[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 133 (Thursday, November 18, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11446-S11449]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTES TO RETIRING SENATORS
Zell Miller
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the late Senator Paul Coverdell was a
great Senator and dear friend of many of us in this body. His untimely
passing left a great hole in our hearts. But it also took from Georgia
and from America a great leader.
At the time, none of us had any idea how we would ever manage without
him. I remember when we were doing tributes to him after his death.
There was great emotion on the floor of the Senate. I remember Senator
Phil Gramm tearfully giving Senator Coverdell a farewell. We all felt
great affection for him.
So when the Governor of Georgia, Governor Barnes, needed someone to
step into Paul Coverdell's place to be the voice for Georgia, he called
upon a fellow whom I had not previously met but had heard of for some
time, former Gov. Zell Miller.
Happily retired and without personal ambition for further public
office, Zell Miller responded to the call of duty. And what a
difference he has made in this body. In a time of turmoil, a time of
terrorist attacks, of economic challenge, of foreign war, when America
needed somebody to lead, Providence blessed America with a great
Senator, Zell Miller.
During his short tenure here, this old marine has been critical to
our efforts to obtain economic opportunity, homeland security, and
national security for this Nation. I can say with total certainty that
Paul Coverdell would be proud--proud--of the accomplishments of Zell
Miller. They have been good for Georgia, and they have been good for
America.
A review of every major battle this administration had in the last 4
years shows that Zell Miller was in the middle of each one and the
linchpin to each success. Zell Miller was instrumental to the economic
recovery our Nation now enjoys. Zell Miller was the key to the homeland
security our Nation has attained. Zell Miller was one of the strongest
voices to harden our Nation's resolve to fully wage the war against
terrorism. On these, the most critical issues upon which history will
judge this Nation, this President, and this Congress, it was Zell
Miller whose vote and voice made the difference.
Zell made the difference when the numbers didn't add up to victory.
Like our mutual friend, Phil Gramm, apparently being outnumbered was
never a cause for concern to Zell. Zell served in the proud line of
Truman Democrats. Like Harry Truman, he called for unity during a time
of war and, like
[[Page S11447]]
Harry Truman, gave hell to anybody who played games with our national
security.
Like John Kennedy, he knew that tax cuts were not just good for the
economy but they were good for the take-home-pay of workers and their
families. But from Zell we didn't just hear the thoughts of old-school
Democrats, we also rediscovered the truths of our Nation. He showed us
that integrity still matters, that nation comes before party, and that
thinking first of our children and grandchildren is the right and
proper way to judge national policy. Any time Zell looked for his
bearings, he gazed to those fixed stars of his favorite constellation:
His wife Shirley, his children, his seven grandchildren, and two great-
grandchildren. This internal compass served him well because no one
could ever accuse Zell of being confused about what he believed in and
why.
So Zell Miller heads back to the Appalachian Mountains of north
Georgia, whence he came. He returns with his wife Shirley back to the
base of Double Knob Mountains, where the ravines flow to the Brasstown
Creek and then the Hiawassee River and on to the Gulf of Mexico. He
returns to the dirt roads he walked as a lad, where he worked with his
mother, to haul stones from a nearby field to build a rock-walled house
with no rafter, no subfloor, and a ladder for a staircase in which he
was raised.
From such modest beginnings, and such a modest man, the world is
better because of his leadership. He stands as a lesson for all and for
all time. Because of Zell Miller, I can say, be you a Senator, a
college graduate, a single mother, or an elementary school student,
never, never, never doubt the impact a single person with clear vision
and a strong heart can make for your family, your community, your
nation, and, yes, your world--not just for now but for generations to
come.
So, Senator Miller, we will miss you around here.
Mr. President, we have had the privilege over the last 4 years to
serve with a truly great American who has made a difference in a body
in which it is very difficult for an individual Senator to frequently
make a difference. Farewell, Senator Miller. We look forward to seeing
you in the coming years.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Graham of South Carolina). The Senator
from Alabama.
Zell Miller
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the assistant majority leader
for his fine words. I certainly agree with those about Zell Miller.
Democracies in general, America in particular, seem blessed that in
times of turmoil, leaders do step forward and give us the guidance we
need. During a time of war and economic challenge, America got such a
leader in Zell Miller. It is not too much to say that he was the key,
the very hinge upon which much of the fate of the agenda of the last
several years swung. For the goals of President Bush, from homeland
security to economic growth to the war on terrorism, Zell Miller has
been the difference between victory and defeat, the gap between almost
and barely.
I think part of the willingness of Senator Miller to step forward,
break ranks, and support President Bush came because he is a man of
experience and judgment and integrity. He got to know President Bush.
