he practiced law; operated a small
hardware, furniture, and appliance store; raised cattle;
and pursued several other business interests. During those
years, Bumpers was active also in community affairs,
serving as city attorney, school board president, and
president of the Chamber of Commerce.
After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps for 3 years in
the South Pacific during World War II, Senator Bumpers
returned to continue his undergraduate work at the
University of Arkansas, and later received his law degree
from Northwestern University.
Bumpers is married to the former Betty Flanagan of
Charleston. They are the parents of three children, Brent,
Bill, and Brooke, and they have six grandchildren.
A champion of the taxpayer and a foe of government
waste, Senator Bumpers fought for a balanced budget long
before it became a publicized national issue. He led the
successful battle to cancel the $12 billion
Superconducting Super Collider, and he is continuing his
efforts to ground the $100 billion space station, a
boondoggle he contends offers few, if any, scientific
benefits. While supporting a strong but not bloated
defense, Senator Bumpers has fought to eliminate Star
Wars, a pipe dream that would make the heavens a
battlefield and cost citizens hundreds of billions of
dollars for an illusion of security; and the F-22, an
unneeded fighter plane that sports a price tag of $180
million each.
From his position as the ranking member of the Senate
Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Bumpers also
fights policies that attack the common good. Calling it
``the biggest ongoing scam in America,'' Senator Bumpers
has, for 9 years, sought to stop the giveaway of America's
public lands. Since 1872, mining interests, many of them
foreign-owned, have paid as little as $2.50 an acre for
mineral-rich public lands and extracted billions of
dollars worth of gold, silver, platinum and palladium
while paying not a penny in royalties to American
taxpayers. ``Mining companies get the gold and the
taxpayers get the shaft,'' he says of this staggering
abuse of public assets.
Also, he has fought for nearly 20 years to bring
competition to the operation of concessions in National
Parks, which, because of preferential treatment for
contracts, rake in about $700 million a year but offer
taxpayers a meager 2.4 percent return on the use of their
land.
Senator Bumpers was one of only three Senators to vote
for the 1981 Reagan budget cuts but against the reckless
1981 tax cuts. Had a majority adopted his positions,
Federal budget deficits would have been eliminated by
1985.
A student of history with a profound respect for the
intelligence, ideals and vision of the country's founders
and a healthy skepticism of passing fads in economic and
social theory, Senator Bumpers is hesitant to change the
Constitution, which he calls a ``sacred document.''
As a Senator from a rural State and the top ranking
Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on
Agriculture, Dale Bumpers has fought to protect family
farmers, to expand rural housing and to promote rural
development, especially the water and sewer programs that
improve the quality of life and help bring jobs to rural
areas.
A dedicated environmentalist, Senator Bumpers believes
we must preserve America's natural heritage and warns that
America's fate may hinge on stopping and preventing
threats to our air, land, water and habitats. And he has
played a crucial role in protecting the integrity of
national historic sites, such as the Manassas Battlefield
in Virginia.
Senator Bumpers and his wife Betty have long been
national leaders in protecting the health of children by
promoting childhood immunization. Their efforts have
helped Amer-
ica reach a record high level of immunizations. Since
1991, Mrs. Bumpers and Rosalyn Carter have been actively
involved in ``Every Child by Two,'' a program dedicated to
fully immunize every American child by the age of two.
In January, 1997, Senator Bumpers became the highest
ranking Democrat Member of the Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee, and also in 1997 introduced the first
comprehensive legislation of the 105th Congress to
deregulate the electricity industry, which could save
consumers billions of dollars. He also sits on the
powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and is a member
of the Small Business Committee.
During his tenure in the Senate, Bumpers has kept in
close touch with the people of Arkansas, making more than
100 appearances in the State annually.
Senator Bumpers has received numerous awards and honors.
In April 1996, because of his tireless efforts on behalf
of research projects for the University of Arkansas, the
University's Board of Trustees renamed the College of
Agriculture the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food
and Life Sciences.
In a poll by The Hill newspaper in 1994, Senate staff
members chose him as the second best-liked Democratic
Senator, just behind the majority leader. Admired for his
unshakable integrity and his willingness to cast the
occasional unpopular vote, Bumpers has been described by
the respected political weekly National Journal as a
Senator to whom ``other Senators pay attention.''
Bumpers reveres the Senate's traditions of deliberation
and debate and is widely recognized for his gift of public
speaking. Bumpers has been named one of the ten best U.S.
Senators in a poll of Washington correspondents, and was
chosen as the top Senator orator in a USA Today poll of
Senate press secretaries.
Senator Bumpers received the 1993 Medal of the Society
Award from the National Park Foundation for his commitment
to scenic and historic preservation. He also was awarded
the 1993 Dream Award from the National Association of Home
Builders for his support of rural housing and tax credits
for first-time home buyers.
More recently, Senator Bumpers and Mrs. Bumpers received
the 1995 Maxwell Finland Award from the National
Foundation for Infectious Diseases for their longstanding
efforts to improve health care, especially in the realm of
childhood immunization. In 1997, he received the Lifetime
Achievement Award from the League of Conservation Voters
for his work protecting the environment.
TRIBUTES
to
DALE BUMPERS
Proceedings in the Senate
Thursday, June 18, 1998.
Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I must also observe, before
yielding the floor, that my good friend from Arkansas, who
is the distinguished ranking Democrat on the subcommittee
on agriculture appropriations, is helping manage this bill
this year, and it will be his last opportunity to exercise
this important responsibility.
He has chosen not to seek reelection in the State of
Arkansas for another term in the Senate. And I must say
that it pains me to contemplate going through the process
of developing and helping to write an agriculture
appropriations bill without his intelligent and thoughtful
assistance. He has been a good friend to me since I have
been in the Senate. We have worked closely together on a
number of issues, not only in agriculture, in rural
development, but in other areas as well.
I pointed out earlier in my statement that in
recognition of his outstanding service for the people of
Arkansas in the U.S. Senate, and particularly for his work
on agriculture research issues, there is included in this
bill a general provision to designate the U.S. National
Rice Germplasm Evaluation and Enhancement Center in
Stuttgart, AR, the ``Dale Bumpers National Rice Research
Center.''
The distinguished Senator from Arkansas has been a very
effective advocate of agriculture research funds for this
ARS Research Center. I think he is the father of that
center. I believe it is most appropriate to name this
facility in his honor.
Thursday, July 16, 1998.
Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I express my sincere
appreciation to all Senators for their assistance and
cooperation in the consideration of the agriculture
appropriations bill. In particular, I thank my
distinguished colleague and good friend from Arkansas, who
has served for 20 years as a member of this committee and
was helping manage the agricultural appropriations bill
for the last time in his Senate career. He has been not
only a very good friend but very helpful, thoughtful,
intelligent and effective as a Senator in this capacity,
helping shape this legislation during the time we have had
the opportunity to work together as members of the
Appropriations Committee.
I am going to miss him very much. The Senate is going to
miss Dale Bumpers. He is one of the most astute,
articulate and effective Senators serving in the Senate
today.
I want Senators to know, too, that at my request, this
bill includes a general provision to designate the United
States National Rice Germplasm Evaluation and Enhancement
Center in Stuttgart, AR, the Dale Bumpers National Rice
Research Center.
In my judgment, Senator Bumpers is the father of this
center. He has helped guide the development of the
research there in this important agriculture sector. I
think it is very appropriate and I was pleased that the
subcommittee included that in our committee print. It was
approved by the full committee and is included in the bill
that was passed by the Senate.
Wednesday, October 7, 1998.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I rise today to pay
tribute to my retiring colleague from Arkansas, Senator
Dale Bumpers. Arkansas is a State with a small population,
and it is a State where politicians of even opposing
political parties and philosophies find their lives and
careers intersecting and intertwining.
As a high school student, I followed Dale Bumpers'
meteoric rise from an unknown country lawyer from
Charleston, AR, to the Governor of the State and a man who
became known in Arkansas politics as the giant killer,
defeating such luminaries of Arkansas politics as Win
Rockefeller and J.W. Fulbright.
I worked for Dale's opponent in 1980, not because I was
enamored by his opponent, but because I was upset with
some of Dale's votes. That has always been the way with
Dale Bumpers; you either agreed with him passionately or
you disagreed vehemently.
While Dale has always been as smooth as honey, he has
never tried to varnish his views or dilute his positions
to make them more palatable to the general public, whether
it was the Panama Canal or the space station.
Mr. President, I mentioned that in Arkansas, political
lives and careers intersect frequently. In 1986, my
brother Asa, then a U.S. attorney and now serving in the
U.S. House of Representatives, ran against Senator Bumpers
in his second reelection campaign.
I worked in Asa's campaign, and I encountered and
experienced firsthand the high esteem in which the people
of Arkansas hold Dale Bumpers. After Senator Bumpers won
that race resoundingly, delivering a good old country
thumping to the Hutchinsons, I returned to my service in
the Arkansas legislature and Asa became the State GOP
chairman. We continued to follow Senator Bumpers' career
from afar, occasionally bumping into him at events in the
State.
In 1990, Asa ran for attorney general of Arkansas. It
was a politically tough, mean, even nasty race. It was
hard fought and a very close race. I remember 1 day as I
was working in Asa's headquarters in Little Rock, Dale
Bumpers walked in off the street unannounced. He came by,
he said, to wish us well and to say that he always
respected us and thought well of us. I saw a side of Dale
Bumpers that those who know him well see all the time. He
knows well that there is life beyond the political arena
and that politicians are, first and foremost, human
beings.
I saw this again in 1996 when I was running for the U.S.
Senate. It was the closing days of a very close race. Dale
and my predecessor, Senator David Pryor, were campaigning
for my opponent in a fly around of the State. I suppose
Dale was returning the favor from a decade before when I
was campaigning for his opponent.
In the closing days, my son Timothy was involved in a
tragic and terrible automobile accident. Timothy was
seriously injured, and I was in the hospital room, not
sure whether he was going to make it or not. The phone
rang, and it was Dale Bumpers. He called to assure me of
his thoughts and his prayers and to tell me that he and
David were suspending campaigning until it was clear that
my son was going to be OK.
Dale, we will miss you around this place. I won't miss
your votes, but I will miss you. I will miss your stories,
and I will miss your humor. I will miss your eloquence,
and I will miss your passion. I am grateful that our
Senate careers overlapped for these 2 years. Thanks for
your advice and counsel, and best wishes on this next
phase of your life.
Thursday, October 8, 1998.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I would like to pay a brief
tribute to my friend and colleague and neighbor from the
State of Arkansas for his 24 years of service in the
Senate.
I have had the pleasure of working with Senator Dale
Bumpers since I was elected to the Senate 18 years ago. So
I am completing three terms. He is just completing four
terms. Twenty-four years in the Senate is a long time. But
I think the Senate has been blessed by his humor, his
levity. The camaraderie that Senator Bumpers has brought
to the Senate floor and to the Senate group has been
enjoyable, educational, and humorous, to say the least.
I have had the pleasure of serving with Senator Bumpers
on the Energy Committee where he has been ranking member
for the last several years. We have worked together on a
lot of legislation. We passed some good legislation, I
might add, as well. So I compliment him for his years of
service.
He served 4 years as Governor of Arkansas; I think he
was elected in 1970; and elected to the U.S. Senate in
1974. It seems like he has been in the same chair for
years. He has been the same Senator who will still get
excited on a speech and pull his microphone cord to the
limit. Maybe he might test the limit of the cord as much
as anybody I know in the Senate--a very good speaker, a
very good friend who has served his State very well.
We worked together on several pieces of legislation,
including legislation that dealt with the exchange of
lands, both for the Forest Service and for protecting
lands in both Arkansas and Oklahoma, that would not have
happened if it had not been for his good work and
leadership. And frankly, he was a pleasure to work with on
that bill, and many other pieces of legislation throughout
our careers.
So I certainly wish Dale Bumpers and his wife Betty
every best wish in their days ahead. He has made a
valuable contribution as a Member of the U.S. Senate and
as a Member of our Senate family.
Mr. JEFFORDS. Let me first join my good friend from
Oklahoma in his accolades for Senator Bumpers. I expect
that I, as a Republican, probably supported some of
Senator Bumpers' pieces of legislation more than any other
Republican. And I had an opportunity to work with him on
many that were not popular with some of the people,
especially in the far West. But I point out that I have
enjoyed so much working with him, especially on things
which most all of us agreed on, as the preservation of
Civil War sites and other of our historical aspects which
are so important to this Nation.
I am going to be so sorry to see him leave. We had many
wonderful times together. And I expect we will have some
more out in his great State.
Friday, October 9, 1998.
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, one of the things that
makes the Senate such a unique and enjoyable place to work
is the fact that there are 100 unique personalities that
make up this institution. While each member takes his or
her duties seriously, I hope that I do not offend anyone
when I say that not all are gifted orators. One person who
definitely can engage in articulate and compelling debate,
and is also able to bring a little levity to our
proceedings through his wit and ability to tell a story is
the Senator from Arkansas, Dale Bumpers.
First elected to the Senate in 1974, Senator Bumpers
arrived with an already well established and well deserved
reputation for having a commitment to serving his
constituents and our Nation. He served in the United
States Marine Corps during World War II, as well as the
Governor of Arkansas, having been elected to that post in
1970. Clearly, his training as the chief executive of his
home State, along with experiences as a trial lawyer, gave
him the skills that would make him an effective and
respected Senator.
For the past more than 20-years, Senator Bumpers has
worked hard to represent his State, and in doing so, has
made many valuable contributions to the U.S. Senate. I
regret that we have not shared any committee assignments,
but I have always respected and valued the opinions of the
Senator from Arkansas. His exist from the Senate leaves
this institution without one of its most impressive and
effective advocates.
I am certain that Dale and his lovely wife Betty will
enjoy the more deliberate lifestyle and pace that being
out of politics will afford them and I wish the both of
them health, happiness and success in the years ahead.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the U.S. Senate is about to
lose one of the great orators of its long history. I never
had the opportunity, of course, to hear Webster or Clay or
Calhoun. But, I have heard Dale Bumpers of Arkansas on the
Senate floor and it's hard to imagine anyone could have
been a more forceful, eloquent, or effective speaker.
I was reminded recently by a former staff member of one
debate in particular. The issue was the proposed real
estate development in Northern Virginia at the site of the
Second Battle of Manassas. The debate had stretched into a
Friday evening and a larger than usual number of Senators
were on the floor. The manager had made an effective
presentation when Dale Bumpers, the author of a more
restrictive version of the bill rose to speak.
Knowing that many of his colleagues love history, Dale
Bumpers using detailed maps laid out the story of the
Second Battle of Manassas more than a hundred years ago.
Every Senator on the floor that night listened with rapt
attention. As he reached the climax of his performance,
Dale Bumpers said:
``Well, I could go on and on, but I want to just simply
say * * * I believe strongly in our heritage, and I think
our children ought to know where these battlefields are
and what was involved in them. And, I don't want to go out
there 10 years from now with my grandson and tell him
about the Second Battle of Manassas * * * and he says,
``Grandpa, wasn't General Lee in control of this war
here--didn't he command the confederate troops.?''
``Yes, he did.''
``Well, where was he?''
``He was up there where that shopping mall is.''
Senator Bumpers then said, ``I can see a big granite
monument inside that mall's hallway right now: `General
Lee Stood On This Spot'. Now if you really cherish our
heritage, as I do, and you believe that history is very
important for our children, you'll vote for my
amendment.''
Rarely in the modern Senate do we see issues actually
decided in debate on the floor. But, I suspect that that
night I watched Dale Bumpers, with that speech, win the
``Third Battle of Manassas''.
Dale Bumpers has served in the Senate for four terms. He
has been one of the most consistent voices for elimination
of wasteful government spending. We will all miss his
leadership in efforts to reform Federal mining law and
grazing fees. His battles against the Clinch River Breeder
Reactor which he won in 1984, the superconducting super
collider which he finally won in 1993 and the space
station which he did not win, have become legendary.
Dale Bumpers and I both take pride in the fact that we
were among the few Senators to vote against the Reagan tax
cut and unfunded defense buildup of 1981 which together
led to the huge deficits of the 1980's.
Dale would have made a great President because he is a
person whose clarity of expression is matched by the
courage of his vision and his commitment to America's
working families.
Mr. President, when the 106th Congress convenes next
year, the Senate will seem an emptier body in the absence
of one of its most memorable leaders and all of us in the
Senate family with miss Dale and Betty Bumpers.
Saturday, October 10, 1998.
Mr. DOMENICI. First let me talk for a moment, since he
is present on the floor, of Senator Bumpers, the senior
Senator from Arkansas. Let me use a couple of minutes of
my time to say a few words about him before I proceed to
talk about the budget and a few other matters.
First, I want to say to Senator Bumpers, I don't think
he needs me to repeat again what I have said in committee.
He is going to be missed. He has been a real credit to
this place called the U.S. Senate. I have never known him
to behave, act, or in any way conduct himself as to demean
this place. He has held it in respect, and that makes it a
better place when we do that.
But I also want to remind the Senate, since it has not
been stated here on the floor as I know of, that in the
energy and water appropriations bill it was my privilege,
at the behest of some of Dale Bumpers' good friends here
in the Senate, with the help of his staff and others, to
include a resolution honoring him for his diligent and
hard work on behalf of the public domain in the United
States--the forest lands, the wilderness, the parks. In
that bill, the resolution says we want him to be known for
as long as there is an Arkansas. Thus, we took eight
wilderness areas that are in his State that he had a lot
to do with, and for name purposes we made all of them part
of one wilderness called the Dale Bumpers Wilderness Area.
That is now 91,000 acres in total that will bear your
name. I know many other things could be done to indicate
our esteem for you, but many of us thought that this might
just be one that would strike you as quite appropriate.
And we hope so. It is now the law of the land. The
President signed it about 22 hours ago. Thus, I am here
saying it in your presence.
I thank you personally on behalf of our side of the
aisle for everything you have done.
Then, might I say to Senator Bumpers, that aisle, from
your podium on down here to the first step into the well,
is going to get a deserved rest when you leave. That aisle
and the carpet there is going to take a new breath and say
there is nobody walking up and down on top of us, because
Dale Bumpers is not walking, walking the floor there as he
delivers his eloquent speeches on the Senate floor. I only
say that by way of the great respect we have for the way
you talk to us, and talk to the American people. I am very
pleased that you used that little 30 feet of carpet and
hall as your place to talk.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, this is one of those
moments that one feels a bit overwhelmed--to follow Dale
Bumpers in a discourse that he gives here on the floor.
This is a task that I never liked--to get on the floor
after Dale Bumpers moved us with his oratory and described
his feelings for this institution and our responsibility.
But there is another reason that I am really feeling
uneasy; that is, the prospect that this place will be
without Dale's voice, without his wit, his humor, but more
importantly, his commitment to the people of this country.
I want you to know, Dale, what a sacrifice I make today.
I decided to stay here rather than to go to a budget
conference down the hall trying to wrestle with the issues
of the day. So I sacrificed that time just so I could
stand on this floor to hear your terminal speech. That is
devotion and friendship, I assume.
I have to say that one could see the position that Dale
has earned over the years, because people were as generous
and as warm and as friendly from the other side of the
aisle. That doesn't mean that we always agree, and it
doesn't mean that we always share a similar direction for
our country.
But Dale has succeeded in winning friends, in making
sure that we never forgot about who it is we are here to
serve. We could make lots of jokes, but one never wants to
compete with Dale's humor. I think about the only close
match was with Dale Bumpers and Alan Simpson. That was a
good team. The jokes were always better when we were off
the floor somehow. But beyond the wit, beyond the humor,
beyond the jokes was always this incredible pursuit of
what is right for our country and what is right for our
people.
I have submitted a written statement without the kind of
eloquence I wish I could have borrowed from Dale. He was
right, he was accurate when he said his impression of his
IQ was overblown. All of us agree with that.
We know Dale well. We love him. We love to tease him a
little bit. There were very few times on this floor when
Dale could not get attention from others, and it wasn't
just the volume; it was the substance of his mission that
we all paid attention to. They kid him about stretching
the cord that holds our microphones, but everybody was
anxious to hear what Dale had to say or read what was in
the Record.
So I just wanted to have a chance to say how pleased I
am for the opportunity to be here at the last speech
Senator Dale Bumpers was going to make in this Chamber. It
has been an honor to serve with Dale as well as to serve
with people such as John Glenn. John Glenn is one of the
finest people who, it is fair to say, has ever left this
Earth. But we are going to see John Glenn at the end of
the month and witness his heroic and incredible mission
into the sky. John Glenn was with me when I was sworn into
the Senate. We happened to be in Colorado on a vacation
just 16 years ago, and he stood while I found a magistrate
to swear me in because there was an opportunity based on
the resignation of the then-appointed Senator.
At the same time we are saying goodbye to Wendell Ford.
Wendell is someone who you could fight with, get your
blood pressure up, more often than not you would lose the
argument and lose the debate. But Wendell Ford got things
done. And I want to tell you, if I had to be served by a
Senator, I would want that Senator to have the same
concern about my State and my well-being and my family and
my future as did Wendell Ford. He never let an opportunity
go by without defending his people and the State of
Kentucky. Although we disagreed on lots of occasions, I
always walked away with a high degree of affection and
respect for Wendell Ford.
