[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 54 (Thursday, April 3, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4813-S4815]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN

  Mr. WARNER. I join all who had the privilege to serve with our late 
colleague, Senator Patrick Moynihan. Of the 24 years I have been here, 
22 were spent with him. While my heart has sadness, it is filled with 
joy for the recollections of a wonderful friendship and working 
relationship we had in the Senate.
  We shared a deep and profound love for the U.S. Navy. He served from 
1944 to 1947 and was a commissioned officer. I served from 1946 to 1947 
as an enlisted man. Whenever we would meet, he would shout out, 
``Attention on deck,'' and require me to salute him as an enlisted man 
properly salutes an officer. Then he would turn around and salute me, 
as I was once Secretary of the Navy, and he was consequently, at that 
point in time, outranked.
  That was the type of individual he was. He filled this Chamber with 
spirit, with joy, with erudition, and he spoke with eloquence. We shall 
miss our dear friend.
  I recall specifically serving with him on the Committee on 
Environment and Public Works, of which he was chairman for a while. He 
had a great vision for the Nation's Capital. Some of the edifices we 
enjoy today would not have been had it not been for this great 
statesman. The landmarks would not be there had it not been for him. I 
am talking about the completion of the Federal Triangle. The capstone, 
of course, is the magnificent building today bearing the name of our 
President Ronald Reagan.
  He was a driving force behind the completion of that series of 
Government buildings started in the 1930s, under the vision of Herbert 
Hoover and Andrew Mellon. They were great

