[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 147 (Wednesday, September 20, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13883-S13885]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       CONGRESSMAN JAMIE WHITTEN

  Mr. COCHRAN. Madam President, last week, I was very honored to be 
able to attend the funeral in my State of former Congressman Jamie 
Whitten. Congressman Whitten was my good friend and colleague in the 
House. I served in the House 6 years before coming to the Senate. 
During that time, I got to know him and be with him frequently. Even 
though I was not on the Appropriations Committee at that time when I 
was elected to the Senate, I soon became a member of the Appropriations 
Committee, and as irony caused it, I was immediately the chairman of 
the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee.
  The day I went on the Agriculture Subcommittee, the Republicans had 
become the majority in the Senate and that was my first assignment. 
Interestingly enough, on the House side, Congressman Whitten had been 
the chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations 

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Subcommittee since about 1949. He had been in the House only 8 years 
when he became chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for 
Agriculture.
  So that first year, I recall having the opportunity of going to 
conference with Congressman Whitten chairing the subcommittee on the 
House side and I chairing it on the Senate side, both being from the 
same State. I was very new to the job, and I remember he said to me 
that day as we began our negotiation on the House-passed and Senate-
passed appropriations bills funding the Department of Agriculture and 
related agencies, ``Thad, you had better be careful what you ask for 
now; you might get it.''
  I have never forgotten that. It was an interesting lesson and a good 
thing to tell me because in that position you have to defend what you 
have recommended; you have to understand that there are going to be 
those who will look critically at the contents of the bill. And we 
worked very cordially together during those 6 years when I chaired that 
subcommittee.
  As I was handling the bill in this Chamber for the last couple of 
days we have been considering the Agriculture appropriations bill, I 
thought several times about my good friend and former colleague in the 
House and the lessons that I learned, which have certainly been good 
lessons to learn.
  He was a man who was very courteous, very knowledgeable about the 
subject. In his dealings with other Members of the House and Senate, he 
was always a gentleman. I respected that and appreciated that in Jamie 
Whitten.
  When he retired from the House, we truly saw come to an end a 
legendary career in many ways, not because of length of service, which 
was longer than anyone had ever served in the House of Representatives, 
but because of the kind of person he was and the way he did his job. He 
took it seriously. He was conscientious, he did it well, and he did it 
well for a long period of time.
  I was reading editorials just over the last few weeks in our State, 
and there have been many written talking about Congressman Whitten. 
There were two that I particularly appreciated, and I will put them in 
the Record. One is from the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal in 
Tupelo, and the other was written by Bill Minor, who has a syndicated 
political column in Mississippi, and this was printed in the Clarion-
Ledger in Jackson, MS.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that both of these 
editorials be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the editorials were ordered to be printed 
in the Record, as follows:
 [From the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo, MS, Sept. 12, 
                                 1995]

                    Former Congressman Jamie Whitten

       Jamie Whitten started his public service career when some 
     Mississippians still had eye-witness memories of the Civil 
     War and only dreamed of one day having electricity in their 
     houses. He concluded his public service after a 53-year 
     tenure in the U.S. Congress when many Americans routinely 
     communicate from their homes via computers with people 
     halfway around the world.
       His journey ends in Charleston, the same small town that 
     nurtured his early political career and always sustained him 
     as the place he called home. It was the place where almost 
     everyone knew him and called him Jamie, not Mr. Chairman or 
     Congressman or any of the other honorifics by which he was 
     addressed in his official capacities. He was, in the words of 
     longtime staff leader Buddy Bishop, ``just one of the guys'' 
     in Charleston. His town, the state, and the nation bid 
     Whitten farewell in a service at Charleston Presbyterian 
     Church, where he had been an active member for almost 70 
     years.
       Whitten, 85, died Saturday in an Oxford hospital less than 
     a year after retiring from the U.S. House of Representatives. 
     His 53 years in the House is the record for longevity in that 
     chamber. He is second only to the late Sen. Carl Hayden of 
     Arizona, whose 56 years in the House and Senate combined is 
     Capitol Hill's longest tenure.
       Whitten was a low-profile giant who thrived on the serious 
     and demanding business of making public policy. His 
     legislative gifts were no place more evident than in federal 
     policy, laws and programs related to improving and enhancing 
     life in rural America. The depth and breadth of his influence 
     and interest inevitably grew as he moved up the ladder of 
     power and responsibility in Washington. The ladder finally 
     took him to the pinnacle chairmanship of the Appropriations 
     Committee.
       Mississippi's senior senator, Republican Thad Cochran, 
     considered Whitten a congressional mentor and close friend. 
     Cochran said Monday that Whitten possessed the invaluable 
     gift of remaining unhurried and courteous in a political 
     atmosphere that was more often frenetic and sometimes 
     discourteous.
       Whitten believed in federal investment in America, a 
     practice some people derisively and mistakenly call pork-
     barrel spending. Whitten often stated his belief in spending 
     federal dollars to generate a return from the productivity of 
     American citizens. That idea always is unpopular with 
     congressmen who don't have the intelligence or the influence 
     to steer a share of the investment to their states and 
     districts. Whitten understood, as he networked with 
     colleagues from coast to coast, that a good investment 
     provides a good return, no matter where it's made.
       He also understood that the vast resources of the federal 
     government, as a moral imperative, must be applied to people 
     in crisis and people in need.
       Many other members of Congress in this century have been 
     more widely known, more colorful and more ambitious. A bare 
     handful stand in company with Whitten's impact and influence 
     because, for him, effectiveness was vastly more important 
     than fame.
       Winston Churchill said that ``singleness of purpose and 
     simplicity of conduct'' are powerful attributes of public 
     servanthood.
       Those same qualities distinguish Congressman Jamie L. 
     Whitten's long record as the people's representative in 
     Washington.
                                                                    ____