He looked into his heart, he examined his policies, and he believed
him. He had a particular belief in this man at this point in history,
based on his study of history, his writing, and his experience, and he
was willing to step forward in an unusual degree and take a lot of
grief for it, to stand up for what he believed was right.
When President Bush proposed a tax cut to get the economy moving in
2001, and things were not going well, Zell Miller was the first
Democrat to support that plan. He cosponsored the bill with Phil Gramm
of Texas, a great Senator. When they teamed up I thought of that slogan
in the Alabama football network. Bear Bryant would have a TV show every
week to talk about the game. He promoted Coca-Cola from Georgia, I
guess, and Golden Flake potato chips, and the slogan was: ``Great Pair
Says the Bear.'' So when Zell Miller and Phil Gramm joined forces, it
was indeed a great pair. When it came time to protect the homeland
against terrorist attacks, it was Zell Miller who stood with the
President in 2002 to make sure we had a Department that functioned more
like the Pentagon than the post office in protecting the lives of
American citizens. After 4 months and 11 votes and a national election,
finally it took. We passed the Homeland Security bill that has
succeeded in keeping us safe, since 9/11, at least--a feat not many
would have predicted possible at the time.
I would just say this: Senator Miller understood the importance of
that issue. I believe he called three press conferences. He urged those
who were blocking the Homeland Security bill for some sort of internal
governmental union-type politics, not on the real merits--he warned
them that this was bad. It was bad for America, and it was bad
politically for those who blocked it.
They didn't listen. I think they wished they had. Certainly, after
the election they were quite willing to pass the bill they had been
blocking before the election.
When the economy slowed down due to the attacks and the corporate
scandal, and it came time to accelerate the tax cuts in 2003, once
again it was Zell Miller who made the economic incentive plan the law
of the land.
On the question of judges for America, Zell Miller had the classical
view of the role of a judge consistent with his good friend, the
wonderful Judge Griffin Bell, who was a court of appeals judge and also
Attorney General of the United States under President Jimmy Carter. He
follows that philosophy. As a matter of fact, he analyzed each nominee
who came forward and I believe saw fit to support the nominees,
consistently, that President Bush sent forward--not because of politics
but because he believed those judges would follow the law, not make
law. They would be constructionists, not activists.
Oftentimes, on each one of these issues it came down to this one man
making the difference, either taking the lead or casting the key vote
on those issues. He taught us once again that nation, family, faith,
heritage, and principle are more important than politics and party. In
this he reaffirmed the belief that government for, of, and by the
people can work.
When he spoke, people listened. I will tell you why people listened.
I asked him how he found time, how he did his speeches. He personally
writes his speeches. It is not written by staff. It is not generated by
some computer. It is not regurgitated from some document or some
memorandum or some summary somewhere. It comes from his heart, his
experience, his head, and his understanding of this great Republic of
which we are blessed to be a part. That is why people listen to his
speeches.
Most of us recall his speech in New York at the convention, where he,
in Trumanesque fashion, blasted those who play games with our national
defense. They squalled and thought it was hell. He was just telling the
truth, I suggest.
It was clear, passionate, and powerful and helped change the course
of the national debate. It changed the course of the national debate
because it was true. What he said was important. It had to do with
whether this Nation would have leadership committed to a strong
America. He also had some very fine words right here on the floor of
the Senate.
On the Energy bill, he rose in ``defense of that great American
workhorse,'' in his words, the pickup truck. He told a story of meeting
a guy who was a PHD--that is a post hole digger--who said:
If you really want to know when times are bad, take notice
of the number of people having to sell their pickups. Look at
the ads in the paper and the ``for sale'' signs in the yards.
The more you see, the worse it is because pickups are the
very symbol of the working man. As the pickup goes, so does
the working man and the very heart of this country.
He added:
Pickups are as essential to the carpenter as his hammer; as
essential to the painter as his paintbrush. So we must leave
this American workhorse, the pickup truck, alone. Don't pick
on the pickup.
Then he shared with us a tune called ``Talking Pickup Truck Blues.''
He spared us the agony of singing it, but he did share one verse.
[[Page S11448]]
Sure, an SUV is classy travel, but it ain't much good for
hauling gravel, or hay or bovine feces. So please do not make
my pickup truck an endangered species.
That is not often heard on the floor of this Senate--words of
eloquence that bring a smile to us all but more than that drives home a
truth about real people who serve America day after day in pickup
trucks.
