[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 149 (Thursday, December 1, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: December 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 AN HONOR TO HAVE SERVED IN THE SENATE

  Mr. WOFFORD. Thank you, George Mitchell and Jim Sasser and my other 
colleagues. Thank you most of all for your leadership, but also for 
your warm words.
  I am almost but not quite happy to be on the distinguished roll of 
those who are departing, the top of which is George Mitchell who gave 
such great leadership in this body.
  As I say my last words from this desk, I want to tell my colleagues 
what an honor and what an opportunity it has been to serve here. The 
ties of friendship with so many on both sides of the aisle are 
important to me and are going to be lasting.
  One of the memorable moments for me came when I was asked in my first 
year to do the annual reading of George Washington's Farewell Address. 
Little did I think then that I would be making my own so soon.
  But my thoughts tonight are most of all on how lucky I have been, how 
very lucky, first, to have been appointed by Governor Robert Casey and 
then to have been elected by the people of Pennsylvania to fill the 
unexpired term of Senator John Heinz.
  When I first addressed this body, I said I had vowed to do everything 
in my power to make something good come out of the tragedy of the loss 
of a good Senator, a great Senator like John Heinz. So, I am lucky to 
have had the chance to help shape and shepherd the National Service 
bill, the Civilian Community Corps, the new CCC bill, the school-to-
work opportunity bill, the college reform bill, and to have had the 
chance to work and to fight on so many fronts in this body, some of 
which bore fruit, and in all of which, all of these matters it was 
bipartisan cooperation that worked; and in my case, with the help of a 
wonderful staff.
  Luck ran out for me and for the American people when we failed to 
find common ground for a health reform bill that would assure all 
Americans of the kind of choice of private health insurance that 
Members of Congress and millions of Federal employees and their 
families enjoy.
  That simple test for health reform that what has been good for 
Members of Congress is an example of what must be assured for the 
American people, I have often put to this body and to the people of 
Pennsylvania. I will continue to use that test as I follow from the 
outside what you do inside this Chamber in these next years. I hope to 
be able to do something more than to follow. I hope to help from the 
outside to see that we find the ways and means to assure all Americans 
do have the right to a choice of affordable health care and it becomes 
a reality for all Americans.
  Now, the past is said to be prologue. And I am going to go a little 
further back in the past than George Mitchell just did, about my 
activities. I want to note that this half a term in the Senate has been 
the high point of more than half a century of involvement with the 
Senate--most of it as a private citizen.
  The other day, when I was asked to carve my name inside this desk, I 
discovered the names of the Senators who preceded me. At the top of the 
list were the names of Copeland and Wagner, of New York. It made me 
remember that when I was 11 or 12 years old, in a brief Republican 
period, I conducted a letter-writing campaign to the Senate against the 
court packing plan of Franklin Roosevelt. I have in my scrapbook 
letters from a number of the Senators who sent back responses, and two 
I vividly remember were Royal Copeland, of New York, and Robert Wagner, 
of New York.
  Let me go back just a little further, elaborating on this. This is my 
unknown long life with the Senate. In 1940 and 1941, I was an 
interventionist who wanted to fight against Hitler and I actively 
lobbied the Senate in favor of Roosevelt's lend-lease plan.
  At age 17, in the summer of 1943, just before joining the Army Air 
Corps, I spent many days around the halls of the Senate, seeing 
Senators and asking their support for the B-2-H-2 bill, the Ball-
Burton-Hatch-Hill bill, a bipartisan bill to promise that the Senate 
would not go isolationist after the war but would join a world 
organization to keep the peace.
  Then, in 1947, on the way back from Europe on a converted troop ship, 
with hundreds of students who had gone to Europe for the summer, 
Claire, my spouse of 46 years--not quite, then--and I organized a 
petition on shipboard to support the Marshall plan. I came down to the 
Senate to deliver it before going back to college.
  In the 1950's I spent a good deal of time lobbying, unpaid, for the 
first Civil Rights Act since reconstruction. After we got that in 1957, 
a lot of us kept at it until we won the Comprehensive Civil Rights Acts 
of 1964 and 1965. And in the 1960's, too, there was the effort that 
took seeing every Senator in the U.S. Senate--Sargeant Schriver did, 
and Bill Moyers, and I was at their side often--to get the first Peace 
Corps bill passed. Before long, some of us, including Jay Rockefeller 
and Paul Simon, and later joined by Peace Corps volunteer Chris Dodd, 
who spoke earlier, started the campaign for national service to bring 
the idea of the Peace Corps home to this country. The first victory 
there was the Volunteers in Service to America bill, VISTA.
  So if past is prologue, and it often seems to be, all this suggests 
that you may see more of me--not as a Senator, but once again as a 
citizen who will do his best to help the Senate do its duty.
  On election night I said something, but it was cut off on television 
so not many would have known that I said it. But on election night, 
after thanking so many people--I had about half the voters of 
Pennsylvania minus 80-some thousand to thank--I said: To all things 
there is a season, turning to some good old words.
  There is a time to win and a time to lose; a time to plant and a time 
to reap. And, above all, I think in this country today, where we know 
there is a time to tear down, the time has come for us, together, to 
build.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MITCHELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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