So when I listen to Dale Bumpers summarize his life, I
think about where we are, because too often the arguments
here overtake the purpose of our functioning. But Dale
Bumpers, Senator Dale Bumpers reminds us that the mission
is almost a holy one and that we have to step back and
take a deep breath and get down to the business of the
American people.
I wish to thank the Democratic leader for giving me
these few minutes. I also wanted to take an opportunity to
say so long to Senator Dan Coats. Dan Coats was a
formidable opponent for me when New Jersey persisted in
sending its trash out to Indiana where it was welcomed by
the communities that had the certified landfills and all
that. But Dan Coats didn't object when New Jersey sent its
All-American football players to Notre Dame or to the
University of Indiana. But serving with Dan also has been
a privilege.
Mr. President, I wrap up just by saying that Dale
Bumpers, if you listened to his words, arrived here
encouraged by a father who saw the value of government
service, and it is an interesting and touching explanation
of what it is that provided his motivation. My father also
motivated me to engage in whatever enterprise I could to
serve the public. But he didn't know it then. He worked.
He tried to survive with his family during the lean and
tough years, ashamed that he had to resort to a job with
the WPA. I will never forget how discouraged he was when
he came home, but, he said, he needed the job; he had to
feed his family. My father died at the age of 43, after a
year of illness with cancer. I had already enlisted in the
Army. He disintegrated in front of our eyes, leaving not
only an empty house but an empty wallet. My mother had to
work. I had to send home my allotment to help pay the
bills that were accumulated during that period of time.
But we both got here because we were encouraged by
things that occurred in our families, messages that were
sent by our parents, mine perhaps less articulate than the
one I heard Dale Bumpers describe. But we are here because
they were able to give us that opportunity and we are here
because we want to serve, to do something, to give
something back as a result of having that opportunity.
To Senator Dale Bumpers and the others, we say farewell.
This place will be a lesser place without your presence,
but because of your presence this place will continue to
gain strength and to do what we have to do for the future.
Rest assured that America will be strong. It will be
different forces and different faces, but the work will
continue to be done here.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. If the Senator will suspend for
just a minute, I am going to stretch the prerogatives of
the Chair to say I came over to talk about Senator
Bumpers, whom I have gotten to know recently. We worked on
park bills. I know no one more committed nor more easy to
work with and who keeps his word any better.
I am sorry to say that, but I needed to.
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I don't think anyone could
say it any better than that, and I appreciate the
Presiding Officer's comments. They are certainly well
spoken and very appropriate. I join my colleague from New
Jersey in expressing feelings that are very hard to
express in public. Senator Bumpers and I have some things
in common. I am not as eloquent as he is, but I feel at
times such as this probably as emotional.
I love his sense of humor. I have used more Bumpers
material in my public career than anybody else in this
Chamber. I don't think this is his story, but I might as
well start with it. There was a time when Senator Bumpers
was at a dinner. We all go to these banquets over and over
and over. We all drag our wives along. And they are so
good to come with us so often. Betty was at this
particular dinner with Senator Bumpers, sitting, as she
always does, at his side supportive and smiling.
The emcee introduced Senator Bumpers as one who is a
model legislator, a model politician, a model spokesperson
for Arkansas, just a model person all the way around. On
the way home, Dale commented to Betty about what a
wonderful introduction that was. They got home; Betty
brought the dictionary to Dale, sitting now in his own
study, and read to him the word ``model,'' as it is
defined in Webster's. There it is defined as ``a small
replica of the real thing.''
Senator Bumpers is a model in the truest sense of the
word. In many respects I call him my model, for how he
speaks, for what he stands for, for how he interacts with
his colleagues, for how he represents his State, for all
of the courageous positions he has taken. I don't know how
you do better than that. I don't know who it was who once
said, ``If we are to see farther into the future, we must
stand on the shoulders of giants.'' Dale Bumpers is a
giant. And it is upon his shoulders that we have stood
many, many, many times to see into the future, as I have
seen. He persuades us, he cajoles us, he humors us, he
always enlightens us.
As I heard Senator Domenici, the senior Senator from New
Mexico, say earlier: ``He does it in a way that is not in
fashion perhaps, not in keeping with what the normal rules
of the body are.'' The normal rules are, you are supposed
to stay at your desk. Not Senator Bumpers. Senator Bumpers
has the longest cord in Senate history. I joked the other
night, when we finally see Senator Bumpers depart, we are
going to cut up his cord and give 10 feet to every Senator
and save 10 more for the next. He goes up and down that
aisle.
Since, as we are prone to do in this body, we name
things after our colleagues--I happen to be fortunate
enough to reside in the Byrd suite--I am going to start
referring to that as the Bumpers corridor. And I am
pointing, for the record, to my left. For anybody who has
served with Dale, I don't have to point at all. We all
know what the Bumpers corridor is.
So it is a bittersweet moment. We recognize the time
comes for all of us to depart, to say goodbye. As others
have noted, and I am sure more will note before the end of
the session, we say goodbye not only to our dear,
wonderful friend Dale, but to his wife Betty as well.
There is no question, as we all know, he over-married.
There is no question who the real force in the family is.
There is no question who the visionary and the giant is.
As Senator Bumpers so capably noted, there is no question
who is beloved in the State of Arkansas. We will miss
Betty Bumpers and her vision and her humor and all of her
contributions.
I asked my staff to put some thoughts together and I
really want to share some of them because I think, for the
record and for our colleagues and for those who may be
watching, it is important to remember who it was we just
have heard from.
We heard from a Marine. We heard from a man who
volunteered to serve during World War II. We heard from a
person who grew up in a small town, Charleston, AR--I
don't have a clue where it is--where he worked as a
smalltown lawyer and taught Sunday school. He may not have
been a Methodist preacher, but he was a Sunday school
teacher. He told us about his decision, in 1970, to run
for Governor. What he did not say is that he was one of
eight candidates vying for the Democratic nomination. He
did indicate that polls taken at the start of the race
gave him a 1-percent approval rating. That is half of what
it is right now. He sold a herd of Angus cattle for
$95,000 to finance his TV ad campaign. You couldn't get
that much for Angus cattle today.
He finished the primary in second place, behind someone
whose name we all know, Orville Faubus, whose race-baiting
brand of politics still dominated much of Arkansas
Democratic politics. He beat Orville Faubus in a runoff
and went on to beat the incumbent Republican, Governor
Winthrop Rockefeller, in a general election by a margin of
2 to 1.
After being elected Governor, Dale Bumpers was asked by
Tom Wicker, then a reporter for the New York Times, to
explain how a man would come from obscurity to beat two
living legends. He answered simply, ``I tried to appeal to
the best in people in my campaign.'' And that is what he
has done his entire public career; he has appealed to the
best of people.
As Governor, he worked aggressively and successfully to
modernize the State government. He put a tremendous
emphasis on improving education and expanding health
services. Then, in 1973, with 1 year remaining in his
term, he made the decision to challenge another living
legend, William J. Fulbright, for the Democratic
nomination for the U.S. Senate. Senator Fulbright was, at
that time, a 30-year incumbent Senator. It probably did
not come as any surprise to people in Arkansas, but it
must have to the Nation, because when all the votes were
counted, Dale won that race too, 2 to 1.
In the Senate, there is not a colleague in this Chamber
who has not been affected by his eloquence and his
reasoning on everything from arms control to the
environment. He has been a champion for rural America. He
has been a consistent advocate for fiscal discipline. In
the 1980's he voted against the tax cuts, arguing that
they would explode the Federal deficit. In the 1990's he
took the tough votes needed to eliminate those deficits.
He has been a tireless defender of the U.S. Constitution
and the separation of powers it guarantees. He did not
mention this, but he should have. In 1982 he was the only
Senator from the Deep South to vote against a proposal
stripping the Federal courts of their right to order
school busing. He said at the time, while he opposed the
use of busing to achieve racial balance, he opposed even
more ``this sinister and devious attack on the
Constitution * * * [this] erosion of the only document
that stands between the people and tyranny.''
This past July, shortly before launching the last of his
annual attempts to kill the international space station,
Senator Bumpers told a reporter that he expected to lose
again but he would try anyway because he thought it was
the right thing to do. Then he added, ``I probably lost as
many battles as anybody who ever served in the U.S.
Senate.''
I want to tell my friend as he prepares to end his
Senate career, if you did in fact lose more battles than
someone else who may have served here, it is only because
you chose tougher and more important battles. Even more
than the outcome of your battles, you have earned your
place in history for the dignity and the courage and the
eloquence with which you have waged those battles.
I remember, having just arrived--I was elected in 1986,
sworn in in 1987--by the end of the year, in 1987, I had
already decided who my man for President was. I remember
the conversation as if it took place yesterday. I was
reminded again, as our colleague spoke on the Senate
floor, about his ambition. That was the ambition for many
of us as well. He would have been the same kind of
outstanding President that he has been the outstanding
Governor and Senator we know today. That was not to be.
But in the eyes of all of us, Dale Bumpers will always
stand as the giant we knew, as the respected legislator we
trust, and as the friend we love.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I compliment my colleagues
on their fine remarks about our colleague, Senator
Bumpers. I already made a speech complimenting him for his
service to the Senate. I noticed my speech had several
things in common with the speech of Senator Daschle. I
alluded to the fact of Senator Bumpers' sense of humor,
which all of us have enjoyed, Democrats and Republicans,
and I also referred to the fact that he had the longest
microphone cord in the Senate. He has used it extensively,
and we have all enjoyed that as well.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, in the bustling commotion of
the ending days of the 105th Congress, Members are
preoccupied with efforts to enact sought after objectives
important to their constituents. We are busy tying up
loose ends, putting the finishing touches on projects, and
looking forward to going home to our constituents and to a
break in the hectic schedule of the U.S. Senate.
Regrettably, as this session of Congress adjourns, we are
also faced with the difficult task of saying goodbye to
colleagues who have chosen to follow a new path in life.
As I reflect on my years in Congress and on my
association with its many Members and their various
personalities, their goals and, yes, sometimes, their
eccentricities, I am reminded of some very important
milestones in history made possible by these fine
Americans. I am reminded of my good fortune to have been
associated with men and women representing the American
people from all walks of life and from all corners of the
United States.
In my reflections, I have thanked my Creator for
allowing me to serve my country with such fine men and
women, and I am, indeed, sorrowful at the upcoming loss of
some of the finest men I have ever known.
I pay tribute today to an exceptional U.S. Senator, a
man with whom it has been my honor to serve and to have
been associated with--a man of unusual conviction,
passion, and resolve. He has been called the last Southern
liberal, and he is proud of it. He often quotes from ``To
Kill a Mocking Bird.'' He is THE commanding foe against
the space station.
The above discourse clearly references the actions of
only one man--Senator Dale Bumpers, Democrat from
Arkansas. He is the U.S. Senator responsible for ``right-
turn-on-red,'' his first legislative victory and one for
which, I am told, he received devilish teasing from a
colleague who warned that ``many people might want to
drive straight!''
I will miss my friend, who is retiring following 24
years of service. He leaves a legacy that has made a
difference, not only to the people of Arkansas, but to all
Americans. His tireless efforts to end Federal policies
that he believes give away resources that belong to the
taxpayer will long be remembered by certain mining and
ranching interests out West. And more than a few NASA
space station contractors will continue to run when they
hear his name! Contractors who worked on the now-
terminated superconducting super collider can only wish
that Senator Bumpers had chosen to retire earlier.
While many a press story covered his crusades against
alleged lost causes, Senator Dale Bumpers is a man that
leaves this Senate with a triumphant record for the
American people. In particular, Senator Bumpers has been a
national leader in protecting the health of children. In
fact, along with his wife, Betty, Senator Bumpers has long
promoted childhood immunizations, known safeguards in
protecting the health of millions of children.
As the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations
Subcommittee on Agriculture, formerly the chairman, Dale
Bumpers has represented the rural heart of America. He has
fought for policies to help rural families, including
securing funding for basic infrastructure projects that
provide water and sewer facilities to small towns
throughout the Nation. I personally wish to thank Senator
Bumpers for being a leading advocate for funding on these
vital projects, and I share his concern for the millions
of Americans who do not have access to a clean, ample
supply of drinking water.
Senator Bumpers has further made a significant mark on
efforts to protect family farmers. In particular, we owe
our gratitude to Dale Bumpers for his efforts to initiate
programs to help young Americans become this Nation's next
generation of family farmers, a dwindling breed at risk of
extinction. In honor of his service to rural America, I am
proud that this Congress, in the Fiscal Year 1999
Agriculture Appropriations Bill, is formally paying
tribute to his work by designating an Agricultural
Research Service facility as the Dale Bumpers National
Rice Research Center. This action follows the recognition
by the people of Arkansas in dedicating the Dale Bumpers
College of Agricultural, Food, and Life Sciences at the
University of Arkansas.
Senator Bumpers' noteworthy record also extends to many
other constituencies. Through his ranking membership on
the Senate Small Business Committee, he has fought to help
self-employed people obtain health care. He has also been
an advocate of funding for rural hospitals; for Medicaid;
for the Women, Infants and Children feeding program. The
list goes on and on.
Dale Bumpers' legislative skills and record are clear.
He is a modern hero to the underdog. But there is yet
another side of the Senator from Arkansas that deserves
recognition--the Dale Bumpers who is a husband, a father,
and a grandfather. Married to Betty Lou Flanagen, Dale's
``Secretary of Peace,'' for 49 years, he is devoted to his
marriage and his family. Dale and Betty have three
children and six grandchildren, and Dale often speaks
affectionately of his family and of their influence on his
consideration of legislative issues. Yes, Senator Dale
Bumpers of Arkansas has a personal record of which he can
be proud.
It is with regret that I bid farewell to my friend and
colleague, who is now departing the U.S. Senate. I believe
that the Senate has deeply benefited from the work of U.S.
Senator Dale Bumpers. As I say my farewell to Dale
Bumpers, I want him to know that when the 106th Congress
convenes, I will remember his thoughtful recital of the
fictional Atticus Finch in ``To Kill a Mocking Bird,''
``For God's sake, do your duty.''
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to
an extraordinary person, a respected and honorable man, a
true friend, and one whom I am truly saddened to see leave
the Senate--Senator Dale Bumpers.
Mr. President, Senator Bumpers is, more than most, a
true advocate for the citizens of the United States. I
know of no better person who embraces issues with the
passion and intellect that he demonstrates. His oratory
skills are well-known and rarely matched. Dale is a true
champion of the public's interests, and particularly when
that clashes with special interests.
Throughout his decades of public service, as Governor of
Arkansas and U.S. Senator, Senator Bumpers has carried
with him a strong, unyielding belief in a few basic ideas,
ideas that have driven him in his tireless efforts to make
our country--and the world--a better place.
Senator Bumpers believes in ensuring equal opportunities
for all, including the poor and indigent. He believes in
providing high quality, comprehensive education and health
care. He believes in the sanctity of our Constitution. He
believes in the value of the arts and humanities in
developing human creativity and a national culture. He
believes in the importance of environmental conservation
and preserving our natural resources. He believes in
eliminating needless corporate subsidies and reducing
wasteful defense spending. And he believes in the need to
slow the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
Senator Bumpers has never shied away from taking on the
powerful special interests, year after year, even when he
knows the odds are stacked against him and he is often
disappointed with the results. But he has kept on trying.
We have all been witnesses to his eloquent and powerful
discourses on a number of subjects. Every one of his
presentations before us and before the country have been
grounded in personal experience and intellectual strength.
When Senator Bumpers speaks, we know that he speaks from
his heart.
Mr. President, in 1995, the Senate debated an amendment
that would require zero tolerance for youth who had any
amount of alcohol in their blood. Senator Bumpers revealed
his personal story about his parents and their friend who
were killed by a drunk driver while returning from their
small farm, just across the Arkansas River. Senator
Bumpers was in law school at the time, far away in
Chicago.
Dale, more than most, has the power to sway with his
words. That amendment was swiftly adopted.
Mr. President, also 3 years ago, the Senate was
considering an amendment to add funds to the National
Endowment for the Humanities. Now, the NEH is a small
agency that can, and does, often come under the budget
knife as an insignificant agency. Not to Senator Bumpers.
Senator Bumpers took to the Senate floor, and told all of
us about his high school English teacher, Miss Doll Means.
He touched us with a personal story that was a turning
point in his life. When he was a sophomore, Miss Doll
Means told him, after he had read a page of ``Beowulf''
that he had a nice voice and he read beautifully. That one
statement, from an English teacher in a town of 1,000
people, did more for his self-esteem than anybody, except,
he said, his father. Not only does he indeed have a nice
voice and he reads beautifully, he is among the best
orators this Senate has ever seen.
Mr. President, earlier this year the Appropriations
Committee passed an amendment naming a vaccine center at
NIH after Dale and Betty Bumpers. For almost 30 years, the
two of them have worked tirelessly on a crusade to
vaccinate all children--and because of their efforts and
others, we have made great progress toward that goal.
Mr. President, when the senior Senator from Arkansas
leaves this body in a few weeks, there will be a
noticeable void. We will lose a tireless champion for the
underserved; a champion for the public's interest; a
champion for responsible spending, not wasteful spending;
and a champion for equal opportunity, for our environment,
and for the arts and humanities. Senator Bumpers has our
respect, and he has the people's respect. We will miss
him.
Mr. President, I wish my friend and his wife Betty,
their children and grandchildren the very best for the
future.
Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, five Senators will move on at
the closing of this session of the 105th Congress. And
they are Senators that have, with the exception of one,
been here ever since I joined this body back in 1989.
Dirk Kempthorne from Idaho was elected after I was. And
now after one term he has elected to go back to his home
State of Idaho.
It seems like it becomes more and more difficult, as
time goes by, to attract men and women to public service,
and especially to public service when there are elections.
He brought a certain quality to this Senate. On his work
on the Environment and Public Works Committee, he was
sensitive to the environment and all the public
infrastructure that we enjoy across this country. It just
seemed to fit, because he had come here after being the
mayor of Boise, ID. And his very first objective was to
tackle this business of unfunded mandates. He took that
issue on and provided the leadership, and finally we
passed a law that unfunded mandates must be adhered to
whenever we tell local government, State government that
it is going to take some of your money to comply with the
laws as passed by the Federal Government.
He, like me, had come out of local government. He knew
the stresses and the pains of city councilmen and mayors
and county commissioners every time they struggle with
their budget in order to provide the services for their
people, when it comes to schools and roads and public
safety--all the demands that we enjoy down to our
neighborhoods.
We shall miss him in this body.
To my friend, John Glenn of Ohio, who has already made
his mark in history that shall live forever, he has left
his tracks in this body. And not many know--and maybe not
even him--but I was a lowly corporal in the U.S. Marine
Corps when he was flying in the Marine Corps. So my memory
of John Glenn goes back more than 40 years to El Toro
Marine Corps Air Station in Santa Anna, CA.
As he goes into space again at the end of this month, we
wish him Godspeed. He gave this country pride as he lifted
off and became the first American to orbit the Earth. And
he carried with him all of the wishes of the American
people.
To Dan Coats of Indiana, a classmate, we came to this
body together in 1989. Our routes were a little different,
but yet almost the same--he coming from the House of
Representatives and me coming from local government.
He is a living example of a person dedicated to public
service. But it never affected his solid core values. He
has not changed one iota since I first met him back in
1989.
The other principal is on the floor today. It is Wendell
Ford of Kentucky. I was fortunate to serve on two of the
most fascinating and hard-working committees in the U.S.
Senate with Senator Ford: The Commerce Committee and the
Energy Committee. Those committees, folks, touch every
life in America every day.
We flip on our lights at home or in our businesses. We
pick up the telephone, listen to our radio, watch our
televisions, move ourselves from point A to point B, no
matter what the mode--whether it is auto, train or plane.
Yes, all of the great scientific advances this country has
made, and research and the improvement of everyday life
and, yes, even our venture into space comes under the
auspices of the Commerce, Science and Transportation
Committee and the Energy Committee. Those two committees
play such a major role in the everyday workings of
America.
Wendell Ford was one great champion and one of the true
principals in formulating policies that we enjoy today. He
played a major role in each and every one of them.
Again, it was my good fortune to work with Senator
Bumpers on two committees: The Small Business Committee
and the Energy Committee. There is no one in this body
that has been more true to his deeply held beliefs than
Senator Bumpers. Our views did not always mesh--and that
is true with Senator Ford. It was their wisdom and the way
they dealt with their fellow Senators that we worked our
way through difficult issues and hard times with a sense
of humor. I always say if you come from Arkansas you have
to have a pretty good sense of humor. My roots go back to
Missouri; I know we had to develop humor very early.
Nonetheless, it was the integrity and the honesty that
allowed us to settle our differences, even though we were
180 degrees off plumb.
I think I have taken from them much more than I have
given back to them. This body has gained more than it can
repay. This Nation is a better Nation for all of them
serving in the U.S. Senate.