So this man knows America. Given all the good he has done in so
little time--he has given so much to it--he leaves much too soon. He
has done a great job for this Nation and for Georgia in replacing the
departed Paul Coverdell who we all loved and admired. He has been a
great leader and a great Senator, and the Senate will miss the presence
of this old Marine sergeant.
I can say without contradiction I believe that few Senators in the
history of this Republic have in one short term contributed so much to
the health and welfare of our Nation and made such a tremendous impact
on it.
It is because he put his Nation first; he stood for what we believe
in. He was true to his raising.
I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
Mr. MILLER. Mr. President, I have listened with a grateful heart to
the generous words of my colleagues, the Senator from Kentucky and
earlier this morning the Senator from Alabama. I will remember and
cherish those words as long as I am on this Earth. I thank each of them
for their friendship.
I see my good friend from Montana on the floor. I thank him, a fellow
marine, for his friendship.
This means more to me than I have words to express. I did not come to
this Senate expecting events to unfold as they have. I guess I am
living proof that politics is not an exact science.
In Shakespeare's ``Hamlet,'' his friend Laertes is going off to
college and his father Polonius is giving him the usual advise that you
give when your sons go off to college. After all the words of caution
that I hope fathers still give their sons, Polonius ended with these
words:
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
I have always believed that and I have tried to live that.
I have had a most blessed personal life--personal and political.
Since 1959, voters in Georgia have been putting me in one office or
another, and I am deeply grateful to them.
God has richly blessed my personal life. My wife Shirley has been the
perfect partner for over 50 years. She has been my companion, my
critic, my crutch. We have two wonderful sons, Murphy and Matthew, and
our daughters-in-law and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren.
We are very blessed.
If he had lived, Paul Coverdell would be ending his second 6-year
term. As I told some of my colleagues last night, not a day has gone by
since I have been here that I have not thought of this good man who
left us so suddenly and so tragically.
My most fervent hope during these 4\1/2\ years has been that Paul
would be pleased with the way I have served and finished out his term.
I know Paul is pleased, as I am, that our mutual friend Johnny Isakson,
one of the finest public servants I have ever known, will soon be our
successor in this great body.
I also wish to say what an honor it has been to serve the last 2
years with my colleague from Georgia, Senator Saxby Chambliss.
Now as this page turns on the final chapter of my career as a public
servant, I cannot help but remember how it was in that first chapter of
my life. Growing up in a remote Appalachian valley, we lived in a house
made of rocks my mother gathered from a nearby creek with only an open
fireplace for heat, no indoor plumbing, no car, no phone, and no
father.
On summer nights before the TVA dammed up the Hiawassee River and
brought electricity to that Appalachian valley, after the Moon had come
up over the mountain, the lightning bugs were blinking, while the frogs
croaked down at the creek and the katydids sang, every once in a while
a whippoorwill's lonesome cry could be heard.
I remember after my mother had finally quit working and was getting
us quiet and ready to go to bed, we would play a game. The game would
start when the headlights of that rare car would penetrate the
darkness, maybe once every half hour or so on that narrow strip of
asphalt across a big ditch in front of our house. We would stare at the
headlights of the car as it made its way around the steep curves and
finally over Brasstown Mountain. We would count and see how long it
took from the time it went by our house until its taillights would
disappear through that distant gap and was no longer a part of that one
and only world I knew.
It was often at this time my mother would laugh and say, ``You know
what's so great about this place? You can get anywhere in the world
from here.''
That world has turned many times since I first traveled that narrow
road through that gap and out of that valley. It has been a long road
with many twists and turns, ups and downs, bumps, and, yes, a few
wrecks, a road that twice carried me to the highest office of the ninth
largest State in this Nation, to all the continents and famous cities
of the world and, finally, to the Senate.
So I leave this Senate, knowing that once again my mother has been
proved right. One could get anywhere in the world from that little
mountain valley and back again. Everywhere I have ever been really was
on my way back home.
I thank all of you. I thank my family. I thank my very special staff
who has stayed with me through thick and thin. I thank my friends and
especially my God. It has been one heck of a ride.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I wish to say a few words about my friend
from Georgia, Senator Miller, who preceded my remarks.
I was raised in the Midwest. We both come out of an era of rural
America. It was a different life. I remember when we did not have
electricity. We did not live on a gravel road. We did not have running
water in the house. In fact, the water bucket froze on cold winter
nights. We didn't have the best clothes in the world. But they were
clean. And I have never gone to bed hungry.
I have an idea my mother was kind of like Mrs. Miller. A home full of
love on a badlands farm made up of two rocks and one dirt, trying to
hang on to it, coming out of tough times called the Depression of the
dirty 1930s. It shaped a lot of character. It put a lot of fiber in a
lot of people who went on to love this country and would serve her and
our States at any cost.
