[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 139 (Tuesday, October 1, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S12052]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               TRIBUTE TO ALAN SIMPSON AND MARK HATFIELD

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, there are two others of my colleagues on 
this side of the aisle about whom I would like to speak briefly this 
morning. The first, of course, is one who has been the subject of 
innumerable tributes already, the wonderfully delightful and witty 
senior Senator from Wyoming, Alan Simpson.
  There is almost nothing I can say that can add to the tributes that 
have already been made. Alan Simpson is unique. The single wittiest 
Member of the Senate, whose legion of stories is so great that you can 
hear one 3 years after you first heard it, without having listened to 
it in the interim, and it is as funny the second time as it was the 
first. I must confess there were a number that I tried to memorize so I 
could tell them myself. To be in a place of informality with Alan and 
to listen to what he has to say is an extraordinary privilege.
  But, of course, that does not make him a U.S. Senator. Commitment and 
hard work and dedication to principle are what make an outstanding 
Member of this or of any other legislative body. And the degree of 
thoughtfulness and attention that Senator Simpson has focused on a wide 
range of issues, those representing his own quintessential rural 
Western State, but even more significantly those that affect the future 
of the United States, its place in the world, its society and its 
culture, all have fallen within the ambit of Alan Simpson's interest.
  Whether it has been the almost constant support of a strong and 
successful foreign policy for the United States, whether it has been 
his thoughtful examination of questions relating to the budget and the 
tax relief of the American people, his dedication to seeing to it that 
this Congress and administration actually seriously begin the attempt 
of balancing the budget, whether it is on his latest crusade for more 
thoughtful, balanced and strong immigration policy or a myriad of other 
issues, Alan Simpson's views are sought out by his companions and given 
great weight by them.
  Perhaps the finest symbol of the reach and scope of Alan Simpson's 
interest and influence is his years of short radio debates with Senator 
Kennedy, the leading Member of the other party. While I heard only a 
few dozen of them, each one shows Senator Simpson's patented wit, as 
well as his ability to get to the absolute heart of the particular 
issue.
  Those are sets of qualities that are not likely soon to be duplicated 
here in the U.S. Senate, and as a consequence, every Member will miss 
Alan Simpson as a U.S. Senator, and I believe I can say that every 
Member of the U.S. Senate will miss Alan Simpson as a friend whom they 
see on each and every day.
  Last in this series, but far from least, Mr. President, is my friend 
and neighbor, Mark Hatfield, the senior Senator from Oregon. We are 
brought together, of course, by geography, by the fact that so many of 
the regional challenges that affect one of our States affects the other 
as well. By the very real geographic fact that rivers join together 
rather than separate and the boundary between our two States, through 
most of its length, is the Columbia River.
  So, in any event, we would have been pushed together for the solution 
or for answers to these regional questions, but our association is far 
greater than that. I can say, Mr. President, that when I arrived in 
this body in 1981 and viewed my 99 colleagues, the single individual 
who most closely fit the best possible academic or idealistic profile 
of a U.S. Senator was Mark Hatfield, in bearing, in demeanor, in dress, 
in voice, in mind and in ideas.
  Mark Hatfield is an individual who, as much as any other I ever met, 
is able to combine a great loyalty toward a set of ideas and directions 
which make and preserve a political party, with an independence of 
judgment and an unwillingness to delegate his final decisionmaking 
authority to anyone else. That is a very difficult balance, Mr. 
President, but Mark Hatfield, I am certain from the beginning of his 
career, certainly during the 14 years that we have been here together, 
has perhaps best exemplified that wonderful balance: a chairman of an 
Appropriations Committee, tolerant, willing to listen to the views of 
others within his own party and in the other party, a firm and fine 
negotiator with whatever administration is in power, but at the same 
time, someone who never has lost sight of his goal of a more 
thoughtful, more peaceful, more generous America.
  Mark Hatfield's influence on this body will live for many years, 
perhaps for generations, after he has left. Others, beside myself, will 
look back and say that Mark Hatfield was their ideal of what a U.S. 
Senator ought to be.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DASCHLE. 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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