In our country we don't say goodbye, we just say so
long. But we say so long to these Senators from our
everyday activities on the floor of the U.S. Senate. I am
sure our trails will cross many times in the future.
Should they not, I will be the most disappointed of all.
Mr. KEMPTHORNE. Mr. President, I appreciate you
presiding as you do in such a class fashion. I would like
to make a few comments here. I have been touched and
impressed by the fact of colleagues coming to the floor
and paying tribute to those Members who are departing. I
have listened because, as one of those Members who are
departing, I know personally how much it means to hear
those kind comments that are made.
Senator Ford, who just spoke, is leaving after a very
illustrious career. I remember when the Republican Party
took over the majority 4 years ago and I was new to the
position of Presiding Officer, it was not unusual for
Wendell Ford, who knows many of the ropes around here, to
come and pull me aside and give me a few of the tips of
how I could be effective as a Presiding Officer. I think
probably one of the highest tributes you can pay to an
individual is the fact that you see their family and the
success they have had. I remember when Wendell Ford's
grandson, Clay, was a page here. I think Clay is probably
one of the greatest tributes paid to a grandfather.
Dale Bumpers, often mentioned here on the floor about
his great sense of humor, is an outstanding gentlemen. He
is someone whom I remember before I ever became involved
in politics. I watched him as a Governor of Arkansas and
thought, there is a man who has great integrity, someone
you can look up to. And then to have the opportunity to
serve with him has been a great honor.
John Glenn. Whenever any of the astronauts--the original
seven--would blast off into space, my mother would get all
the boys up so we could watch them. I remember when John
Glenn blasted off into space. Again, the idea that somehow
a kid would end up here and would serve with John Glenn is
just something I never could dream of at the time. In
fact, John Glenn became a partner in our efforts to stop
unfunded Federal mandates. You could not ask for a better
partner.
Speaking of partners, he could not have a better partner
than Annie. I had the great joy of traveling with them
approximately a year ago when we went to Asia. That is
when you get to know these people as couples. I remember
that we happened to be flying over an ocean when it was
the Marine Corps' birthday. On the airplane we had a cake
and brought it out, to the surprise of John Glenn. But you
could see the emotion in his eyes. I know the Presiding
Officer is a former U.S. Marine, so he knows what we are
talking about.
Dan Coats. There is no more genuine a person than Dan--
not only in the Senate but on the face of the Earth. He is
a man of great sincerity, a man who can articulate his
position so extremely well. He is a man who, when you look
into his eyes, you know he is listening to you and he is
going to do right by you and by the people of his State of
Indiana, and he has done right by the people of the United
States. He is a man who has great faith, a man to whom I
think a number of us have looked for guidance.
When you look at the Senate through the eyes of a
camera, you see just one dimension. But on the floor of
the Senate we are just people. A lot of times we don't get
home to our wives and kids and sometimes to the ball games
or back-to-school nights. There are times when some of the
issues don't go as we would like, and it gets tough. At
these times, we hurt. There are people like Dan Coats to
whom you can turn, who has said, ``Buddy, I have been
there and I am with you now.'' So, again, he is an
outstanding individual.
Monday, October 12, 1998.
Mr. FORD. Mr. President, as the 105th Congress comes to
a close, I want to take a moment to say thank you to my
fellow colleagues who, like me, will be retiring this
year.
I came to the Senate in 1974 with Senators Glenn and
Bumpers. It was a different time, when campaigns were
still won by going door to door, when the Senate itself
was much more open to compromise and bipartisanship.
Despite the changes in the Senate, Senator Bumpers has
continued to be a voice for his State, never giving up the
fight for something in which he believed. And when the
Senate itself began to listen, they began to respond. In
fact, after fighting 19 years to reform the National Parks
concessions operations, he finally won approval of the
legislation on last Thursday.
And while it's true the Senate long ago lost its
reputation as a place of eloquent debate, my colleague
from Arkansas has proven time and again the power of words
with his skillful oratory, whether the issue was arms
control, education or balancing the budget. In all my
years here in Washington, I was never so moved as I was by
a speech he gave on preserving the Manassas, Virginia,
Civil War Battlefield. He not only changed votes, but he
reminded his colleagues and the American people that our
greatest strength lies in our ability to give voice to our
beliefs and to our constituent's concerns.
Like Mark Twain who came into this world with Halley's
comet and left this world with the return, Senator Glenn
came into the public eye with his historic orbit around
the Earth and he will close out his public career with
another historic flight into space. In between, he's
demonstrated over and over that he's truly made of the
``right stuff.''
As the ``Almanac of American Politics'' wrote, he is
``the embodiment of the small town virtues of family, God-
fearing religion, duty, patriotism and hard work * * *''.
And over the years, he has brought the same fight and
determination that made him a brilliant fighter pilot to
his efforts to expand educational opportunities, increase
funding for scientific research, to clean up nuclear waste
sites, promote civil rights and to make our government
more efficient.
Despite their long list of contributions in the Senate,
perhaps their greatest contributions to this Nation are
still to come. Senator Bumpers has talked about going back
to Arkansas to teach and Senator Glenn has said once he
gets back down to Earth, he'll work to steer young people
toward public service. I can't think of a greater honor
than to say I've served alongside these two men and shared
their vision of a better America.
I also want to thank my two retiring colleagues on the
other side of the aisle. We may not have always agreed on
which road to take, but I believe we always shared a deep
commitment to our country and its betterment. Whether you
agree or not with Senator Coats' position on the issues,
everyone in this Chamber will agree he's willing to roll
up his sleeves and do the hard work necessary to
accomplish his goals. He's brought the same tenacity to
the Senate that found him at 3 percent in the polls when
he began his first congressional bid and had him winning
by 58 percent on election day. He got that win the old-
fashioned way, organizing block by block and pressing his
case one-on-one.
Senator Kempthorne has only been a part of this
institution for just one term, but he has already proven
that he can work with his colleagues to pass laws, like
the unfunded mandates bill, in a place where it's often
easier to move mountains than a piece of legislation. The
Safe Drinking Water Act of 1996 was a perfect example of
his ability to bring together scientists, activists on
both sides of the issue, and public health experts to
craft legislation that each one had a stake in seeing
succeed. So while he may have spent just a short while in
these Halls, he demonstrated that it is only through
compromise that we can achieve solutions in the best
interest of the Nation.
So Mr. President, let me tell my fellow retirees what a
privilege it has been to serve with you over the years and
how grateful I am for your commitment to public service
and the American people.
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, on Saturday, I had a chance
to talk about our good friend, Dale Bumpers. I'd like to
take a few minutes to talk about four other friends who
will be leaving us at the end of this Congress.
Shortly after he left the White House, Calvin Coolidge
was called on to fill out a standard form. After filling
in his name and address, he came to a line marked
``occupation.'' He wrote ``retired.'' When he came to the
next line, labeled ``remarks,'' he wrote ``Glad of it.'' I
suspect that our colleagues who are retiring at the end of
this Congress are also ``glad of it''--at least in some
small measure. But, in addition to relief, I hope they
also feel a sense of pride--both for what they have
accomplished here, and the dignity with which they have
served.
In a short time here, Dirk Kempthorne has made all of
our lives a little better. Thanks in large part to him,
the Safe Drinking Water Act is now the law. Senator
Kempthorne has also reminded us of the importance of State
and local involvement in our decisions. We will all miss
him.
I had the good fortune to travel with Senator Kempthorne
to the Far East. As most of our colleagues know, as we
travel we get to know one another even better. I know him
and I admire him and I wish him well in his life after the
Senate. I also applaud him for the nature with which he
has continued to work with all of us. He has a very
conciliatory, very thoughtful, a very civil way with which
to deal with colleagues on issues. If we would all follow
Dirk Kempthorne's example, in my view, we would be a lot
better off in this body. His manner, his leadership, his
character, his personality is one that we are going to
miss greatly here in the U.S. Senate.
We will also miss Dan Coats. With his thoughtful
approach and uncompromising principles, Senator Coats has
followed his heart above all else. And, as a result of his
support of the Family and Medical Leave Act, millions of
Americans are able to follow their hearts, too, and spend
more time with their families when they need them most.
When Senator Coats announced his retirement in 1996, he
said, ``I want to leave (politics) when I am young enough
to contribute somewhere else * * * I want to leave when
there is still a chance to follow God's leading to
something new.'' Wherever Senator Coats and Senator
Kempthorne are led, we wish them both the best. I am
confident that they will continue to contribute much to
their country and to their fellow citizens.
And we will surely miss our own three departing
Senators.
Dale Bumpers, Wendell Ford and John Glenn are three of
the sturdiest pillars in this institution. They have much
in common. They came here--all three of them--in 1974. For
nearly a quarter-century, they have worked to restore
Americans' faith in their government.
Their names have been called with the roll of every
important question of our time. And they have answered
that call with integrity and dignity.
They are sons of small town America who still believe in
the values they learned back in Charlestown, AR;
Owensboro, KY; and New Concord, OH. They are also modest
men.
Perhaps because they had already accomplished so much
before they came to the Senate, they have never worried
about grabbing headlines here. Instead, they have been
content to work quietly, but diligently--often with
colleagues from across the aisle--to solve problems as
comprehensively as they can. They have been willing to
take on the ``nuts and bolts'' work of the Senate--what
John Glenn once called ``the grunt work'' of making the
Government run more efficiently.
They were all elected to the Senate by wide margins, and
reelected by even wider margins. And they all would have
been reelected this year, I have no doubt, had they chosen
to run again.
What I will remember most about each of them, though, is
not how much they are like each other they are, but how
unlike anyone else they are. Each of them is an American
original.
As I said, I've already shared my thoughts about Dale
Bumpers. No Senator has ever had more courage than Dale
Bumpers.
And no Senate leader has ever had the benefit of a
better teacher than Wendell Ford.
No leader has ever enjoyed such a loyal partnership as I
have. No leader has ever had a better friend and
counselor.
For the past 4 years, Senator Ford has been my right
hand and much more. He is as skilled a political mind, and
as warm a human being, as this Senate has ever known.
Carved inside the drawer of the desk in which Wendell
sits is the name of another Kentucky Senator, ``the Great
Compromisor,'' Henry Clay. It is a fitting match.
Like Henry Clay, Wendell Ford believes that compromise
is honorable and necessary in a democracy. But he also
understands that compromise is, as Clay said, ``negotiated
hurt.''
I suspect that is why he has always preferred to try to
work out disagreements behind the scenes. It allows both
sides to bend, and still keep their dignity.
In 1991, Wendell's quiet, bipartisan style convinced a
Senator from across the aisle, Mark Hatfield, to join him
in sponsoring the ``Motor Voter'' bill. Working together,
they convinced the Senate to pass that legislation. To
this day, it remains the most ambitious effort Congress
has made since the Voting Rights Act to open up the voting
booth to more Americans.
Wendell Ford has served the Bluegrass State as a State
senator, Lieutenant Governor, Governor and U.S. Senator.
His love for his fellow Kentuckians is obvious, and it is
reciprocated.
In his 1980 Senate race, Wendell Ford became the first
opposed candidate in Kentucky history to carry all 120
counties. In 1992, he received the highest number of votes
ever cast for any candidate in his State.
Throughout his years in the Senate, Senator Ford has
also been a tenacious fighter for the people of Kentucky.
He has also been a leader on aviation issues, a determined
foe of government waste and duplication, a champion of
campaign finance reform, and--something we are especially
grateful for on this side of the aisle--a tireless leader
for the Democratic Party.
He chaired the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee for
three Congresses, from 1976 through 1982. And, in 1990,
Democratic Senators elected him unanimously to be our
party whip, our second-in-command, in the Senate--a
position he still holds today.
We will miss his raspy and unmistakable voice, his good
humor and wise counsel.
Finally, there is John Glenn. What can one say about
John Glenn that has not already been said?
In all these 24 years, as hard as he tried to blend in
with the rest of us, as hard as he tried to be just a
colleague among colleagues, it never quite worked, did it?
I used to think that maybe I was the only one here who
still felt awed in his presence. Two years ago, on a
flight from China with John and a handful of other
Senators and our spouses, I learned that wasn't so.
During the flight, we were able to persuade John to
recollect that incredible mission aboard Friendship 7,
when he became the first American to orbit the Earth. He
told us about losing all radio communication during re-
entry, about having to guide his spacecraft manually
during the most critical point in re-entry, about seeing
pieces of his fiberglass heat panel bursting into flames
and flying off his space capsule, knowing that at any
moment, he could be incinerated.
We all huddled around him with our eyes wide open. No
one moved. No one said a word.
Listening to him, I felt the same awe I had felt when I
was 14 years old, sitting in a classroom in Aberdeen, SD,
watching TV accounts of that flight. Then I looked around
me, and realized everyone else there was feeling the same
thing.
I saw that same sense of awe in other Senators' faces in
June, when we had a dinner for John at the National Air
and Space Museum. Before dinner, we were invited to have
our photographs taken with John in front of the Friendship
7 capsule. I don't think I've ever seen so many Senators
waiting so patiently for anything as we did for that one
picture.
A lot of people tend to think of two John Glenns:
Colonel John Glenn, the astronaut-hero; and Senator John
Glenn. The truth is, there is only John Glenn--the
patriot.
Love for his country is what sent John into space. It's
what brought him to Washington, and compelled him to work
so diligently all these years in the Senate.
People who have been there say you see the world
differently from space. You see the ``big picture.'' You
see how small and interconnected our planet is.
Perhaps it's because he came to the Senate with that
perspective that John has fought so hard against nuclear
proliferation and other weapons of mass destruction.
Maybe because he'd had enough glamour and tickertape
parades by the time he came here, John chose to immerse
himself in some decidedly unglamorous causes.
He immersed himself in the scientific and the technical.
He looked at government with the eyes of an engineer, and
tried to imagine ways it could work better and more
efficiently.
As early as 1978, he called for Congress to live by the
same workplace rules it sets for everyone else. More
recently, he spearheaded the overhaul of the Federal
Government procurement system, enabling the Government to
buy products faster, and save money at the same time.
In 1974, the year he was elected to the Senate, John
Glenn carried all 88 counties in Ohio. In 1980, he was
reelected with the largest margin in his State's history.
The last time he ran, in 1992, he became the first Ohio
Senator ever to win four terms.
As I said, I'm sure he would have been reelected had he
chosen to run again. But, as we all know, he has other
plans.
For 36 years, John Glenn has wanted to go back into
space. On October 29, he will finally get his chance. At
77 years old, he will become the oldest human being ever
to orbit the Earth--by 16 years.
Many of us will be in Houston to see John and his
Discovery crew mates blast off. If history is any
indication, I suspect we will be wide-eyed once again.
In closing, let me say, Godspeed, John Glenn and Dale
Bumpers, Wendell Ford, Dirk Kempthorne and Dan Coats. You
have served this Senate well. You are all ``Senators'
Senators,'' and we will miss you dearly.
Tuesday, October 13, 1998.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I have been honored to have
the opportunity to hear Senator Bumpers share his
perspective on public service and his personal odyssey.
His story is the story of the South--depression, hardship,
tough economic times, small businesses, and the son of a
shopkeeper. I, too, am the son of a storekeeper and can
understand and identify the qualities that have shaped
Senator Bumpers' life.
I have had the opportunity to personally observe his
service in this body for just 2 years, but in that short
time I have been able to appreciate his many excellent
qualities. He does indeed reflect the character of the
people of Arkansas. He is part of that State; he comes
from its people; and, he shares its values. As an attorney
who has tried many cases, I have had the pleasure to see
him work on the floor of the Senate. He is articulate,
able, well prepared, logical, and persuasive. He states
his case very effectively. I can just imagine him before a
jury in Arkansas as he boils down complex issues to their
essence and appeals to their sense of values. I can see
just why people refer to him as an outstanding lawyer.
Many denigrate that profession, and I have been a strong
critic of some of the abuses of the legal profession, but
the skills possessed by the Senator from Arkansas are
those skills that make a lawyer most valuable. He cuts
straight to the heart of the matter in words that are
comprehensible by all.
Again, I am pleased to have served with the
distinguished senior Senator from Arkansas and I wish him
well in his future service. He has conducted himself with
high standards and has not done anything to bring
discredit on this body. He has stood courageously, alone
if necessary, for the values that he believed in. There is
no doubt, I say to the children and grandchildren of the
distinguished Senator from Arkansas, that your father and
grandfather has been an able and noble practitioner in
this great deliberative body of the greatest nation in the
history of the world.
Wednesday, October 14, 1998.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes
to talk in as glowing terms as I can about a great friend,
a great Senator, and a person I have admired both as a
Senator and as a plain good person for all the years I
have been in Washington. And he is leaving us. He is
retiring at the end of this session. I am speaking about
perhaps the epitome of what I believe to be a good
Senator, and that Senator is Dale Bumpers of Arkansas.
I am really going to miss him, and this country is going
to miss him as well. So will this Chamber. He is truly one
of the finest Senators to have ever graced this body. He
has done so many good things over the years. It is hard to
know where to begin.
I know he started out as someone in the Marine Corps. As
a Navy person I will not hold that against him. I can
overlook that. But then he came back to Arkansas and
practiced law, had a small business, and even raised some
cattle. He had good practical experience, and knows the
people of Arkansas and he knows the people of this
country. The people of Arkansas rewarded that--first as
Governor, and now finishing his tenure as a Senator. He
was elected by more than 60 percent of the vote in the
last two terms.
Senator Bumpers came to the Senate at the same time I
came to the House in 1974. For 24 years he has been here.
Someone said once about Senators in general that some
Senators come here to coin a phrase, or coin a slogan, and
think they have solved the problem. But not Dale Bumpers.
He has worked very hard to solve the problems of this
country.
He has been a close friend, a person of immense common
sense. When it comes to helping farmers, seniors, working
people, and children there is no better person to have as
an ally than Dale Bumpers. He stuck to what he believed.
He had the determination to get the job done with a strong
commitment to the people of Arkansas. He is certainly one
of the finest orators and debaters this Chamber has ever
seen. He has led the fight in the Senate against
government waste.
I loved to listen to his speeches on that $12 billion
boondoggle called the superconductor super collider. And
he won. Unfortunately, we wasted a lot of money on it.
But, the people finally came to their senses and saw it as
the boondoggle that it was.
I wasn't in the Senate at the time. I was in the House
working to kill that other boondoggle called the Clinch
River breeder reactor. Boy, you would think at that time
it was the most important thing to civilization that we
built that breeder reactor. But finally people came to
their senses, and we stopped it. And we are better and we
are stronger because of it. We saved billions of dollars
that would have been wasted. Dale led the fight on that in
the Senate.
He has led the fight against other wasteful spending
such as star wars and the space station.
I believe that he has finally brought home to the
American conscience the issue of mining interests and the
abuse of our public lands and the fact that we need to
update our laws.
Anyway, with a common sense approach he has been a
strong ally on the Appropriations Committee where we need
that kind of common sense approach.
On the Agriculture Committee, he placed the needs of
America's rural communities at the top of the national
debate including rural housing and rural economic
development. He has been the strongest fighter for
protecting the environment. On the Clean Air Act, and
Clean Water Act, Dale Bumpers has been in the forefront of
America's fight to keep our country clean.
As the National Journal put it, Dale Bumpers is the
Senator to whom ``other Senators pay attention.''
In numerous polls of Senate staffers, Dale Bumpers has
consistently ranked as one of the best liked Senators.
So we are going to miss him when we start the 106th
Congress in January. We are going to miss Dale and his
eloquence, his determination and his stick-to-itness.
So to the entire Bumpers family, Dale and Betty, their
children--Brent, Bill and Brooke--and their five
grandchildren, I want to extend my gratitude, and the
gratitude of the citizens of my State, that I am so proud
to represent, for loaning Dale to us for the past 24
years. America is a much better place because of Dale's
service in the Senate.
Mr. President, I want to close on the one note--the one
area in which Dale has devoted so much of his time and
effort, along with Betty on protecting our children from
illnesses and diseases that have ravaged kids since time
immemorial.
No one has fought harder for childhood vaccinations, and
to make them universal, affordable, and accessible than
Dale and Betty Bumpers.
So in recognition of their contributions, the
Appropriations Committee, on which Dale served, voted
unanimously, Republican and Democrats, to name a new
vaccine facility at the National Institutes of Health
after Senator Bumpers and his wife, Betty. This new
facility, now under construction, will be named the ``Dale
and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Facility.''
As I said, Dale has been our resident expert on
immunization since early in his Senate career. He has been
a tireless advocate for funding to purchase vaccines and
provide the public health system with the resources
necessary to deliver those vaccines to the children who
are most in need. He advocated a grant incentive program
in the Senate that the Appropriations Committee has used
each year to reward States that have been successful in
preventing unnecessary diseases.
So there have been a lot of tributes that have been paid
to Dale. But, the most lasting tribute will be his and
Betty Bumpers' name on that research facility at NIH
because, that is truly where his heart has been in making
sure that kids in places like rural Arkansas and rural
Iowa, and all over America--including our inner cities--to
make sure they have a healthy start in life by getting
immunized. To me that says it all about Dale Bumpers.
We are going to miss him. I hope that he doesn't go too
far away. I for one look forward to his continued advice
and counsel as I serve out my career in the U.S. Senate.
Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, in these last few days of
the 105th Congress, when I come to the floor, I often look
wistfully to the aisle just to my left here, where Dale
Bumpers has trod up and down yanking the microphone cord
and dispensing wisdom for just about 24 years now. The
other day he gave his last speech here, and it was
brilliant--an eloquent and moving reminder of the best
purposes of politics. But now I want to look back and pay
tribute to my friend Dale Bumpers for what he has done and
what he has been for me, for the Senate, for his beloved
Arkansas and for our country.
Dale Bumpers was born in Charleston, AR in 1925, and
it's from that little town he first drew the values he has
eloquently proclaimed on this floor for two and a half
decades. In a small town in western Arkansas during the
Depression, young Dale Bumpers learned about human
suffering and deprivation, learned to believe that it
could be defeated and came to understand, on his father's
knee, that the Government could be a force for good in
that struggle. He saw typhoid in his hometown and saw a
New Deal program put an end to it. He saw rural
electrification light the countryside, projects that made
the water cleaner, the roads safer, he saw the WPA and he
saw the tenacity, and the ingenuity and the sense of
community of the American people. One day as a boy he went
to the nearby town of Booneville and saw Franklin
Roosevelt himself, and he heard his father tell him that
politics is an honorable profession--he took all that to
heart and we are all the richer for it. He sometimes says,
as his father did, ``When we die, we're going to Franklin
Roosevelt.''
In 1943, Dale Bumpers joined the Marines. He shipped out
to the Pacific and he expected to be a part of the
invasion force that would hit the beaches of Japan. He did
not expect to survive it. The invasion never came, but
that experience made a profound impression on him. When I
hear him speak about the Constitution, our Founding
Fathers and the flag on this floor it is plain how that
wartime experience helped him comprehend the true stakes
of the constitutional debate, how it informed his notions
of patriotism and his sense of what America means. When he
returned from the service he got a first-rate education at
the University of Arkansas and Northwestern University Law
School, all paid for, he is quick to point out, by Uncle
Sam under the GI bill. He has been returning the favor to
the American people ever since.
Dale Bumpers started his career as a country lawyer in
Charleston, a very successful one by all reports, and he
got a reputation around Arkansas, even if he was, as he
says, ``the entire membership of the South Franklin County
Bar Association.'' As time went by, his practice grew, he
took over his father's hardware store, he taught Sunday
School and sang in the church choir and he and his
wonderful wife Betty started a family. But he wasn't
feeling complacent.
There are a lot of great Dale Bumpers stories many
people don't know. In the days following the Brown v.
Board of Education decision, tension was building in the
South as school integration looked more and more
inevitable. By 1957, we had the Little Rock Crisis, but
there was one town in Arkansas that had already integrated
by then, without any great trouble. It was the first in
Arkansas, maybe the first in the entire South. It was
Charleston, AR, where Dale Bumpers was a young lawyer,
representing the school board. He saw what was coming and
he knew what was right. He did a little research and he
found out how much the district was spending to bus its
black students to Fort Smith. He made his case to the
school board about the right course, working those numbers
into the argument. The board then voted to do what he had
advised them to do--integrate the schools. It was not long
after that he helped to integrate his church--the pastor
of the local black Methodist church approached the all
white congregation of his Methodist church, seeking help
to repair a leaky roof. Why spend all that money and have
two churches, why not just join our two churches together,
said Dale Bumpers, and it was done. Those are two quiet
little pieces of history that tell us plenty about the
principles and the persuasive powers of Dale Bumpers.
Well, after a while, school board politics were getting
to him, so Dale decided he would like to be the Governor
of Arkansas. So off he went, eighth out of eight in the
early primary polls, to do battle with Orval Faubus and
other established politicians. His critics said he had
``nothing but a smile and a shoeshine.'' But then the
people of Arkansas heard what he had to say. He beat
everybody but Faubus in the primary, beat Faubus in the
runoff and then he beat Winthrop Rockefeller. Arkansas had
never seen a Governor like Dale Bumpers. He reformed
everything from education to heath care and gained the
lasting affection of the people while doing it.
After 4 years as Governor, he decided he wanted to go to
the Senate. All that stood in his way was J. William
Fulbright, an institution in his own right. But Bumpers
won, and he came to the Senate. As we have seen, this
Chamber is the place where he always belonged.
When I came to the Senate, I had heard of Senator
Bumpers' intelligence, his quick wit, his impatience with
wasteful spending, his vigorous defense of the environment
and his role as a relentless guardian of our Constitution.
When it comes to amending the Constitution. Dale Bumpers
always says, ``I'm a founding member of the `Wait Just a
Minute' club.'' That is a great line, but it tells of a
Senator who has risked defeat, has felt real contempt from
those who disagree, all because he would not stand for the
political use of the Constitution. He gave a great speech
once called ``The Trivialization of the Constitution'' in
which he made the case that we must never casually fiddle
with our Constitution for political gain or to deal with
transitory policy issues. His work to defend the
Constitution and inject sobriety into the constitutional
debate, all by itself, qualifies him as a great patriot
and Senator. Let the record reflect that I too am a member
of the ``Wait Just a Minute'' club.
Dale Bumpers' leadership in cutting wasteful spending
and his fiscal foresight are unsurpassed. In 1981, when
Ronald Reagan was calling the shots in the budget debate,
Dale Bumpers was one of only three Senators to oppose
Reagan's tax cuts and support the spending cuts. If their
position had prevailed, the budget would have been
balanced in 1984. That was 14 years ago. Now there's a
fiscal role model.
Senator Bumpers went after what we now call ``corporate
welfare'' years before the term was coined, and years
before others were willing to focus on the problem of
government waste. From the international space station to
the 1872 Mining Law, Senator Bumpers has been resolute in
his pursuit of excesses in the Federal budget. He has gone
after sacred cows and hidden pork, and faced strong
opposition from both sides of the aisle. But he has
continued his work, tirelessly and often thanklessly,
because he knows he is doing what is right for the
American people. I have often felt great pride standing
with Dale Bumpers on an amendment, even when we knew we
would lose, because when he made a stand, his allies knew
they were doing the right thing.
His campaign against government waste is matched only by
his efforts to protect the environment as chairman and
ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources
Committee. Senator Bumpers has been an outstanding leader
on the committee, and has exhibited a conservation ethic
unparalleled in the U.S. Senate. Dale Bumpers was the
first Senator to sound the alarm about the ozone layer and
the danger of ozone-depleting gases, long before most of
us had ever heard of them. And he always remembered his
father's hardware store--there never was a more relentless
defender of small business in the Senate.
I have been honored to work with him on a number of
conservation efforts, including public land reform and
nuclear energy issues, and I know the Senate will miss his
leadership in that area. His work to reform the 1872
mining law is the issue where his environmental
stewardship and his determination to cut wasteful spending
have gone hand-in-hand. I have been proud to join him in
this fight, because it's a crucially important one, an
``outrage,'' as he calls it, that wouldn't be under
scrutiny today if it weren't for the work of Senator
Bumpers. And I am confident, Senator Bumpers, that your
view will prevail on the mining law soon enough, because
you are right and everybody knows you're right.
Everybody thinks of Dale Bumpers first and foremost as
an orator, a story teller, a raconteur and a dispenser of
folk wisdom. He is common sense with a silver tongue and a
sense of history. So let me finish my remarks with a
tribute to his oratorical style. Dale Bumpers often
decried the idea that we could eliminate the deficit by
cutting taxes and raising spending, he said ``That reminds
me of the combination taxidermist/veterinarian in my
hometown. His slogan was `Either way you get your dog
back.' '' When he saw a flaw in his opponent's argument he
jumped on it like a duck on a junebug. He might declare.
``His argument is as thin as spit on a rock!'' Why is he
such a masterful debater? Because he can explain the
complex in a simple way, and expose the truth in
uncomplicated language, without demagoguery or distortion.
As he would say, ``You gotta throw the corn where the hogs
can get at it.'' He hated deficit spending, and when he
saw a budget full of red ink, he said, ``Well, you pass
that and you'll create deficits big enough to choke a
mule. That's just eating the seed corn!''
Being in this body, and having the honor of serving with
Dale Bumpers, has given me an invaluable chance to get to
know a remarkable man, and to understand what his legacy
in this body will mean for generations to come. The
greatest thing he has taught me is not to fear the tough
votes. Time and again, from the Panama Canal to the flag
amendment, he has cast the hard votes. Time and again, he
has gone home to Arkansas and made his case, explaining
his votes to the people. He didn't always persuade them
all, but he convinced them that his were votes of
principle--and the people's confidence in his integrity
has sustained him in the affection of even those Arkansans
who disagreed.
Dale Bumpers has plenty to be proud of, but he has
always remembered who he is and where he came from. He
mixed it up with the best of them during debate, but never
with rancor. He is quick to point out the work of other
Senators and his staff when things are accomplished. The
other day he stood on this floor and thanked his grade
school teacher, Miss Doll, for encouraging him more than
60 years ago! He never fails to credit all his success to
his remarkable wife Betty, who has achieved so much in
promoting peace and the health of children. He speaks
always of his family as the wellspring of his values and
the source of his priorities.
So now he leaves the Senate having enriched this country
and this institution in a thousand ways. His wisdom and
courage and his persistent voice will echo long into the
future. To every Member of the Senate, on both sides of
the aisle, Dale Bumpers is an admired friend and
colleague. To those of us who share his principles and
have learned from his leadership, he is nothing less than
a hero. He is one of the great ones--and you don't need to
be all broke out in brilliance to know that. Thank you
Dale Bumpers and good luck!
Wednesday, October 21, 1998.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, in this last day of the 105th
Congress, I think it is appropriate that we take a little
more time to express our appreciation and our admiration
for our retiring Senators. I look down the list: Senator
Bumpers of Arkansas; Senator Coats of Indiana; Senator
Ford, the Democratic whip, of Kentucky; Senator Glenn, who
will soon be taking another historic flight into space;
and Senator Kempthorne, who I believe is also going to be
taking flight into a new position of leadership and honor.
This is a distinguished group of men who have been
outstanding Senators, who have left their mark on this
institution. I believe you could say in each case they
have left the Senate a better place than it was when they
came.
Have we had our disagreements along the way? Sure,
within parties and across party aisles. I have to take a
moment to express my appreciation to each of these
Senators. I especially want to thank Senator Ford for his
cooperation in his position as whip. We worked together
for a year and a half as the whip on our respective side
of the aisle and we always had a very good relationship.
Of course, I have already expressed my very close
relationship for Senator Coats and for Senator Kempthorne.
To all of these Senators, I want to extend my fondest
farewell.
As majority leader, I feel a responsibility to speak for
all of us in bidding an official farewell to our five
colleagues who are retiring this year.
It was 1974 when Dale Bumpers left the Governorship of
Arkansas to take the Senate seat that had long been held
by Senator Fulbright. There are several Senators in this
Chamber today who, in 1974, were still in high school.
Four terms in the Senate of the United States can be a
very long time--but that span of nearly a quarter-century
has not in the least diminished Senator Bumpers'
enthusiasm for his issues and energy in advancing them.
He has been a formidable debater, fighting for his
causes with a tenacity and vigor that deserves the title
of Razorback.
It is a memorable experience to be on the receiving end
of his opposition--whether the subject was the space
station or, year after year, mining on public lands.
Arkansas and Mississippi are neighbors, sharing many of
the same problems. From personal experience, I know how
Senator Bumpers has been an assiduous and effective
advocate for his State and region.
No one expects retirement from the Senate to mean
inactivity for Senator Bumpers, whose convictions run too
deep to be set aside with his formal legislative duties.
All of us who know the sacrifices an entire family makes
when a spouse or parent is in the Congress can rejoice for
him, for Betty, and for their family, in the prospect of
more time together in a well earned future.
Senator Dan Coats and I have a bond in common which most
Members of the Senate do not share. We both began our
careers on Capitol Hill, not as Members, but as staffers.
I worked for the venerable William Colmer of
Mississippi, chairman of the House Rules Committee, who
left office in 1972 at the age of 82. Senator Coats worked
for Dan Quayle, who came to Congress at the age of 27.
Despite the differences in our situations back then, we
both learned the congressional ropes from the bottom up.
Which may be why we both have such respect for the
twists and turns of the legislative process, not to
mention an attentive ear to the views and concerns of our
constituents.
Now and then, a Senator becomes nationally known for his
leadership on a major issue. Senator Coats has had several
such issues.
One was the constitutional amendment for a balanced
budget. Another was New Jersey's garbage, and whether it
would be dumped along the banks of the Wabash.
The garbage issue is still unresolved, but on other
matters, his success has been the Nation's profit.
He has championed the American family, improved Head
Start, kept child care free of government control, and
helped prevent a Federal takeover of health care.
His crusade to give low-income families school choice
has made him the most important education reformer since
Horace Mann. His passionate defense of children before
birth has been, to use an overworked phrase, a profile in
courage.
Senator Coats does have a secret vice. He is a baseball
addict. On their honeymoon, he took Marcia to a Cubs game.
And when he was a Member of the House, he missed the vote
on flag-burning to keep a promise to his son to see the
Cubs in the playoffs.
To Dan, a commitment is a commitment. That is why he is
national president of Big Brothers. And why, a few years
ago, he kept a very important audience waiting for his
arrival at a meeting here on the Hill.
He had, en route, come across a homeless man, and spent
a half-hour urging him to come with him to the Gospel
Rescue Mission.
Here in the Congress, we must always be in a hurry. But
Senator Coats and his wife, Marcia, have known what is
worth waiting for.
They have been a blessing to our Senate family, and they
will always remain a part of it.
Senator Wendell Ford stands 12th in seniority in the
Senate, with the resignation of his predecessor, Senator
Marlow Cook, giving him a 6-day advantage over his
departing colleague, Senator Bumpers.
He came to Washington with a full decade of hands-on
governmental experience in his native Kentucky. He had
been a State senator, Lieutenant Governor, and Governor.
With that background, he needed little time to make his
mark in the Senate.
In that regard, he reminds me of another Kentuckian who
make a lasting mark on the Senate.
Last month, I traveled to Ashland, the home of Henry
Clay, to receive a medallion named after the man once
known as Harry of the West. Senator Ford was a prior
recipient of that award, and appropriately so.
Henry Clay was a shrewd legislator, a tough bargainer,
who did not suffer fools lightly. That description sounds
familiar to anyone who has worked with Senator Ford.
He can be a remarkably effective partisan. I can attest
to that. There is a good reason why he has long been his
party's second-in-command in the Senate.
At the same time, he has maintained a personal autonomy
that is the mark of a true Senator. He has been outspoken
about his wish that his party follow the more moderate
path to which he has long adhered.
Senator Ford's influence has been enormous in areas like
energy policy and commerce. Contemporary politics may be
dependent upon quotable sound-bites and telegenic
posturing, but he has held to an older and, in my opinion,
a higher standard.
One of the least sought-after responsibilities in the
Senate is service on the Rules Committee.
It can be a real headache. But it is crucial to the
stature of the Senate. We all owe Senator Ford our
personal gratitude for his long years of work on that
Committee.
His decisions there would not always have been my
decisions; that is the nature of our system. But his work
there has set a standard for meticulousness and gravity.
All of us who treasure the traditions, the decorum, and
the comity of the Senate will miss him.
We wish him and Jean the happiness of finally being able
to set their own hours, enjoy their grandchildren, and
never again missing dinner at home because of a late-night
session on the Senate floor.
There are many ways to depart the Senate. Our colleague
from Ohio, Senator John Glenn, will be leaving us in a
unique fashion, renewing the mission to space which he
helped to begin in 1962.
In the weeks ahead, he will probably be the focus of
more publicity, here and around the world, than the entire
Senate has been all year long.
It will be well deserved attention, and I know he
accepts it, not for himself, but for America's space
program.
For decades now, he has been, not only its champion, but
in a way, its embodiment.
That is understandable, but to a certain extent, unfair.
For his astronaut image tends to overshadow the
accomplishments of a long legislative career.
In particular, his work on the Armed Services Committee,
the Commerce Committee, and our Special Committee on Aging
has been a more far-reaching achievement than orbiting the
Earth.
With the proper support and training, others might have
done that, but Senator Glenn's accomplishments here in the
Senate are not so easily replicated.
This year's hit film, ``Saving Private Ryan,'' has had a
tremendous impact on young audiences by bringing home to
them the sacrifice and the suffering of those who fought
America's wars.
I think Senator Glenn has another lesson to teach them.
For the man who will soon blast off from Cape Canaveral,
as part of America's peaceful conquest of space--is the
same Marine who, more than a half century ago, saw combat
in World War II, and again in Korea.
His mission may have changed, but courage and idealism
endure.
In a few days, along with Annie and the rest of his
family, we will be cheering him again, as he again makes
us proud of our country, proud of our space program, and
proud to call him our friend and colleague.
Senator Dirk Kempthorne came to us from Idaho only 6
years ago. He now returns amid the nearly universal
expectation that he will be his State's next Governor. It
will be a wise choice.
None of us are surprised by his enormous popularity back
home. We have come to know him, not just as a consummate
politician, but as a thoughtful, decent, and caring man.
This is a man who took the time to learn the names of
the men and women who work here in the Capitol and in the
Senate office buildings.
In fact, his staff allots extra time for him to get to
the Senate floor to vote because they know he will stop
and talk to people on the way.
During the memorial ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda for
our two officers who lost their lives protecting this
building, Senator Kempthorne noticed that the son of one
of the officers, overwhelmed by emotion, suddenly left the
room.
Dirk followed him, and spent a half-hour alone with him,
away from the cameras. The public doesn't see those
things, but that's the kind of concern we expect from him.
His willingness to share credit gave us our Unfunded
Mandates Act and reauthorization of the Safe Drinking
Water Law. And his eye for detail and pride in his own
home State led to the transformation of that long, sterile
corridor between the Capitol and the Dirksen and Hart
office buildings.
Now, as tourists ride the space-age mechanized subway,
they enjoy the display of State flags and seals that form
a patriotic parade. It delights the eye and lifts the
spirit.
If you've ever visited Idaho, known its people, and seen
its scenic wonders, you don't have to wonder why he's
leaving us early.
You wonder, instead, why he ever left.
Years ago, he explained his future this way: That he
would know when it was time to leave the Senate when he
stopped asking ``why'' and started saying ``because.''
We're going to miss him and Patricia, and no one needs
to ask ``why.'' Even so, we know the Governor will be a
forceful spokesman on the Hill for all the Governors.
They could not have a better representative. The Senate
could not have a better exemplar. We could not have a
better friend.
Mr. DODD. Mr. President, as we approach the end of
another Congress, we bid farewell to those Senators who
will not be returning in January. Today I wish to say
farewell to a good friend and one of the most honorable
and respected members of this body--Dale Bumpers.
Dale Bumpers is the epitome of what a Senator should be.
He entered public service because he believed that it was
a noble profession, and throughout his political career he
has performed his duties with the highest levels of
integrity and decency. He has always been guided by his
heart and his mind, not by any polls.
He almost seems like a character from a Frank Capra
film. He was a World War II veteran from a small town who
attended college and law school on the G.I. Bill. After
practicing law for 20 years in his home town, he earned a
reputation as a political giant-killer on his way to the
Governor's mansion and eventually the Senate. Even his
home address seems straight out of Hollywood. Believe it
or not, he actually lives on a street named Honesty Way.
Oftentimes when you're watching Dale Bumpers speak from
the Senate floor, you can't help but think of the
character made famous by Jimmy Stewart--Senator Jefferson
Smith--whose political philosophy was ``the only causes
worth fighting for are lost causes,'' and whose most
famous line was, ``Either I'm dead right, or I'm crazy.''
As Senator Bumpers said just the other day on this
floor, he's probably fought more losing battles than any
other Senator. I can picture Senator Bumpers right now,
speaking from the heart on some issue about which he cares
very deeply. He knows that he's right, but whatever he
says, he can't seem to sway a majority of his colleagues.
But no matter what, he won't give up. He won't back down.
And in 18 years of serving with Dale Bumpers, I can
honestly say that I never saw him waver in his beliefs or
back down from a good, honest debate.
Two years ago, when Dale Bumpers was speaking on the
retirement of his former colleague from Arkansas, David
Pryor, he said, and I quote, ``I am not a terribly
effective legislator because I have a very difficult time
compromising. I have strong beliefs, and sometimes
compromise is just out of the question for me.''
Maybe there is some truth to that statement. Maybe Dale
Bumpers could have scored a few more political victories
if he had been more willing to compromise.
But I think that my friend from Arkansas is being a
little hard on himself in his self-assessment. I think
that he is an excellent legislator, and it was his candor
and his devotion to his convictions that made him
effective. Obviously, compromise is often essential to
getting things done around here. But equally essential is
having people around here who are passionate about issues
and willing to fight for their beliefs in the face of
opposition.
Dale Bumpers is not only thought of highly by his
colleagues, but I think that everyone in the entire Senate
family thinks fondly of this man. And I know for a fact
that many members of my staff share a deep admiration for
Senator Bumpers.