The highest compliment one could pay to any person we meet in this
body, comes from the West in an expression that says: We'll not say
goodbye; we'll just say so long because you are welcome to sit at my
fire anytime.
That is my feeling toward this old marine. I only have one
disappointment, that we never did get a trip to the Pacific to visit
Iwo Jima. I have been there but he never got to go. We tried every way
in the world. We had a couple trips scrubbed because of business in the
Senate. We never did make it, but we are not going to give up.
So we say so long to Zell Miller, a good friend, a good Senator, a
great representative of Georgia, and a great representative of this
country.
I came down here today to talk about other men who will be leaving
this Senate, including Senator Hollings from South Carolina. He was
chairman of the Commerce Committee when I first came here in 1988 and
1989. I was up to my eyes in confusion, trying to drink out of a fire
hydrant to take it all in. My former chairman of the Commerce Committee
was part of my education, a very important part of it, in understanding
the work done in the committees and this business of setting policy
that conforms to the wants and desires of our States and what is good
for the country.
One time I offered a little amendment that had a far-reaching effect
in the debate of regulating the cable industry. I didn't want to do
that but I wanted to give him a little competition to make them better.
I offered an amendment without telling anybody on the committee,
without telling a soul.
I will tell the Presiding Officer I know what it is like to sit way
down at the end of the committee because when I came here my seniority
was S100.
[[Page S11449]]
I remember the chairman, Mr. Hollings, saying, I've never heard of
anything like that. It was pretty obvious we were going to have to go
to a vote. He didn't know if he had enough votes to defeat it and I
didn't know if I had enough votes to pass it. An instance such as that
calls for a little backroom sit-down, talk about this, and see what it
does to the issue.
I was right there with him. Senator Inouye from Hawaii was also in
the meeting. One can start to learn the ways of the Senate especially
in the areas of committee work.
I will miss Ernest Hollings because he has been an institution here
serving from the 89th through the 108th Congress. That is a great
tradition.
The Presiding Officer knows and understands Ernest Hollings. We may
disagree on philosophy but we did not disagree on America.
Don Nickles will leave this Senate in this year, having arrived in
1980 with President Ronald Reagan. The real voice of conservatism, a
fiscal conservative, who stood in this Senate and fought wasteful
spending and did it with grace, did it with knowledge, a leader among
all.
There again, he being 8 years ahead of me, he was a mentor and
someone I could look to, study and learn from.
In 1987 or 1986, Tom Daschle came to the Senate. A neighbor from
South Dakota from Aberdeen, SD, we both learned a little bit here. He
was much more successful than I, reaching into leadership of his party.
We had a lot of common friends in South Dakota. I will be sorry to see
Tom Daschle leave the Senate. But he has left big tracks here. There
are fond memories on issues that we agreed on and issues that we did
not agree, but we did not do it being disagreeable.
Bob Graham from Florida I learned was in the Angus business and he
leaves this year.
John Breaux from Louisiana. I worked with him on the Commerce
Committee regarding energy issues. His wisdom will be missed.
I am afraid I took much more from these men than I could ever return
to them.
I served only one term with John Edwards and Peter Fitzgerald. They,
too, will be missed in the Senate. Their contribution was huge.
Ben Nighthorse Campbell served from the 103rd to the 108th Congress.
But my, the knowledge he has had and the experiences he has had.
It seems as if he has always ridden dangerous things, including old
broncs and horses, which are unpredictable, and, you might say, not the
safest things. What a great thrill being the cover Senator for Harley
Davidson. He, too, has lived a great life. He, too, understands the
West. He is also a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. The
reservation is in my State of Montana.
We campaigned together, learned from each other. Now he will be
returning back to his Colorado, back to the High Country. He is looking
forward to that.
Peter Fitzgerald comes from Illinois. As to all of these men, I want
to say you do form relationships here, and there is a certain bond that
attracts us all, as we learn that even though you may be on the same
side of the aisle or the opposite side of the aisle, one could always
agree or disagree without being disagreeable. That is what makes the
Senate a special place.
We will miss all of these men, but I am looking forward to those who
take their place as, there again, new relationships will be developed,
a new bond dealing with the old challenges of a free society, with
those who love the Constitution and love this country who were prepared
to die for it and would if asked to do so today. No one doubts the
depth of their patriotism nor their service to their country. We
welcome them as we say goodbye to old friends, old relationships that
will never be forgotten.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
allowed to speak for up to ten minutes in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is in morning business. The Senator
from Tennessee is recognized.
____________________