[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 126 (Friday, September 13, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S10540]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     SENATOR NANCY LANDON KASSEBAUM

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the sunlit, wind-tossed, rolling plains of 
Kansas have produced many leaders whose long vision and open minds have 
helped to shape this Nation. Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum is one of 
those leaders. Her three terms in the Senate have left an enduring 
legacy, one with roots as deep as the prairie grasses in the rich black 
Kansas soil and covering issues as diverse as the many-colored 
wildflowers nestled among those blades. The Senate has been enriched by 
her civil, thoughtful, presence.
  Senator Kassebaum's political inclinations are strongly rooted in the 
Kansas earth. Her father, Alf Landon, a former Governor of Kansas, was 
nominated for President in 1936 to run against President Franklin 
Roosevelt. When Governor Landon died at age 100 in 1987, he had 
witnessed in his daughter's election to the Senate and her rise to 
prominence in this body a part of the quiet revolution in American 
society that brought women into so many new fields. First elected in 
1978, Senator Kassebaum in 1994 became the first woman to chair a major 
Senate committee, the Labor and Human Resources Committee, since 
Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine led a special Committee on Rates 
of Compensation from 1953 to 1955.
  Now, I had the great honor and privilege to serve with Margaret Chase 
Smith here in the Senate for a number of years, a woman whose 
declaration of conscience will always reverberate in this Chamber and 
will always grace the pages of the great Record of this Chamber's 
deliberations.
  In the 104th Congress, Chairman Kassebaum--some would say 
``chairwoman''--has addressed some of the most contentious issues 
debated in recent years, including health care reform, welfare reform, 
minimum wage increases, and striker replacement. Her fairness and her 
civility in dealing with these contentious matters has been matched by 
her tenacity and her resourcefulness in crafting legislation that can 
be passed by the Senate and signed by the President. I have not always 
agreed with her proposals--and she has not always agreed with mine--
indeed, on many issues like the repeal of Davis-Bacon, on striker 
replacement, we have been on opposite sides of the issue. But I commend 
Senator Kassebaum for her willingness to tackle difficult issues and to 
propose sweeping overhauls of complex and overlapping programs, such as 
welfare, health insurance, Medicaid, and job training programs, and to 
do so with courtesy and affability and respect for the others' views. 
No one would ever underestimate the quiet strength of Senator 
Kassebaum's convictions on these issues, but everyone can always count 
upon her straightforward, mannerly, courteous approach to debate and 
compromise.
  Senator Kassebaum has also chaired the African Affairs Subcommittee 
of the Committee on Foreign Relations. She was instrumental in both 
implementing a sanctions regime against the white apartheid government 
of South Africa and in lifting those sanctions, once a new government 
was installed. She has been a strong voice for tolerance and compassion 
in a part of the world all too often racked by violence and ethnic 
hatreds. It was for these noble reasons that she called in June, 1992, 
for the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers to Somalia, after 
visiting that strife-torn nation. She steadfastly spoke up for these 
humanitarian concerns, even as I led an effort to withdraw U.S. troops 
from Somalia as the situation there deteriorated, eventually resulting 
in the tragic loss of 18 U.S. military personnel. But in the final 
vote, acknowledging the reality that the United States public would not 
support committing still more military men and women to Somalia, a 
requirement if the humanitarian mission was to be carried out in 
relative safety, Senator Kassebaum voted for an orderly withdrawal from 
that sad nation.

  One issue upon which Senator Kassebaum and I see eye-to-eye on is 
school prayer. Despite the differences in topography, Kansas and West 
Virginia share in their solid small towns and on the farms and among 
the country folk a closeness with the earth and a reverence for the 
deity, a reverence for the church and for the community. Senator 
Kassebaum offered an amendment in 1994 to withhold Federal funds from 
any local school district found guilty of willfully violating a court 
order to allow constitutionally-protected prayer. Her amendment passed 
overwhelmingly by a vote of 93 yeas to 7 nays.
  Mr. President, Senator Kassebaum shares in the strength of her Kansas 
upbringing, the solid strength of her Kansas forbearers. She sets her 
eye on a distant legislative target and she plows a straight furrow 
toward it, undaunted by distance or by difficulty. She speaks plainly, 
softly, and honestly, preparing the seedbed of civil bipartisan 
compromise. She is willing to cross party lines to vote for programs 
that result in the greatest common good as she sees it. By her actions, 
she has shown herself to be concerned more about the future of the 
Nation than the future of partisan politics. Her twin strengths of 
perseverance and courtesy have earned for her the respect and the 
genuine admiration of her peers and of the Nation. It is these 
qualities that have been in short supply during the bellicose and often 
bitterly partisan past several years in the Senate, and which will be 
so sorely missed when she retires from office.
  And so I thank Nancy Kassebaum for her service to the State of 
Kansas, to the Senate, and to the United States, and wish her well in 
her retirement. Senator Kassebaum has said that she wants to spend more 
time with her grandchildren. Robert Southey (1774-1843) wrote in the 
poem, the ``Battle of Blenheim'':

     It was a summer evening,
     Old Kaspar's work was done,
     And he before his cottage door
     Was sitting in the sun,
     And by him sported on the green
     His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

  I hope that Senator Kassebaum, her battles in the Senate over, past, 
and done, may treasure the pleasures and joys of sporting in the Kansas 
sun with her children and their children.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SPECTER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Chair. I note the change from Senator Frist 
to you, Madam President, and so I address you properly as Madam 
President.

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