The past few weeks, there has actually been a ``Dale
Bumpers watch'' in the L.A. room in my office, much like
the Mark McGwire watch that captivated the country during
the baseball season. Every time Senator Bumpers has come
to the floor, hands have pulled back from keyboards and
the volumes on television sets have been turned up, as my
staffers have watched and wondered if this would be the
last time that Dale Bumpers will speak on the Senate
floor. I only hope that they were watching C-SPAN on the
afternoon of Saturday, October 10.
Of course, Dale Bumpers will most likely be remembered
for his unsurpassed oratory skills. One thing that made
our friend from Arkansas such an effective speaker was
that his positions were always based on common sense.
Whether or not you agreed with Dale Bumpers, you could
always understand the logic behind his argument. But what
set him apart was his passion. Not many people can get
excited over a 120-year-old mining law, but Dale Bumpers
could speak on this issue and convince you that this was
the defining issue of the decade.
I only regret that he was never elected majority leader
so that he may 1 day come back to speak as a part of the
Leaders' Speaker Series. Maybe we can come up with a
waiver provision to let certain colleagues who were never
majority leader speak--and call it the ``Bumpers Rule.''
For Dale Bumpers the final judgment on the merit of his
arguments will not be rendered by the yeas and nays of his
colleagues. It will rather be rendered by the illuminating
perspective of time. And I have little doubt that time
will rule in favor of the Senator from Arkansas.
Just the other day, Senator Bumpers was on the floor
talking about a speech he gave about the ozone layer in
the mid 1970's. Most of his statements were considered
alarmist at the time, but more than a decade later, an
exhaustive study by the National Academy of Sciences
confirmed that everything he said has in fact been proven
true. And I am confident that time will ultimately prove
that Dale Bumpers was right far more often than he was
wrong.
I also think that time will reveal that our friend from
Arkansas was one of the most capable, intelligent, and
principled legislators that this body has ever known. I
can honestly say that it has been an honor to serve
alongside Dale Bumpers for the past 18 years. I will truly
miss his friendship, and I wish him and his wife Betty
only the best in all their future endeavors.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I know we are all going to
greatly miss our friend Senator Bumpers. He is certainly
one of the finest orators this body has enjoyed since
Daniel Webster. But I want to take a moment to personally
thank Senator Bumpers.
Senator Bumpers and I came to the Senate as part of the
class of 1974. So I had very mixed feelings last year when
I heard that my good friend would be leaving this Chamber.
He and I have shared many battles over the 24 years that
we have spent in these halls and on this floor. And, as my
good friend pointed out just a few days ago, I am not even
half as entertaining as him, so his shoes will be hard to
fill.
However, as Senator Bumpers has often remarked, he has
probably fought more losing battles in this Chamber than
any other Member. He is leaving those battles for the rest
of us to fight. He has laid down a marker for where our
country must go in the next century. His challenge to us
who remain in this Chamber is to frame laws that show
respect to our country's founders and to our country's
future.
He has fought tirelessly to defend our Bill of Rights
and only yesterday warned this Chamber against of the
temptation of amending what he has often called ``our
sacred document.'' Senator Bumpers has shown great courage
over the years in his steadfast protection of our
Constitution.
As he has pointed out many times, he has taken a lot of
political heat for voting against popular issues like
school prayer, flag burning and the balanced budget
amendment. But even though he has voted against all of
these things and voted for our Constitution, he is walking
out of this Chamber by his own choice. His courage should
guide us all in our choices between popular issues of the
day and protecting our Constitution.
His legacy will also be marked by an intense desire to
pass on to his grandchildren and to all of our
grandchildren a world where you can still find places of
solitude and beauty, streams where you can still catch
trout and salmon and forests where you can still find
trees older than your grandparents.
That is why it is only fitting that in the last few days
of this Congress we are able to honor Senator Bumpers by
dedicating wilderness areas within the Ozark and Ouachita
National Forests to his long, and often lonely, fight to
protect our Nation's most precious natural resources.
His marker also represents a world where children are
free from disease and free from debt. Dale and his wife
Betty have not only made a professional commitment to
protecting the health of our children, but they have made
this a personal commitment.
Even if Dale was still a Main Street merchant or a
jackleg merchant, as he described himself, Betty would
still be dragging him into these fights to protect our
children's health. Although I know that she has never had
to pull very hard, because his commitment comes from the
heart.
Many of us will remember Senator Bumpers not only for a
keeper of our national treasures, but also as a chaser of
boondoggles. Whether it be reining in government subsidies
for mining companies or chemical companies, he is never
one to pull punches or mince words.
In fact, one of the only reasons I can come up with for
Congress still not passing mining reform is that we all so
love to see Dale take over the aisles of this Chamber and
entertain us with his now re-known ``Bumperisms.'' Who
else would think to compare the attraction between our
mining companies and government subsidies to a ``duck on a
June bug.''
Of course, Dale certainly would not be one to limit his
battles to planet Earth. He has also taken on the black
holes we've tried to build in outer space. I will not be
surprised at all if we start receiving Bumper-Grams from
Arkansas each week telling us how many millions we have
spent in the last 7 days on the International Space
Station. Although this fight is not over, Senator Bumpers
can leave here knowing he helped stop the ill-conceived
``Star Wars'' to make our heavens a battlefield.
Although we will certainly miss Senator Bumpers for all
his one-liners, impassioned speeches, and frank critiques,
we will also miss his wonderful wife, Betty. As we leave
here this week, I will look fondly on Senator Bumpers
future--spending his days with Betty, his three children,
Brent, Bill, and Brooke and their five grandchildren.
Finally, Mr. President, let me help send our dear friend
by quoting from another highly esteemed Arkansan, Johnny
Cash, ``ask that engineer if he will blow his whistle
please, `Cause I smell frost on cotton leaves. * * * And I
smell that Southern breeze. Hey, Porter! Hey, Porter!
Please get my bags for me, I need nobody to tell me now
that we're in Tennessee. * * * Hey Porter! Hey Porter!
Please open up my door. When they stop this train I'm
gonna get off first `Cause I can't wait no more. Tell that
engineer I say, ``Thanks a lot. I didn't mind the fare.
I'm gonna set my feet on Southern soil. * * * And breathe
that Southern air.''
We all hope that Southern air treats you and Betty well.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I understand that in his last
campaign Senator Bumpers used the slogan: ``What a Senator
Should Be.'' I couldn't have summed it up better myself.
Throughout his 24 years in this body, Dale Bumpers has
set new standards for the office of Senator. He is sincere
and compassionate. He speaks with eloquence and clarity.
He is an idealist and a realist. He is courageous and
principled. He can stimulate a debate and broker a deal.
He has a deep understanding of the issues and a quick wit
that amuses us all. He is a true populist whose dedication
to improving the lives of Arkansans has benefited our
Nation as a whole.
I am deeply honored to have served with Senator Bumpers
for 6 years. I have learned a great deal from him. Because
of him I have been fortunate to witness some of the
Senate's most animated debates, on such issues as mining
law reform, electric utility restructuring, protecting
small business, preserving our public lands, arms control
and fighting the now infamous space station.
He has been a voice for our precious environment,
champion of consumer rights, and he has always been
willing to stand up for the ``little guy'', for the
interests of regular folks.
Senator Bumpers' illustrious career began long before he
was elected to the U.S. Senate. As a young lawyer in
Charleston, AR, Dale Bumpers played a key role in the
first integration of a public school after the Brown vs.
Board of Education decision.
He went on to serve as Governor of Arkansas for 4 years,
and was recently voted the ``Greatest Governor'' in the
history of Arkansas by the Arkansas Times.
Fortunately, it was not often that Senator Bumpers and I
were on opposite sides of an issue. However, one of my
most memorable moments in the Senate was one such
occasion. We were debating an important agriculture issue
and to emphasize my point, I brought a frozen chicken on
the Senate floor and slammed it on a desk. Senator Bumpers
and Senator Pryor immediately raised a point of order and
I had to remove that chicken from the Senate floor.
Anyone who has had to face off against Senator Bumpers
knows of the passion he feels for the issues he discusses
and the people he represents. Even those who may oppose
his views can't help but admire his lively speeches and
personal stories. I will miss hearing his familiar sayings
about pigs squealing under gates and fights with Betty. I
will miss his pointer flying as he paces up and down the
aisles of the floor. I will miss the passion in his voice.
And most of all, I will miss my friend.
Senator Bumpers is someone on whom I have grown to
depend, a man who has always given a kind word, and a
person who has been a true role model for us all.
I thank the senior Senator from Arkansas for all that he
has shared with us and all that he has taught us. No doubt
there will be Senators who will continue to promote the
causes he cared for so deeply. But I assure you, the
debates will never have the same enthusiasm, the same
passion or the same flare, that Senator Bumpers brought to
this august body.
It is with reverence, awe and deep affection that I pay
tribute to the truly distinguished gentleman from
Arkansas, Senator Dale Bumpers. I will miss him dearly.
Wednesday, June 18, 1997.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, with sadness, I rise today
to pay tribute to a remarkable member of the U.S. Senate,
the senior Senator from Arkansas, Dale Bumpers. Senator
Bumpers has announced his retirement after more than 25
years in public service, including the last 22 years in
the U.S. Senate. When Dale Bumpers leaves the Senate at
the end of next year to return to his family and his
beloved Arkansas, I will miss his leadership and his
friendship tremendously.
There has rarely been a Senator in this body with the
courage of his convictions like Dale Bumpers. During his
time here, he has stood up valiantly for the causes he
believes in. He has been an advocate for his home State
and has fought against a number of Government projects
that he felt were wasteful or inefficient. His object has
always been to protect the people of Arkansas and the
American taxpayer. We have not always agreed with each
other on the merits of every project. But I have always
been able to count on Senator Bumpers' integrity, his
honesty, and his good humor.
When Senator Bumpers retires, I think my colleagues will
agree that the back of the Senate Chamber will never be
the same. In an institution known for its orators, Senator
Bumpers is among the most accomplished of them. His
passion for public debate, and his commitment to justice
have been obvious to all Senators when Dale Bumpers takes
the floor of the Senate. He speaks with eloquence and with
feeling, whether the issue is protecting our environment
or cutting corporate welfare.
Throughout his career in public service, Senator Bumpers
has remained true to his constituents by being a strong
advocate for his home State of Arkansas. He knows that a
Senator's ultimate responsibility is to the people of his
State. As a result of his advocacy and his honesty,
Arkansas voters have returned him to Washington three
times with landslide re-election victories. I have no
doubt that the voters of Arkansas would have made it a
fourth re-election landslide if he wished.
Senator Bumpers' insights into the issues and problems
we address in the Senate, and in his Environment and
Public Works Committee have made him a valuable and
trusted Member of this body. Our leadership, the Senate,
and most of all the State of Arkansas have greatly
benefited from his service.
I believe that I speak for all of my colleagues when I
say that the departure of Senator Bumpers will leave a
void in this institution. As he approaches retirement, I
want to thank Dale Bumpers for his service to his country
and congratulate him for his extraordinary career. I wish
him excellent health and happiness in retirement, and I
will truly miss him.
---
FAREWELL ADDRESS OF SENATOR BUMPERS
Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to
speak, for what may be the last time, on the floor of the
Senate. It is a very bittersweet time for me, after 24
years, most of which have been spent at this very desk. I
might say at this moment that I have been blessed by
having Senator Kennedy as my seatmate these many years,
and before him Senator Gore--both truly outstanding men.
In order to deliver a speech such as I am about to
deliver, Mr. President, I do not think there is anything
wrong with listing some of the defining moments in my
life, because this speech is really more for the benefit
of my children and grandchildren than it is for my
colleagues or the people of America.
First of all, I was blessed by my parents. I remind my
brother from time to time that everybody was not so lucky
in choosing their parents as he and I were. And that
really is the reason that I stand here as one of 1,843 men
and women ever to serve in the U.S. Senate. We were taught
when we were children that when we died we were ``going to
Franklin Roosevelt''. And the reason we were taught that
is because we were very poor. Most people do not realize
that the South, from 1865 until about the time Franklin
Roosevelt became President, was still living almost as a
conquered nation. National politicians paid very little
attention to the South.
In our household, we were poor during the Great
Depression. And I might say, the Great Depression is
certainly one of the most important defining moments of my
life. But it was during the Great Depression that Franklin
Roosevelt began to provide all kinds of things for people
in the South that they had previously thought unthinkable.
We didn't have indoor plumbing. We didn't have running
water. We didn't have paved streets. We didn't have much
of anything. The people in our community died of typhoid
fever in the summertime because the outhouse was just a
few steps away from the well from which we drew our
drinking water. Then Franklin Roosevelt began to provide
immunizations for children against smallpox and typhoid.
It was free. We got those shots at school.
We had then what we called hoboes or tramps; today we
call them homeless people. My mother always saved a few
scraps after breakfast knowing that some tramp was going
to knock on the back door and ask for food. That was back
before welfare came into existence. So we were very poor.
I remember when I was 12 years old my father heard that
Franklin Roosevelt was coming to Arkansas. He was a great
believer in America and the political system and public
service. He wanted my brother and me to see Franklin
Roosevelt. So we drove over a gravel road 20 miles to
Booneville, AR, and when the train on the Rock Island line
pulled in, Franklin Roosevelt came out on the back
platform, obviously being held up by a couple of Secret
Service men. I tugged on my father's arm and I said,
``Dad, what's wrong with him?'' He said, ``I will tell you
later.'' On the way home, he told us that Franklin
Roosevelt had contracted polio when he was 37 years old,
he couldn't walk, and he carried 12 pounds of steel braces
on his legs.
Then he told my brother and me that if Franklin
Roosevelt could become President and couldn't even walk,
there was no reason why my brother and I, with strong
minds and bodies, couldn't become President, too. I never
took my eye off that goal until many, many years later.
In the following year, my father was president of the
Arkansas Retail Hardware Association. They gave our family
$300 to go to Los Angeles to the national convention. I
can remember the big party at the Biltmore Hotel in Los
Angeles in 1937. I had never stepped on a carpet before in
my life, and the Biltmore was filled with thick carpet. We
just loved it. We didn't stay at the Biltmore. We were
staying at the $2-a-night cabin.
But the night of the big party, everybody was in tuxedos
and long dresses, except my parents. And all the children
were dressed in tuxedos, too, even in that Depression year
of 1937. But I can remember my brother and I had on long
pants and white shirts, no tie, no coat. We were terribly
embarrassed. My father sensed that, and so the next day he
told us that he knew we were embarrassed but he reminded
us that the most important thing was that we were clean,
our clothes were clean, our bodies were clean, and the
kind of clothes you wore really were not all that
important. He made it OK.
When I was 15 years old, I had a high school English and
literature teacher named Miss Doll. Every Member of the
U.S. Senate has been influenced by a college professor or
high school teacher, maybe a preacher or somebody else.
She was my influence.
I remember my mother, who had a tendency--not to
denigrate my mother--to not build our self-esteem. My
father was working against that, trying to teach us self-
esteem, not ego, but esteem.
We were reading Beowulf in English, a great piece of
literature. We would read a paragraph and discuss it. One
time it came my time to read. I started reading, and all
of a sudden--I read about two pages and Miss Doll still
hadn't stopped me--I looked up and she was standing there.
She looked at me and she looked at the class and she said,
``Doesn't he read beautifully?'' ``Doesn't he have a nice
voice?'' And she said, ``And wouldn't it be tragic if he
didn't use that talent.'' At first I thought she was
making fun of me, but she did more for my self-esteem in
10 seconds than anybody, except my father, ever did. Some
of my political detractors think she overdid it.
And then just out of high school, but only after 6
months at the University of Arkansas, I went into the
Marine Corps. World War II was raging. It was a terrifying
time. I fully expected to be killed in that war. The
Marines were taking terrible casualties in the South
Pacific. Happily, I survived that. The best part of it was
when I got home there was a caring, generous,
compassionate Federal Government, waiting with the GI
bill.
While my father would have stolen to make sure we had a
good education, my brother went to Harvard Law School and
I went to the University of Arkansas and later
Northwestern University Law School--both expensive schools
my father could never afford. I studied political science
and law. The reason I did that is because my father wanted
me to go into public service. He wanted me and my brother
to be politicians. He may be the last man who ever lived
who encouraged his sons to go into politics.
In my first year in law school, he and my mother were
killed in a car wreck. They were tragically killed by a
drunken driver. Neither of them had ever had a drink in
their life. That is what made it so bizarre. The big
disappointment of my life was that my father didn't live
to see me Governor or Senator.
The next defining moment of my life is when our children
were born--first Brent, then Bill and then Brooke.
The next defining moment was when I was practicing law
in a little town of 1,200 people and decided to run for
Governor. The day I filed, a poll was taken statewide. It
was the last day of the filing deadline. I found that of
the eight Democrats in the primary, I had 1-percent name
recognition. It was probably the most foolhardy thing I
had ever done in my life. But I was trying to keep faith
with my father, and I believe strongly in our country and
I believe in public service.
The next defining moment in my life was shortly after I
was elected Governor I got an invitation to go to Kansas
City to speak at a Truman Day dinner. I told them I
couldn't go, the legislature was in session. I just
assumed those legislators would screw the dome off the
capital if I left town. They came back and said, ``If you
will agree to do this, we will let you spend an hour with
President and Mrs. Truman,'' and that was more than I
could resist. So I went and spent that hour with President
Truman and he asked me how I liked being Governor. I said,
``I don't like it, it's a real pressure cooker. I am just
a country lawyer. This is all new to me and the press is
driving me crazy.''
I was telling him what a terrible job being Governor of
Arkansas was, and it suddenly dawned on me I was talking
to a man who had to make the decision to drop the atomic
bomb that ended World War II. And so I shut up. And then
he told me, as I left, ``Son, while you are looking at the
ceiling every night in the Governor's mansion, wondering
what you are going to do, remember one thing: The people
elected you to do what you think is right and that is all
they expect out of you. They have busy lives. So,
remember, always tell people the truth; they can handle
it.''
That didn't sound like very profound advice to me at the
time. But indeed it was. I have thought about it every day
of my life since then.
Second, he said, ``When you are debating in your own
mind the issues that you have to confront, you think about
this: Get the best advice you can get on both sides of the
issue, make up your mind which one is right, and then you
do it. That is all the people of the State expect of you--
to do what you think is right.''
So when I drove off the mansion grounds 4 years later,
coming to the Senate, as I told my Democratic colleagues
the other night, most of whom know this, I came here with
the full intention of running for President. I had a very
successful 4 years as Governor. I thought the world was my
oyster and I fully intended, as I say, to run. The reason
I didn't run is because after I had been here for a year,
I realized that this whole apparatus was much more complex
than I thought it was.
I told my children, if I had three lives to live, at the
end of the last one, I would look back prior to 10 years
at the end of it and realize how dumb I was. I was so
smart when I graduated from high school, I could hardly
bear it. When I got out of law school, the problem was
compounded. When I drove off the mansion grounds, I was
quite sure I was ready to be king of the world.
The other night I told Senator Sarbanes I really regret
that I have not been as effective a legislator as I should
have been. He said, ``Everybody feels that way.'' What I
was really saying, I suppose, is I wish I had known then
what I know now. In my dying breath I will look back and
think about, really, how I was not as smart this Saturday
afternoon as I thought I was. That is what a living,
learning experience is.
So I chose not to run for President. By the time I felt
that I was qualified to be President, I decided that it
demanded a price that I was not willing to pay. Not to be
purely apocalyptic about our future, because I am not, I
must say, in all candor, partisanship has reached a point
in this country, and the demands for political money have
become so great--two very insidious things--that good men
and women are opting out of public service, and not to
enter public service. Money is corrupting the political
process and it threatens our very democracy.
Since I announced that I would not run last year, I
confess to you, Mr. President and colleagues, that I have
voted in ways that I would not have if I were running. I
think of the few times when I would have had to worry
about what kind of a 30-second spot that vote would
generate.
I have cast my share of courageous votes since I have
been here, as Harry Truman admonished me to do. I have
always tried to use simple tests as to how I voted; How
would my children and grandchildren judge me? Did it make
me stronger or the Nation stronger? Did it do any
irreversible damage to the environment? Is it fair to the
less fortunate among us? Does it comport with the thrust
of our Constitution, the greatest document ever conceived
by the mind of man? Or does it simply make me stronger
politically because it satisfies the political whims of
the moment? Or does it simply keep the political money
supply flowing?
Speaking of courageous votes, I voted for the Panama
Canal Treaties in 1978 and, in all fairness, in 1980, had
I had a strong opponent, I would not be standing here
right now. I lucked out. But I can tell you, people were
absolutely livid about my vote on the Panama Canal
Treaties--a fabricated political issue. I ask the American
people and my colleagues, who today has been
inconvenienced by the Panama Canal Treaties? Is this
country any weaker? The truth is that it is stronger. Our
relationship with Panama is much stronger. It was the
Quemoy and Matsu issue of 1978.
Incidentally, Henry Bellmon of Oklahoma voted against
the Panama Canal Treaties and made a minute-and-a-half
speech in doing it, while the rest of us were
pontificating for hours trying to justify our positions.