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friends. They wanted to complete that magnificent series of buildings, 
but the Depression came along and the construction stopped. Pat 
Moynihan stepped up and finished.
  Many do not know that in Union Station, which today is a mecca for 
transportation, a transportation hub--we have rail, the bus, and we 
have the subway. Pat Moynihan was the one who saved that magnificent 
structure for all to enjoy for years to come.
  I suppose the capstone was the Judiciary Building. I remember full 
well how he came before the committee and expressed the importance for 
the third branch of Government to have its administrative offices and 
other parts of that branch of the Government encased in a building 
befitting the dignity that should be accorded our third branch of 
Government. That building marks his genius.
  In improving transportation, he was key in TEA-21, the landmark 
legislation that provided so much return to the States for their 
transportation needs, again, as chairman of Environment and Public 
Works.
  He had a strong commitment to addressing poverty in rural America and 
was a strong supporter of the Appalachian Regional Commission which 
touched the States of West Virginia, Virginia, and others.
  We are grateful to him. He understood the people as few did. I say 
goodbye to this dear friend. I salute him. I will always have joy in my 
heart for having served with this man who, in my humble judgment, had 
the wit, the wisdom, and the vision of a Winston Churchill.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, when Pat Moynihan retired from the 
Senate in 2000, following four terms of devoted and distinguished 
service to the citizens of New York and indeed of the Nation, he left a 
great void; now, with his death, he leaves a greater void still. To 
paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, speaking of Benjamin Franklin when in 1784 
he took Franklin's place as the Ambassador of the new American 
Republican in Paris, others may succeed him in the many different roles 
he played in our national life, but no one will ever replace him.
  No simple category was ever capacious enough to accommodate Daniel 
Patrick Moynihan. With justification he has been called an 
intellectual, a scholar, an academic, an author, an editor, a 
politician, a diplomat, and a statesman. He has been known variously as 
a scholarly politician and a political-minded scholar; certainly as 
Nicholas Lemann has observed, ``he was more of a politician, by far, 
than most intellectuals.'' He was a fierce partisan of cities and the 
urban landscape, but he was equally devoted to the urban and rural 
spaces of his State of New York. Born in Tulsa, he was a quintessential 
New Yorker. He was also a proud citizen of this capital city, where he 
and Liz, his wife and partner in every endeavor for nearly 50 years, 
chose to live at the very center. He was at home in academic 
communities wherever he found them. He was equally expert in domestic 
and foreign policy.
  Pat Moynihan grew up poor, and never, ever forgot the grinding, 
corrosive effects of poverty; many years removed from poverty himself, 
he characterized tough bankruptcy reform legislation as ``a boot across 
the throat'' of the poor. As a child he earned money by shining shoes; 
later he worked as a longshoreman. He served in the U.S. Navy. He went 
to college courtesy of the G.I. bill, earning his B.A. from Tufts 
University and his M.A. from Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and 
Diplomacy. Some years later he earned his Ph.D. in international 
relations at Syracuse University, but only after spending a year as a 
Fulbright Scholar at the London School of Economics and working for a 
time in the office of the Governor of New York.
  From the time he left Syracuse for Washington in 1961 until he ran 
successfully for the Senate in New York in 1976, Pat Moynihan held a 
challenging succession of positions in public service and in the 
academic world. Although over the years Pat represented New York in the 
Senate his colleagues became accustomed to that versatility, in 
retrospect it appears astonishing. He joined the Labor Department in 
1961, eventually becoming the Assistant Secretary for Policy Planning, 
but left in 1965 to become director of the Joint Center for Urban 
Studies and a professor in the Graduate School of Education at Harvard. 
Four years later he returned to public life as an assistant to the 
President for urban affairs, only to return the following year to 
Harvard, only to be called upon to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to 
India and then to the United Nations. In those 15 years he served in 
four different administrations and held six different positions. In 
every one of them he served with distinction and his accomplishments--
many of them considered controversial at the time--are remembered 
respectfully today. They will not soon be forgotten.
  New York's voters first sent Pat Moynihan to represent them in the 
Senate in 1976, and returned him every 6 years for three additional 
terms; he declined to run again in 2000, after 24 years of service. It 
was as though, in coming to the Senate, he had come home. He set his 
sights quickly on the Finance Committee, with its vital jurisdiction 
over Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs. In his third 
term he rose to the chairmanship, the first New Yorker to chair that 
committee in nearly 150 years. In that capacity he worked to enact 
legislation that proved to be the foundation for a period of economic 
growth that raised millions of Americans above the poverty level.
  As a member of the Committee on the Environment and Public works he 
worked hard, often with spectacular success, to promote awareness and 
assure the preservation of many of the buildings, once seemingly 
destined for demolition, that today we consider our priceless national 
heritage. For this the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1999 
honored him with the Louise DuPont Crowinshield Award, its highest 
honor, noting, ``The award is made only when there is indisputable 
evidence of superlative lifetime achievement and commitment in the 
preservation and interpretation of the country's historic architectural 
heritage.'' Everyone who walks along Pennsylvania Avenue in this city 
or through New York's Pennsylvania Station is forever indebted to Pat 
Moynihan. He procured the necessary funding to save Louis Sullivan's 
Guarantee Building, in Buffalo, and promptly moved his district office 
into it. In his brief chairmanship of the committee he shepherded 
through to enactment ground-breaking legislation, the Intermodal; 
Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, ISTEA, which recast our 
thinking about surface transportation.
  Pat Moynihan's formal academic training was in foreign policy. Here 
he will be remembered for his effective ambassadorship to India, his 
forceful and principled representation of United States interests in 
the U.N. Security Council and his early conviction, little shared at 
the time he expressed it, that behind the facade of Soviet military 
might and empire lay a system in danger of collapse. He proved to be 
correct. He should also be remembered for his role as one of the ``Four 
Horsemen'' in the Congress, whose work often went unremarked. These 
four Members, whose families had come to this country from Ireland, 
worked tirelessly together in support of efforts to bring peace to 
Northern Ireland, and especially to steer United States policy in that 
direction. That Northern Ireland is no longer torn apart by violence is 
in some significant measure due to their efforts.
  Once we have catalogued all Pat Moynihan's many accomplishments, 
however, there remains the man himself. In everything he did he 
remained a teacher, with an amazing capacity to instruct and to 
inspire. He believed, with Thomas Jefferson, that ``Design activity and 
political thought are indivisible''--an elliptical idea to many of us, 
until we find ourselves in the presence of the architectural monuments 
he helped to preserve. He brought to every undertaking an extraordinary 
historical perspective, and an astute appreciation of what he called, 
in his commencement address at Harvard just a year ago, ``our basic 
constitutional design.'' In his turn of phrase and in his thought, he 
was unabashedly himself--deeply self-respecting, just as he was 
respectful of other people and other cultures. For all these reasons he 
remains a vivid part of our national life.
  It is difficult to know just how to honor our former colleague, 
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, for his lifetime of service and his 
legacy. In the

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end, our best tribute will lie not in the words of remembrance we speak 
but rather his tangible achievements and his legacy. The best tribute 
we can pay is not the words we speak but rather in our rededication to 
the principles for which he fought.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, the Senate was enriched enormously by the 
services of the late Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
  He was appreciated and respected for his intelligence, his sense of 
humor, his seriousness of purpose, and the warmth and steadfastness of 
his friendship.
  His death last week saddened this Senator very much. His funeral 
services at St. Patrick's Church here in Washington last Monday 
attracted a large crowd of friends, former colleagues, and staff 
members as well as his attractive family. This manifestation of 
friendship reminded me why Pat Moynihan was such a successful public 
official. He liked people, and they liked him.
  He took his job as U.S. Senator from New York very seriously. He 
worked hard for funding for the New York Botanical Gardens. He was also 
an active and effective member of the Board of Regents of the 
Smithsonian Institution where it was my good fortune and pleasure to 
serve with him.
  He transformed the City of Washington, D.C. through his determined 
efforts to enhance the beauty and protect the architectural integrity 
of Pennsylvania Avenue.
  His scholarly articles and books on the subject of the cultural and 
social history of our nation were informative and influential. The 
correctness of his assessment of the importance of the family unit in 
our society changed our attitudes about the role of federal government 
policies.
  His influence was also felt on tax policies as a member of the Senate 
Finance Committee.
  I convey to all the members of Pat Moynihan's family my sincerest 
condolences.

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