               [From the Clarion-Ledger, Sept. 17, 1995]

         Jamie Whitten Knew Real Power Was in the Purse Strings

                            (By Bill Minor)

       Mississippi's 53-year congressional veteran served his 
     state well.
       What Jamie Whitten's half-century in the House of 
     Representatives did for the state of Mississippi is 
     incalculable, because it is beyond comparison to any other 
     person who has represented this state or almost any state in 
     the Congress of the United States.
       Certainly Whitten gave this relatively small state in the 
     whole scheme of things for greater influence--you can call it 
     clout--than it had reason to expect. He made the strongest 
     case for longevity as opposed to the current demand for term 
     limits.
       In his incredible 53-year service in the U.S. House, 
     Whitten wisely concentrated on the area where the real power 
     lies in Congress, the power of the purse. He long ago staked 
     out a seat on Appropriations, working his way up to the 
     chairmanship in 1980. But for many years before that, he 
     headed the agriculture subcommittee of Appropriations, the 
     spot that earned him the sobriquet as ``the permanent 
     Secretary of Agriculture.'' It was true that Whitten held the 
     purse strings for farm programs as well as a broad spectrum 
     of other programs that were tucked under his wing and the 
     huge agricultural industry of this country knew it. His first 
     concern always was to see that the farm interests of 
     Mississippi were well-served.
       Whitten, said his onetime Mississippi colleague, former 
     U.S. Rep. David Bowen, ``could digest an appropriation bill 
     faster than anyone'' in Congress. His legendary reading of 
     the fine print in an appropriation bill is what rescued the 
     Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway from the public works graveyard 
     in 1967.
       Whitten's reputation as the ``mumbler'' when he was 
     handling amendments to complicated appropriations bills, was 
     actually strategy and was done intentionally, says Bowen. 
     ``His speaking style may have seemed obfuscating, says Bowen, 
     ``but he was a very bright man.'' Perhaps he was not 
     outwardly articulate as an orator in comparison to some of 
     his colleagues, but Whitten got the job done.
       One important thing in light of what has recently come out 
     of the Bob Packwood diaries about the inordinate influence of 
     Washington lobbyists, is that Whitten, with all his power in 
     spending, never had much time for lobbyists.
       The career of Jamie Whitten is a remarkable story of a 
     small-town Mississippian who started out in Congress as a New 
     Dealer with Franklin Roosevelt a half-century ago. Then be 
     became a Dixiecrat in the 1950s when the Citizens' Council 
     and Ross Barnett were in their heyday. In fact, he was one of 
     the leaders in the anti-civil rights Southern Manifesto in 
     Congress.
       Back in those days he hardly let it be known back in 
     Mississippi that he was a member of the Democratic Party. But 
     by the late 1960s, Whitten began his transformation to a 
     loyal team player for Democratic programs and eventually 
     became a key cog in pushing liberal programs of the 
     Democratic leadership.
       While most political figures become more conservative as 
     they grow older, Whitten on the other hand, grew more 
     liberal, or as some close observers believe, he returned to 
     his New Deal populist roots.
       Yes, Jamie Whitten could be said to have been a pragmatic 
     politician. However, he used the political system to not for 
     his own glory, but in a very real sense for his own state. 
     Essentially, Whitten believed in the fundamental value of the 
     federal government as an instrument for the good of the 
     people.
       Fortunately, Whitten's best years were in the days before 
     the austerity era became vogue in Congress, and when there 
     was more money available to fund projects such as the Tenn-
     Tom.
       It was never his style to dabble in someone else's politics 
     or build a political organization beyond his own small, 
     loose-knit cadre 

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     of followers. The furthest he ever ventured into statewide politics was 
     once, in 1976, when came down to Jackson to endorse Jimmy 
     Carter for president. That occasion was also his rare (maybe 
     only) exposure to sharp questioning by the state press of 
     Mississippi in a full-fledged news conference. I recall that 
     it was quite an unsettling experience for him.
       Jamie probably overstayed his time in Congress when his 
     failing health made him no longer productive. Yet, with his 
     passing last week at age 85, everyone in this state must be 
     grateful that he served them so long and so well. It's 
     unthinkable we'll ever see another like him.
     

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