He announced he would not run again because, coming from
the conservative State of Oklahoma, he knew he didn't have
a prayer of being reelected, so hot was that issue.
When I voted against Ronald Reagan's prayer in school
amendment--the only southern Senator to do so, my opponent
tried to take advantage of it. But the American people and
the people of my State--once you explained what was
involved to them, where the school prayers would be
written or adopted by the school board and required saying
in the schools--came to understand the perils of the
amendment. I always tell youngsters, and college groups
particularly, when you think about that, you tell me which
country that has an official state religion you want to
live in.
Mr. President, one of the greatest moments of my life
was when I was Governor and a man came into my office
wanting me to talk to the highway department about a late
penalty they were going to assess him for being 60 days
late in completing a highway job. To shorten the story, I
said, ``If I do this for you, how do I explain to the next
guy who walks in the door why I can't do it for him? I
don't want to start down that road.'' After a long
conversation, when he started to walk out after I told him
I could not, under any circumstances, comply with the
request, he said, ``Governor, that's the reason I voted
for you.''
This institution is a great place. It is supposed to be
the deliberative body. The Founding Fathers intended the
lower House, the House of Representatives, to be the House
of the people. They expected this place to be the
deliberative body. It is a curious thing--and the minority
leader here knows this--every amendment, every bill that
comes up, we immediately start trying to figure out, how
stringently can we limit the debate on this issue? There
are times when that is fully justified, and there are
times when only if you fully air something do the Senate
Members really come here well enough informed to vote on
it.
We are still the oldest democracy on Earth. We are still
living under the oldest Constitution on Earth, and without
men and women of goodwill being willing to offer
themselves for service, there is absolutely no assurance
that that will always be. Thomas Jefferson said, ``The
price of liberty is eternal vigilance.'' He was not just
talking about military vigilance. We are still woefully
inadequate in this country in the field of education. If I
were the President of the United States and I were looking
at a $70 billion surplus, I would make sure the first
thing we did was to pass a bill that said no child in this
Nation shall be deprived of a college education for lack
of money. Look at all the statistics where we rank among
the developed nations in education. And look at the state
of health care. It is good for those who can afford it.
And 45 million who have no health insurance and no health
care do the best they can.
Mr. President, I have been richly blessed in my life, as
I said, mostly by devoted parents, and good Methodist
Sunday school teaching. My mother wanted me to be a
Methodist preacher and my father wanted me to be a
politician. Think about growing up with that pressure. I
am personally blessed with a great family. If I died
tomorrow, the people of Arkansas would take note of it,
and there would be headlines in all of the papers in the
State. But if Betty died tomorrow the people of our State
would grieve. She has founded two organizations.
When Ronald Reagan announced to this country that we
might just fire one across the Soviet Union's bow to get
their attention, he terrified her. She and a group of
congressional wives met around my kitchen table for about
6 months. Finally, I came home one night, and she said,
``We are forming an organization. And we feel so strongly
about it that we are going to put `peace' in the name. We
are going to call it Peace Links''. Ultimately, she had
almost 250 congressional wives conscripted into that
organization.
I told her ``you are going to get your husband beat.''
We are from a conservative State. People in Arkansas
believe in a strong defense. People across this Nation
believe in a strong defense. She said, ``You men are going
to get my children killed.''
She had already spent all of her public life, from the
time I was Governor until this day trying to immunize all
of the children in this country. And I am not going to go
through all of the successes that she has had, which have
been staggering.
The Western Hemisphere is free of polio. Africa will be
free of polio by the year 2002. Asia will be free of polio
by the year 2004. And measles is next.
I tell you, she deserves a lot of credit for the virtual
elimination of childhood diseases in this country. She
went to see President Carter when he first came to power.
She said, ``I tell you something you can do that will have
a lasting effect on the health of this Nation, and it will
help you a lot when you run again.'' He put Joe Califano
at her disposal. And today she and Rosalynn Carter have an
organization called ``Every Child By Two.'' She is still
going at it--peace and children.
I have three beautiful children, and six beautiful,
healthy grandchildren. I have been blessed with
exceptional staff members, most of whom are more than
staff members. They are very good friends. I have been
blessed with the support of the people of my State in
winning almost every election by 60 percent or more of the
vote. I was much more liberal than my constituents. I like
to believe that they respected me because they knew what I
stood for is what I believed instead of what was
politically expedient at any given time. But, for whatever
reason, I will always be grateful to them.
Our State does not deserve to have been torn apart for
the past 6 years. I know so many innocent people who have
been destroyed, financially and mentally, by a criminal
justice system gone awry. You would have to go back to the
Salem witchcraft trials to find anything comparable.
I do not, nor does any Senator, condone the President's
conduct. Call it whatever you want--reprehensible,
indefensible, unconscionable. Call it anything you want.
But most of us take pride in President Clinton's
Presidency. And the American people are still saying they
like him. But completely aside from that, as I say, I weep
sometimes for the unfair treatment to my State, and so
many innocent people in it.
I have been blessed by unbelievable friendships of
colleagues. Those friendships will probably wane. It is
almost impossible to maintain a relationship with a
colleague once you leave here. That is really tragic. But
I am realistic. And I know that is what it will be. I know
we will have a difficult time having the same kind of
relationship, if any at all. But I want them to know that
I value their friendship. I value my service with them. I
have served with some truly great men and women. And, as
Senator Byrd likes to say, only 1,843 men and women have
ever been so privileged to serve in this body.
I am already nostalgic about this Chamber--24 years in
this Chamber, the Cloakroom, the hearing rooms, the
Capitol itself. For 24 years, the first 20 of which I went
home almost every weekend and came back on Sunday night, I
never failed, as we flew by the Washington Monument, to
get goose bumps. And I hope I never do. So, colleagues, I
thank you for being my friend. To the people of my State,
I thank you for allowing me to serve here.
I want to teach, in order to teach children that
politics is a noble profession. My father said it long
before Bobby Kennedy did. It is a noble calling. And the
minute it becomes what so many people think it is, who do
you think suffers? All of us do. So I want to inspire this
oncoming generation, as my father did me, to get involved
in the political process and public service. You have a
duty and a responsibility.
So, to the U.S. Senate, to all of my colleagues, God
bless and Godspeed.
---
ORDER FOR PRINTING OF INDIVIDUAL SENATE DOCUMENTS
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that
there be printed as individual Senate documents a
compilation of materials from the Congressional Record in
tribute to Senators Dan Coats of Indiana, Dirk Kempthorne
of Idaho, Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, Wendell Ford of
Kentucky, and John Glenn of Ohio.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Craig). Without objection, it
is so ordered.
Mr. LOTT. These clearly are five great Senators who have
served their States and their country so well. And I am
sure they will continue to do so, albeit in a different
arena. Of course, I have said here, Dan Coats has been one
of my closest friends for the past 20 years. I will miss
him here but I will be with him in other areas.
And, of course, John Glenn makes history once again
flying off into space. And many Senators and their spouses
will be there to see that event.
Proceedings in the House
Tuesday, October 20, 1998.
Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a man who
has been a great leader and statesman for the State of
Arkansas and for this country, U.S. Senator Dale Bumpers.
Senator Bumpers will retire this year after 24 years in
the U.S. Senate. A native of Arkansas, Senator Bumpers has
been active in community affairs most of his life, serving
as city attorney, school board president, and president of
the Chamber of Commerce. His service defines the term,
public servant.
Senator Bumpers served the people of Arkansas from 1970
to 1974 as our Governor. He trimmed the number of State
agencies, doubled the number of State parks, launched an
initiative to double the number of doctors trained at
Arkansas' only medical school. He helped to build more and
better State highways and improved our educational system.
There are so many good things in the State of Arkansas
that would not be there if it were not for Senator Dale
Bumpers. The world is a better place because Senator
Bumpers has served. Arkansas and America are better
places. With Senator Bumpers' retirement comes the loss of
one of Arkansas' finest public servants and a good friend
to all those who have had the pleasure of working with
him. I wish Senator Bumpers and his wife, Betty, much
health, happiness and success in the years to come.
ARTICLES AND EDITORIALS
[From Roll Call, January 26, 1998]
Seniority Bites
members with collective 437 years of service in the house
and senate are leaving political office, taking with them
some colorful memories, major legislative achievements,
and political lessons
(By Francesca Contiguglia)
When Representative Lee Hamilton (D-IN) first came to
Congress in 1965, septuagenarian House Speaker John
McCormack (D-MA) had trouble remembering the freshman's
name.
All that changed on the eve of a Caucus vote for
Speaker, when McCormack called for Hamilton's vote.
Hamilton said he would not be supporting the Speaker.
``From that day on, McCormack remembered my name,'' said
Hamilton.
That's just one of the dozens of lessons learned over
the years by Hamilton and the 17 other Members retiring at
the end of this year. But even after a collective 390
years of service, 437 including resigning Members, some of
these Members have regrets about not mastering those
lessons sooner.
``I only wish I had known in 1975 what I know now,''
said Senator Dale Bumpers (D-AR), who is retiring after
four terms in the Senate. ``I would have been a more
effective Senator.''
``You must live through the battles and develop an
institutional memory,'' said Bumpers. He counsels
newcomers to remember that ``you only have so many battles
in you,'' so pick them carefully.
Bumpers has picked plenty of battles, having been known
as an unabashed liberal who is an adamant supporter of
arms control. He once accused Reagan of not wanting ``to
spend money on anything that does not explode.'' Bumpers,
who is also known as a passionate orator, tells newcomers
to remember that the life of a legislator can be
frustrating.
``My goal from the time I was 12 years old was to come
to Congress,'' he said. ``But it's not long till you
realize you're just one of the hundred,'' a sobering
realization, he said.
Other Senate retirees include Glenn and Senators Wendell
Ford (D-KY) and Dan Coats (R-IN). ``There's never been
three finer men serve in the U.S. Senate than those
three,'' said Bumpers.
Although Glenn is a national hero, he has had his share
of disappointments. He dropped out of the 1984
Presidential race after a surprisingly weak showing. He
later was dragged through the mud during the Keating Five
affair, even though the Senate Ethics Committee cleared
him of any wrongdoing.
``One of the greatest miscarriages of justice was Glenn
being brought into the Keating Five hearings,'' said
Bumpers. ``You couldn't hold a gun on me and make me think
John had done anything wrong, ever in his whole life.''
Glenn's clean-cut image was also scarred a bit by his
role as ranking Member in the Senate Governmental Affairs
campaign finance investigation last year. Republicans
accused Glenn of being a defense attorney for the Clinton
Administration and said he muffed a golden opportunity to
make a bipartisan case for reform on the eve of his
retirement--a charge that Glenn vociferously denied.
Ford, who came to the Senate in 1974 along with Bumpers
and Glenn, has distinguished himself as a fierce defender
of the institution both as chairman of the Rules and
Administration Committee and as Democratic Whip for 7
years.
Known as a plain-spoken man from Kentucky, Ford has
looked out for one of his State's top industries: tobacco.
With an ever-present cigarette in his mouth--either during
Congressional hearings or in the hallways of power--Ford
has made sure that Senate rules allow individuals to smoke
on his side of the Capitol.
Now 73, Ford is not slowing down. He gave a speech in
September 1996 for a departing colleague, Senator James
Exon (D-NE), and said, ``I hope you live to be 105 and I'm
one of your pallbearers.''
Coats has spent less time in the Senate than his
retiring colleagues, but he has made his mark for being
upbeat and humorous, making his staff ``more like a
family,'' according to his press secretary of 9 years, Tim
Goeglein.
Goeglein recalled Coats's first day in the Senate. The
staff was unpacking the office when a squirrel snuck in
through an open window and ran about wreaking havoc. Coats
ran off a list of puns and jokes about having a small
rodent running around a Senate office.
One of Coats's larger causes was the line-item veto,
which passed in the 104th Congress. But he has also been
devoted to family causes. Among other things, he supported
the Family Leave Act and sponsored a law allowing parents
to block dial-a-porn numbers.
Outside of politics, Coats is an enormous Chicago Cubs
fan and has said if he weren't a Senator, he'd want to be
the shortstop for the team. His wish almost came true on
his 50th birthday, when he was called from the stands at
Wrigley Field to throw out the first pitch, a surprise
arranged by his staff.
---
[From The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, May 18, 1998]
Bumpers Presses on Toward Legacy of Changes on Hill
(By Susan Roth)
WASHINGTON--It's Senator Dale Bumpers' last chance, and
he's making the most of it.
With his retirement in January, the Arkansas Democrat is
taking advantage of his last opportunity to fight the
legislative battles he has been waging for 23 years on
Capitol Hill.
Despite the conservative climate and Republican majority
in Congress, Bumpers is pushing forward his longtime pet
projects, including mining-law reform, electricity
deregulation and changes in rules for concessions at
national parks. The State's senior Senator also is
continuing to rail at the burgeoning cost of the proposed
international space station--and gaining some supporters
among lawmakers who traditionally have backed the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration's plan regardless of
cost.
``I have never felt more comfortable than I do now with
these issues, especially the space station and the mining
laws,'' Bumpers, 72, said in a recent interview. ``It
makes it more maddening knowing with some degree of
certainty that you're going to lose.''
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, of
which Bumpers is the ranking Democrat, recently held
hearings on his mining-related bills, along with a
Republican mining-reform measure he calls a ``sham bill.''
And the committee is scheduled to consider a bill on
Wednesday to reform the contracting procedures for
national parks concessions, a measure Bumpers has
negotiated with Republican leaders.
The Senator's mining bills are not expected to pass, and
his bill on electricity deregulation--which would set
Federal guidelines on the coming deregulation of the
industry--is considered too complex an issue to make it to
a floor vote in this short legislative year.
But sources on Capitol Hill say the committee and Senate
are likely to pass one of Bumpers' measures as a farewell
gesture, and it looks like it could be the national-parks
concessions reforms.
Bumpers emerged happy and surprised from a recent
meeting with Senator Craig Thomas (R-WY), chairman of the
subcommittee handling the parks bill, and Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt, among other officials.
``I'm very pleased about the progress we made,'' Bumpers
said. ``I frankly couldn't believe it. I think those
people know something ought to be done. It's my 19th year
on that issue. I've sat down with them before and got
nowhere.''
His bill, introduced a year ago, would establish an
open, competitive process for awarding concessions
contracts in the parks. Companies that run the concessions
now are virtually assured of renewing their contracts
under current law that gives them a ``preferential
right,'' regardless of performance or cost, according to
Bumpers. Also, the bill would have the contract money go
to a special account for the use of the National Park
Service, rather than to the general fund as it does now.
Bumpers, who joined the Senate in 1975, has introduced
similar bills in each Congress since 1979. A pair of bills
actually passed both the House and the Senate by
overwhelming margins in the previous Congress, but a
conference committee of both Houses could not agree on the
measure and it never became law.
``Everybody agrees the existing law ought to be changed,
but with the most diligent efforts I can put into it, it
has not been changed, simply because the park
concessioners have more clout with some Members of the
Senate than have I,'' Bumpers said when he introduced the
bill. He argued that the country received only a 2.4
percent return, or $16 million, in franchise fees on
revenues of $676 million for concession contracts in 1995,
the last year for which he could get figures.
``Any property owner in the United States should ask
yourself this question: Would you lease your property out
for that kind of return when it was producing that kind of
revenue for the lessee? You would not even consider it,''
said Bumpers, a former Arkansas Governor. While he
continues to press for his bill, Bumpers has said he is
willing to work with committee leaders, who have their own
bill, to fashion a measure all can support.
``We're working with him,'' Thomas said of Bumpers,
adding that he agreed with Bumpers on the preferential
right of renewal and other issues. ``Some of the
provisions in our bill are not that different from his. We
hope he'd like to work with us to get something passed.
We'll get something.''
Senator Frank Murkowski (R-AK), and chairman of the
Energy and Natural Resources Committee, confirmed that
Bumpers would get a few tokens this year but he declined
to say what they would be. ``There are some things we've
discussed that would be a kind of legacy for him that I
feel sure we can accommodate him on, but I can't think of
them right now,'' Murkowski said.
Murkowski indicated that he has serious problems with
Bumpers' mining bills. He was uncertain about passage of
the Arkansas Senator's parks-concessions measure. And he
said he doubted electricity deregulation guidelines could
be passed this year. ``But there are some projects he
wants very much for his State that I will be able to
accommodate him on,'' Murkowski said. Although Bumpers
knows the chairman's positions and doubts that his mining
bills will pass this year, he remains most passionate
about reforming the Nation's mining law. The 1872 measure
was designed to lure people to settle out West when the
country was young.
The law, which Bumpers has called ``the most unjustified
taxpayer giveaway in the history of the republic,'' allows
hardrock-mining companies to take over public land for a
tiny fraction of the value of the minerals underground and
pay no royalties to the government on the income they
receive from the minerals, including gold, silver, copper,
platinum and palladium.
Bumpers cited one case in which a company paid $9,000
for 1,800 acres of land while estimating that the land
contained $11 billion worth of gold. ``It is a license to
steal and a colossal scam,'' Bumpers said. ``To paraphrase
the old song, they get the gold and we get the shaft.''
Oil, gas and coal companies must pay the government a
percentage of their income under separate laws for their
industries. One of Bumpers' bills would establish a 5
percent royalty on minerals and prohibit the issuance of
new deeds to mining-claimed public land. The royalties
would go to a fund to reclaim land that has been damaged
by mining operations. Mining industry representatives say
such a royalty on their gross income would put them out of
business. The Republican bill would have them pay
royalties on their net income instead.
But Bumpers argues that the GOP bill would allow
companies to escape paying by deducting all sorts of
expenses before calculating the royalties. And he says the
industry never has complained about existing requirements
that mining companies pay royalties to private landowners.
Bumpers also argued before the committee that the
Republican bill would exempt most current mining claims on
public land by grandfathering them under the old
provisions.
Another of his bills would eliminate a tax deduction for
mineral operations on public lands and those areas taken
over by mining companies, and a third bill would impose a
fee on the production of minerals on those public lands
worked by the industry. These fees also would go to the
reclamation fund proposed by Bumpers.
The Senator said the most important piece of legislation
to him is the one requiring royalties from the industry.
``It's pure politics,'' he said of his 9-year battles on
the issue. Bumpers said there are about 10 Senators from
six Western States who have helped the mining industry to
repeatedly block his reform legislation in the past. But
he told the committee that the industry would be mistaken
to sigh with relief when he leaves the Senate next year.
Other Senators will take up the fight, Bumpers promised.
Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and a freshman Member of
the committee, spoke up almost as if on cue. ``When I came
here a year ago, I remember Senator Bumpers making one of
his excellent, passionate speeches, trying to move us
forward on this issue,'' Landrieu said.
``I was so moved that I joined him on the floor. I know
he is frustrated about leaving without passing mining
reform, so I have committed publicly to pick up his
banner,'' she said. ``I want to work in a bipartisan
manner to bring reform, and I hope I'll be here for many
years.''
After the hearing, Landrieu said she believes ``it's
important that taxpayers understand the injustice of the
current system. I'm from an oil and gas State where the
companies and the public both benefit [from the royalty
system]. You can have a system where both benefit instead
of just one side.''
Bumpers was grateful. He said some other Senators,
including Jack Reed (R-RI), Slade Gorton (R-WA), and Jim
Jeffords (R-VT), have pledged to carry the ball on some of
his other favorite issues.
``I have profound respect for Senator Landrieu,''
Bumpers said. ``She has acquitted herself very well on an
issue she cares about. I suspect it's an issue that will
be very much alive after I leave here.''
---
[From The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, October 18, 1998]
Senators Extol Bumpers' Candor, Constancy
(By Susan Roth)
WASHINGTON--In the waning days of a congressional
session, Senators tend to wax profound on favorite issues,
but in the last 2 weeks, many have taken time to reflect
on the impending retirement of Arkansas' senior Senator,
Dale Bumpers.
Bumpers, a Democrat who leaves the Senate in January
after 24 years in office, inspires strong emotions in most
of his colleagues. Some dislike him for his frankness and
his unwavering stands on certain issues. Others admire him
for the same reasons.
On October 10, which was intended to be the last day of
the 105th Congress, Bumpers, calling it ``a very
bittersweet time for me,'' rose for his final speech on
the floor of the Senate.
In the days before and after, several Senators from both
sides of the aisle lionized him in floor statements. They
hailed Bumpers' personal kindnesses, his skill as an
orator, his accomplishments as a marine, World War II
veteran and Arkansas Governor and, of course, his record
in the Senate on issues like children's health, rural
development and the environment.
Arkansan Tim Hutchinson, the State's junior Senator,
started the speeches October 7 by remembering that ``as a
high school student, I followed Dale Bumpers' meteoric
rise from an unknown country lawyer from Charleston, AR to
the Governor of the State and a man who became known in
Arkansas politics as the giant-killer, defeating such
luminaries of Arkansas politics as Win Rockefeller and
J.W. Fulbright.''
Hutchinson, a Republican who came to the Senate from the
House less than 2 years ago, maintained a cordial, though
cool, relationship with Bumpers early in his term. The
relationship has warmed; now they occasionally duck out
for lunch together.
