[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 29, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Page S5476]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          HONORING JOHN HARDT

  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I take this opportunity today to pay 
tribute to a very distinguished servant of the legislative branch of 
the Congress. In May 2003, Dr. John Hardt will end his official service 
with the Congressional Research service after 32 years as a valuable 
resource to Congress in the field of international economics and 
foreign affairs. In many ways, Dr. Hardt's retirement symbolizes the 
ending of an era for the Congress; he is the only remaining CRS Senior 
Specialist now providing Congress with research and analysis in the 
field of foreign affairs. He has been a great asset to the Congress and 
to CRS throughout his long career in public service.
  Dr. Hardt received both his Ph.D. in economics and a Certificate from 
the Russian institute from Columbia University. Prior to joining the 
Congressional Research Service, he had already had the kind of 
illustrious career that serves as a lifetime achievement for many 
others. He served his country with distinction during World War II, 
receiving ribbons and battle stars for both the European and Asiatic 
Theaters of Operations as well as the Philippine Liberation Ribbon. He 
has been an educator--specializing in economics, Soviet studies, and 
Sino-Soviet studies--at the University of Washington, the University of 
Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, the George Washington University, 
the Foreign Service Institute, and American military service schools. 
He has served in the American private sector, specializing in Soviet 
electric power and nuclear energy economics for the CEIR Corporation in 
Washington, DC, and as a director of the Strategic Studies Department 
at the Research Analysis Corporation in McLean, VA, where he 
specialized in Soviet Comparative Communist and Japanese Studies. He is 
a widely published author, with hundreds of research papers, journal 
articles, technical memoranda, and books and book chapters to his 
credit.
  Dr. Hardt joined the Congressional Research Service as the Senior 
Specialist in Soviet Economics in November of 1971. It is his work for 
CRS--and for us, the Members of this body--that I want to honor today. 
For the past three decades, Dr. Hardt has served Members of Congress, 
their staffs, and committees with his considerable expertise in Soviet 
and post-Soviet and Eastern Europe economics, the economy of the 
People's Republic of China, East-West commercial relations, and 
comparative international economic analysis. He has advised, among 
others, both the Senate and House Commerce Committees on East-West 
trade; the senate and House Banking Committees on the Export-Import 
Bank and other U.S. government financing programs; and the Senate 
Finance and House Ways and Means Committees on U.S. trade policy. He 
frequently has traveled with congressional committee delegations, 
serving as a technical adviser on visits to the former Soviet Union, 
Poland, Hungary, the former Yugoslavia, the United Kingdom, the Federal 
Republic of Germany, Italy, and Sweden, and then preparing committee 
reports for these trips. On many occasions, Dr. Hardt has been called 
on to advise directly Members of Congress and congressional staff on 
Russian Federation debt reduction and its relationship to 
nonproliferation concerns, and has provided support to the Russian 
Leadership Program, especially those events and activities that 
involved Members of Congress. The extent of his national and 
international contacts is breathtaking and includes senior members of 
foreign governments and leading multinational businesses.
  His most lasting legacy for Congress may well be his service as both 
editor and coordinator of a long series of Joint Economic Committee 
compendia on the economies of the PRC, Soviet Union, and Eastern 
Europe. The Congress can take pride in these important, well-known, and 
highly respected JEC studies, to which Dr. Hardt devoted so much of his 
talent and energies. The more than 70 volumes of this work include: 
China Under the Four Modernizations, 1982; China's Economy Looks Toward 
the Year 2000, 1986; The Former Soviet Union in Transition, 1993; East-
Central European Economies in Transition, 1994; and Russia's Uncertain 
Economic Future, 2001. The series includes hundreds of analytical 
papers on various aspects of issues pertinent to Congress and to U.S. 
policy, all written by internationally recognized government, academic, 
and Private sector experts, and all coordinated and edited by Dr. 
Hardt. This work was not only a valuable source of analysis to the 
Congress but also to the policymaking and academic communities at 
large. For many years, these volumes were the most comprehensive 
sources of economic data and analyses on the economies of the Soviet 
Union, China, and Easter Europe.
  Let me make one final point to illustrate the loss that we, as 
Members of Congress, will sustain with Dr. Hardt's retirement. That 
point concerns one of the great strengths that CRS offers to Congress, 
and which Dr. Hardt's tenure and contributions at CRS epitomize 
perfectly: institutional memory. Of the 525 Members of the 108th 
Congress, only 11 were Members of the 92nd Congress when Dr. Hardt 
first assumed his official congressional duties. Most of the countries 
that he has specialized in have undergone astounding transformation 
during his working life--some, indeed, no longer exist. The members of 
this deliberative body in which we serve has turned over many times. 
Committees have come and gone. But through it all, John Hardt has been 
a constant fixture, a strand of continuity in an environment of 
continual change--part of the collective institutional memory of CRS 
which is of such value to our work in Congress. We wish Dr. Hardt well 
in the new ventures on which he will be embarking. He will be greatly 
missed by us all.

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