[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 43 (Tuesday, March 26, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2885-S2886]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          EDMUND SIXTUS MUSKIE

  Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I join my colleagues in paying respect to 
the memory of former Senator Edmund Muskie. He was a very productive 
Member of this body and he made great contributions to its 
deliberations and to the welfare of our Nation. I admired him very 
much.
  I first came to know Ed Muskie when he was Governor of Maine and a 
delegate to our party's national conventions. I always found him to be 
a person of great common sense and practicality, traits that reflected 
his years of experience in the Maine State Legislature and before that 
as a city official in Waterville.
  He was always a highly effective advocate for the interests of New 
England, and in that role as in other aspects of his wide ranging 
Senate career, he was capable of displaying his sense of righteous 
indignation in the interests of producing results.
  Perhaps his greatest and most lasting contribution was his work in 
securing enactment of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, and his 
subsequent service as the first chairman of the Senate Budget 
Committee. Here his practical vision saw the need for a consolidated 
legislative budget that coordinated and reconciled legislative 
appropriations with executive spending.
  Ed Muskie's Senate career came to a sudden and surprising conclusion 
with his elevation to the office of Secretary of State in the Carter 
administration at the height of the Iraq crisis in 1980. It was a 
measure of Senator Muskie's statute in the Senate and in the Nation 
that President Carter turned to him at a time when circumstances called 
for a steady and authoritative hand.
  It was a fitting climax to a career of exceptionally distinguished 
public service.

[[Page S2886]]

  I join my colleagues in honoring the memory of Edmund Muskie and I 
extend my sympathy to his wife Jane, family and many associates in 
Maine and across the country.

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