Hutchinson acknowledged that he has worked for Bumpers'
opponents, as he did in 1986, when his brother, Republican
Representative Asa Hutchinson, ran and lost. Tim
Hutchinson has always opposed Bumpers' political views.
``That has always been the way with Dale Bumpers. You
either agreed with him passionately or you disagreed
vehemently. While Dale has always been as smooth as honey,
he has never tried to varnish his views or dilute his
positions to make them more palatable to the general
public, whether it was the Panama Canal or the space
station.''
But Hutchinson said he saw Bumpers' human side in 1996,
when Hutchinson was in a hard-fought battle for the Senate
seat he now holds. Bumpers and retiring Senator David
Pryor were campaigning for Hutchinson's Democratic
opponent, Attorney General Winston Bryant.
Then Hutchinson's son, Timothy, was critically injured
in a car accident. Bumpers called Hutchinson at the
hospital ``to assure me of his thoughts and his prayers
and to tell me that he and David were suspending
campaigning until it was clear that my son was going to be
OK,'' Hutchinson recalled.
``Dale, we will miss you around this place,'' Hutchinson
said in his floor speech. ``I won't miss your votes, but I
will miss you. I will miss your stories, and I will miss
your humor. I will miss your eloquence, and I will miss
your passion. I am grateful that our Senate careers
overlapped for these 2 years. Thanks for your advice and
counsel, and best wishes on this next phase of your
life.'' Senator Strom Thurmond, (R-SC), the oldest and
longest-serving Senator at age 95, extolled Bumpers' gift
as a orator and storyteller.
``While each Member takes his or her duties seriously, I
hope that I do not offend anyone when I say that not all
are gifted orators,'' Thurmond said October 9. ``One
person who definitely can engage in articulate and
compelling debate, and is also able to bring a little
levity to our proceedings through his wit and ability to
tell a story, is the Senator from Arkansas, Dale
Bumpers.''
Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), who has served almost as
long as Thurmond and is known along with Bumpers as one of
the foremost orators in the Senate, lived up to his
reputation with a lengthy speech last Saturday. ``I pay
tribute today to an exceptional United States Senator, a
man with whom it has been my honor to serve and to have
been associated with, a man of unusual conviction,
passion, and resolve,'' Byrd said.
``He has been called the last Southern liberal, and he
is proud of it. He often quotes from To Kill a
Mockingbird. He is the commanding foe against the space
station. The above discourse clearly references the
actions of only one man--Senator Dale Bumpers, Democrat
from Arkansas.'' Byrd spoke of many of Bumpers'
legislative efforts--against the space station and the
superconducting supercollider, in favor of mining-law
reform, improvements in children's health care,
improvement in the lives of rural farming families.
``While many a press story covered his crusades against
alleged lost causes, Senator Dale Bumpers is a man that
leaves this Senate with a triumphant record for the
American people,'' Byrd said, calling Bumpers ``a modern
hero to the underdog.'' ``In honor of his service to rural
America, I am proud that this Congress, in the fiscal year
1999 Agriculture Appropriations bill, is formally paying
tribute to his work by designating an Agricultural
Research Service facility as the Dale Bumpers National
Rice Research Center,'' Byrd said. He also mentioned that
the University of Arkansas has designated the Dale Bumpers
College of Agricultural, Food, and Life Sciences.
``As I say my farewell to Dale Bumpers,'' Byrd
concluded, ``I want him to know that when the 106th
Congress convenes, I will remember his thoughtful recital
of the fictional Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird:
`For God's sake, do your duty.' ''
Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), speaking Wednesday, lauded
Bumpers' ``common-sense approach'' to budgeting and
appropriations as a senior Member of the Appropriations
Committee. He also referred to Bumpers' work with his wife
on children's health, saying that ``no one has fought
harder for childhood vaccinations, and to make them
universal, affordable, and accessible, than Dale and Betty
Bumpers.''
In appreciation, Harkin recalled that the Appropriations
Committee recently voted unanimously to name a new vaccine
facility at the National Institutes of Health after the
Bumperses. The facility, now under construction, will be
called the Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research
Facility.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), who spoke at
length after Bumpers finished talking last Saturday,
recounted Bumpers' battles, calling him ``a champion for
rural America, a consistent advocate for fiscal
discipline, a tireless defender of the U.S. Constitution
and the separation of powers it guarantees.''
Before Bumpers' last annual attempt to kill the
international space station in July, Daschle noted that
Bumpers had ``told a reporter that he expected to lose
again but he would try anyway, because he thought it was
the right thing to do.'' Then he added, ``I probably lost
as many battles as anybody who ever served in the U.S.
Senate.''
``I want to tell my friend as he prepares to end his
Senate career, if you did in fact lose more battles than
someone else who may have served here, it is only because
you chose tougher and more important battles,'' Daschle
said. ``Even more than the outcome of your battles, you
have earned your place in history for the dignity and the
courage and the eloquence with which you have waged those
battles.''
Both Daschle and Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), poked fun
at Bumpers' unconventional way of pacing the floor of the
Senate as he addressed the body. ``The normal rules are,
you are supposed to stay at your desk,'' Daschle said.
``Not Senator Bumpers. Senator Bumpers has the longest
cord in Senate history.'' I joked the other night, when we
finally see Senator Bumpers depart, we are going to cut up
his cord and give 10 feet to every Senator and save 10
more for the next. He goes up and down that aisle.
``Since, as we are prone to do in this body, we name
things after our colleagues, I am going to start referring
to that as the Bumpers corridor. And I am pointing, for
the record, to my left. For anybody who has served with
Dale, I don't have to point at all. We all know what the
Bumpers corridor is.'' Like the others, Daschle also said
he would miss Betty Bumpers, who is well-known in
Washington for her work on behalf of children's health,
but Daschle lauded her as much as the Senator.
``There is no question, as we all know, he over-
married,'' Daschle said. ``There is no question who the
real force in the family is. There is no question who the
visionary and the giant is. As Senator Bumpers so capably
noted, there is no question who is beloved in the State of
Arkansas.''
Daschle, who came to the Senate in 1987, said he has
considered Bumpers his model, ``for how he speaks, for
what he stands for, for how he interacts with his
colleagues, for how he represents his State, for all of
the courageous positions he has taken. I don't know how
you do better than that.
``I don't know who it was who once said, `If we are to
see farther into the future, we must stand on the
shoulders of giants.' Dale Bumpers is a giant,'' Daschle
said.
``And it is upon his shoulders that we have stood many,
many, many times to see into the future, as I have seen.
He persuades us, he cajoles us, he humors us, he always
enlightens us. * * * In the eyes of all of us, Dale
Bumpers will always stand as the giant we knew, as the
respected legislator we trust, and as the friend we
love.''
---
[From The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 14, 1997]
It's Bumpers' Big Day
(By John Brummett)
Today is the day. U.S. Senator Bumpers will assemble
friends, supporters and reporters at 2 p.m. at the old
Lafayette Hotel in downtown Little Rock. The event is
described as a news conference and reception. The
Senator's staff says it will be ``political in nature.'' I
can go a step farther in describing the agenda. Bumpers
traditionally makes his formal campaign announcements at
the Lafayette. In fact, he will declare this afternoon
whether he will seek election to a fourth Senate term.
``Yes, I can say that that's the purpose of the event,''
said Martha Perry, Bumpers' indispensable aide in his
Little Rock office. ``He's not going to get up and say,
`Well, I called you all together here today to discuss
mining reform.' ''
Well, he might. But it would be a laugh line.
If he runs, he will begin the race as a heavy favorite
to preserve a shred of the status quo of Arkansas
politics. If he doesn't run, the Arkansas political
landscape will resemble a tornado's path. Everyone will
ponder running for the seat: Rodney Slater, Jay Dickey,
Bill Gwatney, Mike Beebe, Jim Dailey, Winston Bryant,
even, yes, Mike Huckabee.
Republicans will champ at the bit knowing they suddenly
stand a reasonable chance to secure Arkansas' other Senate
seat. That would give Tim Hutchinson a Republican ally,
completing a full turnover in the State's once solidly
Democratic delegation in the Nation's leading deliberative
body. Democrats will be forced to get their act together
to find, unveil and promote a new generation. Or they
could run Bryant again.
Bumpers will begin the morning at the Pink Tomato
Festival in Warren. He'll ride in the parade before coming
north to Little Rock. David Pryor, maybe Bumpers' best
friend, once said of him, ``Dale only needs two things--a
podium and a parade.'' So this ought to be a good day. It
also might be a signal of his leanings. Non-retired
politicians tend to be offered more parades and podiums
than retired ones.
But signals are often over-analyzed at times such as
these in regard to the uncertain intentions of lofty
politicians. Yes, Bumpers is going to the tomato festival.
That doesn't necessarily mean he's anxious to run
vigorously for another 6-year term in the Senate.
Speculation among political insiders has been rampant
all week, and all over the map. The most credible
information has come from the Senator's intimates, who
suspect he has two sets of mental notes, if not two sets
of actual notes, and that he has not yet finally and
unequivocally decided which to deploy. One set would
explain his decision to run again. The other would explain
his decision not to run again.
``I think that in the broad sense he'd love to remain a
U.S. Senator,'' a friend said. ``But I think that in this
specific case he's disillusioned with the state of
politics.''
This friend said it wasn't so much the anguish of the
debate and vote on so-called partial birth abortion that
had put the Senator in a recent state of lament. He said
Bumpers' latest regret is that partisanship has reached
such dreadful extremes that a simple bill to provide an
essential service of government--disaster relief for
people left tragically homeless by acts of God--could be
held hostage by Republican riders to pre-empt future
government shutdowns or change the way we count minorities
for the census.
It is said that one of Bumpers' Democratic colleagues in
the Senate took him aside one day recently and pleaded
with him to run again, telling him he was the conscience
of the Senate. Bumpers is reported to have responded that
the Senate didn't seem to listen to any conscience
anymore.
This seems to be the choice: He can run again because he
loves being a Senator, doesn't want to risk losing the
seat to the opposing party and still believes politics can
be a noble profession, or he can decline to run again
because he hates the current state of politics, despises
the money-raising that will require more time and effort
from him than ever before and desperately wishes to avoid
the kind of overheated and destructive rhetoric now
commonplace in political races.
Bumpers was complaining 15 years ago that it was harder
for him to beg for money than it seemed to be for Bill
Clinton or Pryor, and that was when a Senate candidate in
Arkansas needed to raise a half-million or three-quarters
of a million dollars. Now some stealthy and unaccountable
Republican non-profit might spend that much against him in
a lone weekend of attack-ad saturation.
Bumpers would need to budget a couple of million at a
bare minimum, and I'm pretty sure he hates the prospect of
raising it.
If somebody forced me right now, late Thursday
afternoon, to lay down a $10 bet on what he'll do, I would
bet $5 and a penny on his running and $4.99 on his not
running.
You seldom encounter uncertainty anymore in political
announcements, so we ought to see a large and excited
audience this afternoon. Unless, that is, credible word
leaked Friday, which was always possible, assuming Bumpers
knew by then.
--
[From The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN), June 15, 1997]
Amid Tears, Bumpers Says He'll Quit in 1998
(By Joan I. Duffy)
Senator Dale Bumpers (D-AR), will not seek a fifth term,
he said Saturday in a choked-up speech expressing
frustration with the Republican-controlled Senate and
ambivalence about his decision.
His announcement drew somber moans of ``no'' from the
crowd of 200 in the lobby of the Hotel Lafayette in
downtown Little Rock, where he began his come-from-nowhere
political career 27 years ago.
``We can't lose him,'' said Dewey Neely of Osceola.
``This guy has a mind we just can't waste.''
Bumpers, 71, considered one of the leading
constitutional scholars in the Senate, choked on tears as
he said his heart told him to run again to protect the
Constitution from what he sees as a growing move to
undermine it with frivolous amendments.
``The Constitution is a sacred document. Some of my
colleagues think the Constitution is just a rough draft,''
Bumpers said. ``If (Republicans) ever get 67 votes in the
U.S. Senate, I promise you it's going to be a disaster for
the Nation.''
Despite his emotional attachment to his legislative
role, Bumpers said his head told him it was time to
retire.
``I confess to an agonizing ambivalence about the
decision and probably will suffer torment for the decision
and ambivalence the rest of my life,'' he said as his
wife, Betty, reached in a handbag for tissue to wipe her
eyes.
``(Running again) is definitely what I feel in my heart.
But intellectually, I know this is right for me.''
Called the conscience of the Senate for his oratorical
lectures against tinkering with the Constitution,
Bumpers's seat was one of three top targets of the
Republican Party in its 1998 drive to win a 60-vote
majority.
Bumpers said his desire to keep the Republicans from
that goal was a major force urging him to run. But he said
the joy in serving in the Senate has gone, due to growing
bitterness and partisanship.
``My frustration level has increased exponentially since
I went to the Senate. It is quite a different place,'' he
said. ``Many bills are carefully crafted to achieve
maximum political benefit and little else. There's nothing
wrong with achieving a political benefit if the net
effects to the Nation are great, but too often that is not
the case.''
Bumpers said he broke the news to President Clinton
Thursday, but the Senator declined to tell what was said.
``We've been friends for so long we can let our hair
down with one another. He doesn't quote me and I don't
quote him,'' Bumpers said.
He is the third Democrat to announce his departure this
year, joining Senators John Glenn of Ohio and Wendell Ford
of Kentucky. Senator Dan Coats (R-IN), also is retiring.
Republicans hold a 55-45 majority in the Senate and have
16 seats up next year. Democrats are in 18 races.
Bumpers said he was leaving unaccomplished a list of
goals--particularly balancing the budget and securing
public funding for Senate campaigns.
Bumpers was a little-known lawyer and school board
president in Charleston, AR, when he announced his
campaign for Governor in 1970. He derailed former Governor
Orval Faubus's comeback attempt in the primary and ousted
incumbent Republican Winthrop Rockefeller to win the
office. After two terms, Bumpers took on Clinton's mentor,
former Senator J. William Fulbright (D-AR), and defeated
him in the primary.
---
[From The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 15, 1997]
Bumpers Calls an End to Political Career
(By Noel E. Oman and Mark Waller)
His heart said yes, and his mind said no.
Senator Dale Bumpers announced Saturday in Little Rock
that he went with his mind in deciding to forgo a bid for
a fifth 6-year term in the U.S. Senate.
``It defies what I feel in my heart, but,
intellectually, I believe it is the right decision for
me,'' the 71-year-old Arkansas Democrat told about 200
supporters and reporters.
The 11-minute, emotion-laden speech marked the beginning
of the end of a political career that began more than 27
years ago at the site of Saturday's announcement--the
Lafayette Building, once a downtown hotel.
The decision set off tremors in the major national
parties. Democrats were dismayed that Bumpers shunned
another run and Republicans were relieved they will be
able to target an open seat to increase a 55-45 majority
in the Senate.
Bumpers' decision, reached several days before, was
sealed within his family circle until Saturday. But he
said he wrestled with the decision for months and could
have changed his mind in the moments before he stepped to
the podium.
But his breaking voice and the attempt by his wife,
Betty, to hold back her tears moments into the speech
betrayed his decision even before he said the words.
Some onlookers shook their heads. Sam Boyce, Arkansas
Representative on the Democratic National Committee,
whispered to people around him, ``He's not going to run.''
Minutes later, Bumpers confirmed it:
``I will resist the well-nigh irresistible temptation to
reminisce and philosophize with you--rather, simply say at
the end of a political career that in 1998 will have
spanned 28 years, I will retire from the political
arena,'' said Bumpers, a 2-term Governor with a penchant
for knocking off incumbents.
A chorus of groans, gasps and whispered nos quickly
followed.
``I'm sick,'' said Boyce later. ``It's a sad, sad moment
in the history of Arkansas when a man of the high honor of
Dale Bumpers chooses not to seek reelection.
``It speaks poorly for our system. This is a big, big
slam to the Democratic Party,'' Boyce said.
Bumpers, whose term ends in January 1999, declined to
become partisan, but his frustration with Republican
control of the Senate was clear.
``I must admit that my frustration level has increased
exponentially since I went to the Senate,'' he said.
``Many bills are carefully crafted to achieve maximum
political benefit and little else.''
The announcement ends a storied era in Arkansas politics
dominated the past three decades by Bumpers and two other
former Arkansas Democratic Governors--retired Senator
David Pryor and President Clinton, elected Governor five
times.
``It's the end of the `Big Three,' said Cal Ledbetter, a
University of Arkansas at Little Rock political science
professor.
Bumpers and Clinton chatted privately Thursday
afternoon.
``I have known and admired Dale Bumpers for over 25
years,'' Clinton said in a statement issued by the White
House on Saturday afternoon. ``He was a great Governor,
and he has been a great Senator for the people of our
native State and the entire Nation.
``We will miss his courage to stand against the tide,
his vision and his eloquence. Hillary and I wish him and
Betty all the best. We will miss him. So will the Senate.
So will America.''
The announcement will throw open the race to replace
him, especially among Democrats.
Bumpers' exit also reverberated in Washington, where
Democrats had hoped he would stand for reelection and thus
help their chances to regain control of the Senate in
1998. He is the third senior Senate Democrat to announce
his retirement this year.
Bumpers' emergence on the national political scene began
in 1970 with a run for Governor. In Charleston, a small
Franklin County town in western Arkansas, Bumpers was the
local lawyer, school board member and Sunday school
teacher at the Methodist church.
He proceeded to knock off three of the political giants
of the era: in the 1970 Democratic primary, he short-
circuited a comeback by former Governor Orval Faubus. He
bested the two-term incumbent, Republican Governor
Winthrop Rockefeller, in the general election that fall.
In a 1974 Democratic primary, he defeated Senator J.
William Fulbright, a 30-year fixture in the Senate who had
been the one of the most outspoken critics of the Vietnam
War.
Bumpers' 4 years in the Governor's office were marked by
relative prosperity and legislative good will that spurred
State income tax reform and increases in education
spending.
``We ran a very positive campaign, championing positions
that resonated well with voters, such as improving primary
health care, State funded kindergartens, free textbooks
for high school, higher teacher salaries, prison reform,
rehabilitation and expansion of the State park system and
many other things,'' Bumpers recalled Saturday. ``I know
it's ancient history now, but, in truth, we accomplished
virtually everyone of those things.''
In the Senate, Bumpers has voted against anti-busing,
school prayer and anti-abortion legislation and for the
Panama Canal treaties. He opposed the Reagan tax cuts in
1981 and has opposed ardently the ``Star Wars'' missile
defense system and other weapons systems he saw as too
costly and unnecessary.
In Saturday's announcement, he defended his politics.
``I was taught at a very tender age and have always been
acutely aware that not everyone is as lucky as I am,''
said Bumpers, a child of the Depression who served in the
U.S. Marines in World War II.
``A child born in College Station does not start out
even with a child born in Pleasant Valley. Some people
need more help than others. The government's the only
source for that help. Sometimes that's called liberalism.
So be it.''
Many have labeled him an iconoclast for sometimes
opposing the party line. That was on display Saturday when
he took time to renew his criticism of the budget
agreement reached by the Republican Congress and Clinton.
Bumpers' popularity has remained unchecked. He
considered at times seeking the Presidency, most seriously
in 1984. Even in recent times, when Republicans have begun
to make inroads into Arkansas politics, Bumpers remained
the man to beat.
In 1986, he defeated former U.S. Attorney Asa Hutchinson
with 62 percent of the vote. Hutchinson now is a GOP
Member of Congress from the 3d Congressional District.
In 1992, Bumpers held off a former Baptist minister,
Mike Huckabee, with 60 percent of the vote. Huckabee later
was elected Lieutenant Governor in a special election and
ascended into the Governor's office last year when
Governor Jim Guy Tucker resigned after his Whitewater-
related criminal conviction.
Bumpers expressed an ambivalence about his decision that
he said he fears might stay with him for the rest of his
life, principally because he could not serve in a role
others admiringly called the Senate's conscience.
``I have steadfastly defended the Constitution against
often popular but misguided proposals,'' the Senator said.
``I hope and pray that my fears about what could happen to
that sacred document in the future will prove to be
unfounded.''
His old colleague, Pryor, has spoken glowingly of the
satisfaction he has gleaned from teaching at the
University of Arkansas at Fayetteville--in a profession
Bumpers said he also may join in retirement.
Pryor called Bumpers' plans to retire a ``great loss for
the State. But I don't think anyone went through as
agonizing a process as he did.''
Pryor said he spoke briefly with Bumpers in Warren on
Saturday morning at the annual Pink Tomato Festival
parade, but did not ask Bumpers what he decision was
because ``I didn't want to bug him.''
``I guess I'm not too surprised,'' he added. ``But I
think it's a real loss. He's been an exemplary Member of
the U.S. Senate and he has been as eloquent a spokesman
for this State and its people as any member the State has
ever sent to Congress.''
After Bumpers finished speaking Saturday, Betty Bumpers
immediately made her way through the crowd to hug Archie
Schaffer III, her sister's son and director of media,
public and government affairs for Tyson Foods Inc. in
Springdale.
