[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 160 (Tuesday, December 7, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8574-S8576]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         FAREWELL TO THE SENATE

  Mr. LeMIEUX. Madam President, I rise to pay tribute to the body with 
which I have had the privilege of serving for the past 15 months. Being 
a U.S. Senator, representing 18\1/2\ million Floridians, has been the 
privilege of my lifetime, and now that privilege is coming to an end. 
As I stand on the floor of the Senate to address my colleagues this one 
last time, I am both humbled and grateful, humbled by this tremendous 
institution, by its work, and by the statesmen I have had the 
opportunity to serve with, who I knew only from afar but now am 
grateful that I can call those same men and women my colleagues.
  No endeavor worth doing is done alone. And my time here is no 
exception. In the past 16 months, I have asked the folks who worked 
with me to try to get 6 years of service out of that time, and they 
have worked tirelessly to achieve that goal.

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  My chief of staff Kerry Feehery, my deputy chief of staff Vivian 
Myrtetus, my State director Carlos Curbelo, Ben Moncrief, Michael Zehy, 
Ken Lundberg, Melissa Hernandez, Maureen Jaeger, Danielle Joos, Brian 
Walsh, Frank Walker, Spencer Wayne, Vennia Francois, Victor Cervino, 
Taylor Booth, and many, many others have made our time here worthwhile, 
and I thank all of them. I specially thank Vivian and Maureen who left 
their families and gave up precious time with their children to come to 
Washington to support me in these efforts.
  I am also thankful to the people who work in our State office. Time 
and time again when I travel around Florida I am encountered by people 
who have received such a warm reception from the men and women who 
serve us in Florida and help people deal with problems with the Federal 
Government. I am grateful for their work.
  Senator McConnell has provided me with opportunities beyond my 
expectations. He is a great leader, and I am grateful to him. Senators 
Alexander, Burr, Cornyn, Kyl, McCain, Corker, and many others have 
taken me under their wings and mentored me, and I am appreciative of 
them.
  Chairmen Rockefeller and Levin, we have had the opportunity to do 
great work together in your committees. I thank you for that. Senators 
Cantwell, Klobuchar, Landrieu, Whitehouse, and Baucus, we have worked 
together in a commonsense way to pass legislation that is good for the 
American people, and I am appreciative of your efforts.
  Senator Mel Martinez, who ably held the seat before me, has been 
generous in his advice and counsel. Senator Nelson and his wife Grace 
have been warm and welcomed Meike and I to Washington. I am thankful 
for your courtesy. I thank Governor Crist. He has afforded me 
tremendous opportunities for public service, and I am grateful.
  I want to say a special thank you to my parents. My grandfather, in 
1951, drove his 1949 Pontiac from Waterbury, CT, to Fort Lauderdale, 
FL, with his wife and five kids piled in the back. He didn't know 
anybody. He didn't have a job. But he went there to make a better life 
for his family. He worked in the trades, in construction. He built 
houses and he taught my father the same thing. And as my father worked 
in the hot Florida Sun, his ambition for his son was that he would one 
day get to work in air-conditioning. I have achieved that goal and so 
much more because of their sacrifice. Mom and Dad didn't go to college 
but they sent me to college and law school, and I will be forever 
grateful for what they have done for me.
  My most heartfelt appreciation goes to my wife Meike. When I learned 
of this appointment, I met her at the door of our home in Tallahassee 
and she was crying. She was not just crying because she was happy; she 
was crying because she was worried. We at the time had three small 
sons--Max, Taylor and Chase, 6, 4, and 2. She knew something that 
others didn't know--that we were going to have another baby and that 
baby was born here in Washington, our daughter Madeleine.
  Throughout all of my travels, she has been an unfailing support for 
me, I love her dearly, and I am appreciative to her.
  It has been the privilege of my life to serve here, but I would not 
be fulfilling my charge in my final speech if I did not tell you what 
weighs on my mind and lays upon my heart about the direction of this 
country. So what I say to you now is with all due respect, but it is 
with the candor that it deserves.
  The single greatest threat to the future of our Republic and the 
prosperity of our people is this Congress's failure to control 
spending. In my maiden speech, I lamented a world where my children 
would one day come to me and say they would find an opportunity in 
another country instead of staying here in America because those 
opportunities were better there. In 1 year's time that lament has 
proven to be too optimistic, because the challenge that confronts us 
will not wait until my children grow up.
  When I came to Congress just 15 months ago, our national debt was 
$11.7 trillion. Today, it stands at $13.7 trillion. It has gone up $2 
trillion in 15 months. It took this country 200 years to go $1 trillion 
in debt. Our interest payment on our debt service is nearly $200 
billion now. At the end of the decade, when our debt will be nearly $26 
trillion, that interest payment will be $900 billion.
  When that interest payment is $900 billion, this government will 
fail. And long before that time the world markets will anticipate that 
and our markets will crash. This is not hyperbole; it is the truth. Not 
since World War II has this country faced a greater threat. Not since 
the Civil War has this threat come from within.
  How has Congress arrived at this moment? For the past 40 years, 
Congress has spent more than it could afford. It has borrowed from 
Social Security and foreign governments, delaying making honest choices 
and prioritizing on what it should spend. Budgeting in Washington seems 
to be nothing more than adding to last year's budget. We are funding 
the priorities of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s without any real 
evaluation of whether those are still good priorities and certainly not 
to see whether they are being done efficiently and effectively: It is 
as if a teenage child received not only all the gifts on their 
Christmas list this year but the gifts on all their Christmas lists 
going back to when they were three.