``It really doesn't surprise me,'' said Schaffer, who
said before the announcement that he did not know what the
Senator's decision would be. ``It doesn't particularly
please me, either. I just had kind of a gut feeling. I
think Uncle Dale has a history of making the right
decisions.''
Schaffer also said he thinks Bumpers has gotten
frustrated with the political system.
``He didn't want to say this,'' Schaffer said, ``but
politics in Washington has gotten so nasty in the last few
years. I think that had a lot to do with it.''
State Representative John Paul Capps, D-Searcy, said as
he arrived at the news conference that he had no idea what
Bumpers' announcement would be.
``He has this uncanny ability to keep things to
himself,'' Capps said. ``Judging from his public
proclamations for the last few years, I could sense a
cynicism about the system in Washington. Raising money,
that's the distasteful part that he's never liked. He's
never liked to ask people for money.''
Maurice Mitchell said, ``Of course I wish he would
run.'' Mitchell, a longtime Bumpers supporter who served
as finance chairman for the Senator's last campaign,
called Bumpers ``a great man, a great credit to the State.
But at the same time I understand his position.''
State Senator Jim Argue, D-Little Rock, called Bumpers
his ``political hero.''
``He just approaches it with so much courage and
integrity,'' Argue said. ``Dale Bumpers always had the
courage to voice his convictions, even when it was
unpopular. I hope the people of Arkansas will take a
moment to reflect on the incredible sacrifices and
contributions that Dale Bumpers has made, whether they
supported him or not.''
---
[From The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 6, 1997]
Exodus From Politics
dale bumpers' assignment: to vent his frustration while
defending the system
(By John Brummett)
Congress was in recess last week, but U.S. Senator Dale
Bumpers, feeling fine at 71 and ``as mentally acute as
ever, I'd like to think,'' stayed busy Monday.
He helped clear poison ivy from the yard of Mary Hope
Davis, the chief of staff in his Washington office. Then
he went home--which is on Honesty Way in Bethesda, you
might be interested to know--to hand-write responses to
scores of letters he received about his recently announced
decision not to seek reelection next year. And while
talking by telephone with a newspaperman from home, he
pondered the speech he was to give Thursday at Governor's
School in Conway.
What his staff always said was that the way to keep
Bumpers happy was to schedule him to speak to high school
students or tour an industrial plant. He loves figuring
out how things are made. And he loves the eager faces of
bright youngsters. You must be careful what you say to
kids, Bumpers said. Then he explained.
Years ago his daughter, Brooke, told him that a friend
with an English degree and no training in business had
been hired right out of college by a bank in New York
City. He asked why. She said bank officials had told her
friend that they could teach anyone banking, but that they
couldn't teach anyone to write a sentence. Bumpers began
telling the story every year in his traditional closing
speech to Governor's School, seeking to impress upon
modern-day high school students the eternal importance of
basic skills such as applied literacy. He guesses he'd
told it 5 or 6 years running when a man came up to him one
day in Paragould to report that his son was graduating
from college with a degree in English, and that his son
had pursued the English degree solely because of a story
Bumpers once told at Governor's School about a friend of
his daughter.
The lesson: Be careful what you say to youngsters, for
it may affect lives. Bumpers obviously labored over a
conflict. He had announced his political retirement
because of what he described as an exponential increase in
his frustration level with the unproductive and overheated
state of modern American politics. ``But I don't want to
say anything to discourage or dissuade anyone, especially
our brightest and best young people, from entering the
business of politics,'' Bumpers said.
``Somehow I want to impress on them that politics can be
a field of service with as great a reward as any, and that
what we need more than anything are people committed to
thinking for themselves--that our society and our culture
depend on our finest young people thinking for themselves.
I want to tell them the importance of being good citizens.
I want to stir their curiosities.''
One couldn't help but recall something Bumpers said in
announcing his retirement. It was that his friend and
colleague who preceded him in retirement, David Pryor, had
told him he believed they could mold young minds more
effectively as college teachers than as Members of the
U.S. Senate. ``Boy, Dale got me in a little trouble
there,'' Pryor said last week. ``Some people accused me of
talking him into retiring, but I didn't do it.''
What had set Bumpers to thinking about what he would say
at Governor's School was a newspaperman's request. It was
that he compare and contrast politics from the time he
entered it in 1970 as a charismatic fresh face saying only
positive things--constantly quoting his father's
admonition that politics is an honorable profession--to
that Saturday afternoon 27 years later when he decried
what had become of politics as he announced his
frustrated, if not disillusioned, departure from it.
``To tell you the truth, I haven't worked through the
seeming contradictions of all that,'' Bumpers said. It's
important, he believes, to tell the unvarnished truth
about the dysfunctional state of politics. But it's just
as important, he believes, to defend our political
institutions and not turn young people away from them.
Bumpers would surely be concerned by the words of a
would-be protege, former State Representative David
Matthews of Lowell, in response to publicity last week
that listed Matthews as a leading member of the new
generation of Arkansas Democratic politicians. Matthews
said: ``Politics is too mean. It's too expensive. And it's
too irrelevant to people in what they consider important
to their every-day lives.''
In Bumpers' view, it's important to say that David
Matthews' assessment is absolutely correct. But it's also
important to convey to young people that we cannot concede
to that assessment and let it become a permanent
condition.
Bumpers seemed fairly certain of four things, none
remotely sanguine. (1) Politics is worse now than it was
when he entered it. (2) Money is to blame. (3) Television
also is to blame. (4) None of that is likely to change
over the course of a new 6-year Senate term, and a man at
71 is not altogether enthralled by the prospect of 6 years
spent with unrealized goals.
One other thing seemed certain: Bumpers retirement will
end an era in Arkansas politics spanning almost three
decades. It generally began with him and was dominated by
charismatic, modestly left-of-center Democrats of
acclaimed personal political skills who rose from the
backlash against the Old Guard politics of Orval Faubus
and thrived until age or personal ambition set in. Now as
Bumpers fades out, Arkansas finally signals an interest in
joining the Southern move to Republicanism.
``Yeah, I guess an era has passed,'' Pryor said. ``It
would be hard to ever put back in a bottle all that we
went through. Of course, my explanation for why the South
is becoming Republican is that all the Democratic programs
worked,'' Pryor said. ``People became more prosperous and
decided the programs weren't needed anymore.''
Dale Leon Bumpers was born in Charleston on August 12,
1925, in a two-story frame house with a front porch and
swing. His father, William R. Bumpers, had come from
Alabama to run a hardware store and funeral service. As a
youngster, Bumpers worked in the cotton and bean fields
and later as a meat cutter in a local grocery store.
After graduating from Charleston High School, Bumpers
went briefly to the University of Arkansas at
Fayetteville, but left to join the Marines. He was on a
ship carrying marines to the Japanese mainland when the
atomic bomb was dropped, and Japan soon surrendered. After
the service, he returned to graduate from the University
of Arkansas in 1948, then got his law degree in 1951 from
Northwestern University at Evanston, IL.
While he was in law school, both his parents were killed
in a car crash. That same year, 1949, he married a high-
school classmate, Betty Lou Flanagen, from a fourth-
generation Charleston family of farmers.
The seed for Bumpers' life in politics was planted by
his father, a former State legislator who'd been careful
to teach his son that politics needn't be dirty. Brought
up by a Democratic father through the Depression and New
Deal, the young Bumpers admired FDR and Truman, especially
the latter.
By 1970 Bumpers was a country lawyer in Charleston who
was batting .500 in political races. He'd lost a race for
his father's seat in the State House of Representatives.
He'd handily won election to the Charleston School Board,
and was a member in 1954 when it became the first school
board in Arkansas to integrate after the Brown vs. Board
of Education decision.
At 44, quite unheard of throughout the State except to
respectful colleagues in the Arkansas Bar Association,
Bumpers announced in 1970 as a longshot candidate for the
Democratic nomination for Governor. He was concerned about
the threatened return to power of Orval Faubus, who had
left the Governorship 4 years earlier and was succeeded by
Winthrop Rockefeller, a Republican reformer from New York
who couldn't get along with the Democratic legislature.
To make a long story short, the voters of Arkansas in
1970 were too progressive for Faubus and too impatient for
Rockefeller. Bumpers, running campaigns of positive
generalities and conveying an image of friendliness,
honesty, competence and charisma, drubbed both. He got
more than 60 percent of the vote in a runoff with Faubus
and a similarly impressive percentage in the general
election against Rockefeller.
Faubus had tried to make an issue of Bumpers' once
telling his Methodist Sunday school class that the Red Sea
might not literally have parted. Faubus backers spread
rumors, all untrue, that Bumpers had been charged with
manslaughter as a youth and had engaged in illicit
relationships.
Bumpers didn't waver. He talked about how his daughter,
Brooke, was the light of his life; how that everyone who
knew him and Betty liked her more; and how his daddy
always taught him that politics was an honorable
profession even if not all the people in it behaved
honorably.
Faubus ridiculed Bumpers' campaign as ``going from
cocktail party to cocktail party.'' Rockefeller belittled
Bumpers by saying he was trying to become Governor on ``a
smile, a shoeshine and one speech.''
Whatever, it worked. Bumpers' Governorship was quietly
revolutionary, implementing many of the reforms
Rockefeller had failed to get enacted. State government
was reorganized into a cabinet system. The State income
tax was raised, an endeavor that required nine votes in
the State Senate to obtain the necessary three-fourths
majority. A surplus paid for public kindergarten and free
textbooks. Betty led a childhood immunization program.
In 1974 Bumpers chose to run against the world-famous
junior U.S. Senator from Arkansas, J. William Fulbright.
Some were surprised that Bumpers would run against such an
esteemed Senator of his own party. But Bumpers cited
private polls showing that Fulbright, who had been the
Senate's chief opponent of the Vietnam War, would lose
even to Justice Jim Johnson, a segregationist.
It was 1970 revisited. Fulbright complained bitterly
that he couldn't engage Bumpers in meaningful dialog.
Bumpers ran yet another positive campaign. Again he got
more than 60 percent of the vote.
Bumpers encountered early hostility from veteran
Senators resentful of what he'd done to Fulbright, but in
time he emerged as one the Senate's more widely admired
Members. He won praise for iconoclasm, oratory, wit
(occasionally acerbic) and for maintaining liberal
principles and devotion to constitutional law and
liberties in the face of strong countervailing public
sentiment. He voted for the Panama Canal treaties, against
anti-busing legislation, against school prayer and anti-
abortion legislation, against the Reagan tax cuts of 1981
and against the Strategic Defense Initiative and the MX
missile.
(The issue that irks him most after all these years?
It's the Panama Canal. Try talking to Bumpers about his
career without having him bring it up. ``My pollster in
1992 told me that even then it cost me 3 points in the
polls,'' he said last week.)
Once, in a memorably bitter floor debate in the early
1980's, Bumpers referred to Jesse Helms, the conservative
icon from North Carolina, as the Senator from South
Carolina. When the error was called to his attention,
Bumpers said, ``I apologize to the other State.''
Bumpers was mentioned as a Presidential prospect in 1976
and more widely touted in 1984. He considered a
Presidential run most seriously for 1988. In the end he
chose never to run because he didn't want the lifestyle of
a Presidential candidate or a President. He always seemed
to make sensible decisions about such things.
So it was when he announced that he would not seek
election to a fifth term in the Senate.
``There were three reasons I wanted to run for
reelection,'' Bumpers said. ``I wanted to be there for
real campaign finance reform. I wanted to be there when we
really balanced the budget. And I wanted to be there when
we reauthorized the independent counsel, because we're
going to have to change the way we select people for
independent counsels. But it occurred to me that the first
two things, while they must happen someday, are not likely
to happen in the next 6 years. And the third--well, I'll
just miss that one.''
Bumpers, you understand, believes the tenuous balanced
budget agreement between his friend, Bill Clinton, and the
Republican Congress is smoke and mirrors. He does not
believe that government can cut taxes and balance its
budget. He didn't believe it when Ronald Reagan proposed
it, and he does not believe it now.
``I would be less than candid if I didn't tell you that
the quality of the Senate has deteriorated in the 22\1/2\
years I've been there,'' Bumpers said.
``It's because of the money,'' he said. ``And TV. I'm
talking about how much time it takes to raise money and
about the 30-second spots the money pays for on issues
like partial birth abortion or term limits or guns that
dominate the political discussion. Those are important
issues, but you can't explain them in a single spot. And
I'm talking about the way we elect people. Government is
literally being sold off to the highest bidder. If you
have the kind of money required, then you can take these
extrinsic side issues and dominate the discussion in what
essentially is a distracting process from the real issues
like education or fair taxation or responsible
budgeting.''
Bumpers professes not even to be sure whether C-SPAN's
telecasts of Senate sessions is a good thing. ``It takes
up a lot of time and it causes a lot of posturing for the
camera,'' he said. ``If I had it to do over again, I'm not
sure I would vote for it.''
All that aside, the dominant factor in Bumpers' decision
probably was age and a resulting mental, if not physical,
fatigue.
After all, it wasn't the state of politics alone that
made him decide not to run again. The quality of Arkansas
politics concerned him in 1970, but he ran to do something
about it. Nearly every Senator who has quit in recent
years has criticized the meanness, the expense and the
dysfunction of contemporary politics.
No, the determining factor for Bumpers was that he'd be
79 after another term, and he didn't envision the state of
politics improving dramatically by then.
``I'm not sure I'm being totally honest with myself,''
he said. ``I know that the frustration level is greater
now. But I'm not unmindful of my age. I'd like to think I
would have won again. It would have been mean and it would
have been dirty. And it's just that after all that, I
didn't see much respite from the things that caused my
frustration level to rise.''
Here's how David Pryor put it: ``Dale Bumpers and I came
out of a time when we had to chop our way out of a
thicket. We were fighting for a clear cause at the time,
coming out of the Faubus years. There was a real sense
that a spirit of change was sweeping the land. And we were
using machetes and dynamite and anything else we could get
hold of. And it takes young people to do that sort of
thing.''
Those who would form the new generation today are left
to deal with the obscene expense of modern-day
campaigning, the more open meanness evident in campaigns
and a pervasive apolitical mood that makes it appear that
politics and government have less to do with people's day-
to-day lives than was once the case.
So it was that Bumpers pondered that speech to
youngsters at Governor's School. He wanted to convey that
politics is too expensive, too mean, too dysfunctional.
But he also wanted to convey that young people can't run
from politics because of all that. They must enter it and
change it if our constitutional democracy is to survive.
Bumpers thinks politics must become less like it is in
Washington in 1997 and more like it was in Arkansas in
1970. In those days people were inclined toward change,
and vigorous young politicians, seeing a cause and a shot
at winning by championing that cause, were willing to
fight their way out of the thicket David Pryor was talking
about.
``I'm not unhappy with my legacy,'' Bumpers said. ``The
legacy--and I hope I can say this without sounding
arrogant--is that you can cast unpopular votes and
survive. People will understand and accept if they can see
that you are guided by principle, even in today's
environment. That's what I hope young people will take
from my years in the Senate.''
---
[From The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), August 23,
1997]
What Dale Bumpers Says, He Believes
(By Mary McGrory)
WASHINGTON--Sometimes you wonder why the class acts quit
the Senate. You would know more if you had been there July
22, heard Senator Dale Bumpers' superb speech against the
space station, seen who was there--no one--and watched him
go down, just as he has for 6 years.
Arkansas' retiring senior Senator, 72, is a brainy
liberal with a pungent sense of humor who Democrats hoped
twice would be the first President from his State. From
the day he came he has shown a passionate interest in
priorities. He favors spending money on education and
health rather than on fancy weapons. He is the Senate's
best orator, and he was at the top of his form as he tried
to topple the space station.
He was carefully prepared but not tethered to a text. He
reeled off facts, figures, digressions, specifics,
generalizations; he talked about his wife and her efforts
for peace and children, the Russians, the Pentagon, the
ways of Washington, science and folly.
It was his sixth try on the space station, and he
predicted he would lose again. He gave compelling reasons
why he should not; he cited the opposition of the
scientific community, and added, ``Unfortunately, they
don't have enough political clout to fill a thimble.'' He
quoted the eminent Harvard scientist Dr. Nicolaas
Bloembergen who said witheringly that ``microgravity is of
micro-importance.''
Bumpers explained the futility of his effort: ``There is
no political price to pay, even if you do not have jobs
back home hinging on going forward. * * * There is no
political price to be exacted against you for favoring
something that people know very little about. * * * We
have become so inured to cost overruns, we just simply
cannot stop a big project once it is started.''
He cited a Government Accounting Office report: Since
April 1996, the cost overrun for the space station has
more than tripled.
``Does it not take nerve,'' he asked rhetorically, ``to
come here asking us to go forward with a $100 billion
project in the light of that?''
President Clinton requested $2.1 billion for the space
station. Since 1974, the government has spent $20 billion
on it; the GAO estimates that by 2015, it will be $74
billion.
Bumpers went on in his pleasant baritone for about an
hour and 20 minutes talking about the significance of the
Russian pullout from the project--the Russians were
supposed to save us $1.6 billion--and showing charts that
traced the changing goals of the space station. He talked
through three presiding officers. No one else was
listening.
Occasionally, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), NASA's
home-state champion, looked in to see if he had concluded.
She would shuffle her papers, then wander off, sighing.
Theoretically, the Senators could be in their offices
following his logic on their closed-circuit screens. If
they were, they were not moved. The vote against his
amendment to close the space station was 69 to 31. He got
6 fewer votes than last year.
The problem is well-summarized by author William Greider
in a recent Rolling Stone article: ``Instead of a robust
debate over post-cold war priorities or skeptical
questioning of these fanciful premises, the political
elites in both parties have settled into denial and
drift.''
Bumpers is not going away angry after more than 20
years. It's just that he doesn't think that short of an
economic crisis, the Senate will change. He sees no light
at the end of the tunnel in Senate acquiescence to
Pentagon extravaganzas.
Having a President from his home State has made little
difference. Bumpers voted against the welfare bill and the
recent tax bill. His father, a country schoolteacher, was
a fervently grateful New Dealer, and Bumpers is not a new
Democrat. He has often taken the floor to detail the
blessings that government rained down on rural Arkansas in
the 1930's.
It isn't that his colleagues do not appreciate Bumpers.
He is beset with stricken Democrats who promise him money
and support if he will run again. People who have
consistently voted against him beg him to reconsider.
He says he doesn't mind fighting for lost causes or
speaking before an empty Chamber. He says he has won over
the presiding officer a time or two. One fine night he
took a full Senate with him when he argued eloquently for
saving the battlefield of Manassas II and the site of
``Marse Robert's'' headquarters from malldom. He
prevailed, too, on eliminating the Clinch River breeder
reactor and the super collider. He believes that if the
country had been tuned in on the space station debate,
voters would have been 80-20 on his side.
``What does it take?'' he mused the other day. Not
knowing the answer, he's going home to teach.
---
[From The Democrat-Gazette, June 14, 1997]
Bumpers' Retirement Statement
Senator Dale Bumpers made the following comments in a
statement Saturday as he announced his retirement:
I confess to an agonizing ambivalence about the decision
and will probably suffer the torment of that ambivalence
the rest of my life. It defies what I feel in my heart,
but intellectually, I believe it is the right decision for
me. Thomas Jefferson once said a person should change jobs
every 10 years and in 1998 I will be 18 years overdue. I
plan to remain active and involved. * * *
I must admit that my frustration level has increased
exponentially since I went to the Senate. Many bills are
carefully crafted to achieve maximum political benefit and
little else. There is nothing wrong with achieving a
political benefit if the net effect benefits the Nation.
Too often, that is not the case. * * *
My ambivalence is caused as much by my devotion to the
Constitution as it is to any other single factor. I have
steadfastly defended the Constitution, often against very
popular, but misguided, proposals. I hope and pray my
fears about what could happen to that sacred document in
the future will prove to be unfounded. * * *
Things have gone very well for me politically and
personally during (these past) 27 years. I relate to Lou
Gehrig, who once said, under different circumstances, ``I
consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the
earth.'' Lucky in choosing my parents, lucky at living in
a great country that cares about the less affluent and
that paid for a very fine education for me. Lucky to have
been born and reared in our beloved Arkansas, where people
honored me time and again and made me one of only 1,843
men and women ever to serve in the U.S. Senate. * * *
Most important, I have been lucky to have a great and
close-knit family, (my wife) Betty and three wonderful,
stable and common-sensical children, all well-educated,
happy and in good health. * * *
I was taught at a tender age and have always been
acutely aware that not everyone has been as lucky as I. I
have always believed in the Judeo-Christian principle that
we have solemn duties to each other and that while we are
all created equal in the sight of God, we are far from
equal at birth. * * * Some people need more help than
others, and often the government is the only source for
such help. * * *
To the hundreds who have written, called or otherwise
offered their total loyalty and support if I would run, my
undying gratitude. To the people who have been forgiving
when I disappointed them, my sincere respect and
gratitude. To the voters of Arkansas, words can never
fully express my thanks for your support and forgiveness,
which have sustained me in elections since August 25,
1970. I have 1\1/2\ years left on this term, and I will
work harder than ever to do as much as possible for
Arkansas in that short period of time. I will keep with
the people to whom I owe everything.