  It is clear Congress is capable of solving this problem with business 
as usual. What is needed is across-the-board spending caps to right the 
ship. An across-the-board spending cap will necessitate oversight and 
require prioritization. Congress will finally have to do what 
businesses and families do all across this country: Make tough choices, 
make ends meet.
  I have proposed such a cap. I have proposed going back to the 2007 
level spending across the board. Was our spending in 2007 so austere 
that we could not live with it just 3 years later? If we did, we would 
balance the budget in 2013 and we would cut the national debt in half 
by 2020 and you would save America.
  Unlike most problems that Congress addresses, this problem is 
uniquely solvable by Congress. Congress can't win wars. Only the brave 
men and women in our military, who we especially remember on this day, 
December 7, of all those who have served for our country in all of our 
wars to keep us safe and free, only those men and women can win a war. 
Congress cannot lead us out of recession. Only job creators and 
businesses can create jobs. But this problem is solely of Congress's 
making and uniquely solvable by this body.
  What Congress should do is strengthen its oversight. The lack of 
oversight in Washington is breathtaking. Evaluate all Federal programs. 
Keep what works; fix what you should; get rid of the rest. Return the 
money to the people and use the rest to pay down this cataclysmic debt.
  The recent work of the Debt Commission is a good start, and I commend 
my Senate colleagues who voted for this measure. It was courageous for 
them to do so.
  But out-of-control spending is not just a threat because it is 
unsustainable; it is also changing who we are as Americans. Remember, 
our Founders told us that the powers delegated to the Federal 
Government were ``few and defined,'' the powers to the State ``numerous 
and indefinite,'' extending to ``all the objects which in the course of 
affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people.''
  The current size and scope of the Federal Government is corrosive to 
the American spirit. The good intentions of Members of Congress to 
solve every real or perceived problem with a new Federal program, and 
the false light of praise that attaches to the giving away of the 
people's money, endangers our Republic. Every new program chips away at 
what it means to be an American, harms our spirit, and replaces our 
self-reliance with dependency, supplants an opportunity ethic with an 
entitlement culture. It is at its base un-American.
  It is not the Government's role to deliver happiness. Rather, it is 
its role to stay clear of that path to allow our people to pursue that 
God-given right.
  What has created our prosperity, after all, is not our government, it 
is our free market system of capitalism. It is through the healthy cut 
and thrust of the marketplace that new technologies, new jobs, and new 
wealth are created. Through that dynamic process some win and some 
lose, but it

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allows all of our people, regardless of their race, gender, creed, 
color, or background the opportunity to succeed or fail. And it ensures 
for us that unique expression ``only in America'' is not just a refrain 
from the past but an anthem for the future.
  Can you imagine the tragedy if the downfall of the American 
experiment was caused by a failure of this Congress to control its 
spending? The challenge of this generation is before you and it is not 
beyond your grasp. There is nothing we as Americans cannot do. We have 
fought imperial Japan and Nazi Germany at the same time and beaten 
both. We have put a man on the Moon. We have mapped the human genome. 
And in the spare bedrooms and garages and dorm rooms of our people, our 
citizens have created the greatest inventions and the greatest 
businesses the world has ever known, which have employed millions of 
people and allowed them to pursue their dreams, all in the freest and 
most open society in the history of man.
  We are that shining city on the hill. We are that beacon of freedom. 
We are that last best hope for mankind upon which God has shed his 
grace.
  President Theodore Roosevelt said that one of the greatest gifts that 
life has to offer is the opportunity to do work that is worth doing. I 
can't think of a greater gift than the work that lies before you: 
righteous in its cause, noble in its purpose, and essential for the 
prosperity of our people.
  I will always cherish the relationships I have gained here and the 
work we have done together. God bless you, God bless the U.S. Senate, 
and God bless our great country.
  I yield the floor.

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