[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 171 (Monday, December 31, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8563-S8565]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EXTENSION OF MORNING BUSINESS
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period for
morning business for debate only be extended until 2 p.m., with
Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. KERRY. 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. NELSON of Florida. 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the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, the hour is nigh. Now
Washington is awash in the rumor that there might be some progress
being made. I hope so. If there was anything that was made clear to
this Senator in the reelection in one of the biggest States in the
Union, it was that the people want us to come together and to stop this
bickering, the excessive ideological rigidity, and the excessive
partisanship. That is a huge turnoff because ideological rigidity and
excessive partisanship are impediments to getting people to come
together with commonsense decisions for solutions.
Obviously, there is an easy way. Hopefully that is what is being
tweaked at the moment in a final solution, with the President to speak
in about 30 minutes. I hope so.
Mr. President, I am going to leave you with this thought. My
colleagues know that a little over a quarter century ago, I had the
privilege of seeing our home planet from the perspective of looking
through the window of a spacecraft. It was the 24th flight of the space
shuttle. It was early in the space shuttle program. It is indelibly
etched in my mind's eye, as I looked back at Earth, what I saw. I did
not see political divisions. I did not see religious divisions. I did
not see ethnic divisions. What I saw is that we were all in this
together, all a part of planet Earth. If we could remember that in our
politics, we would all get along so much better. I hope that stays
indelibly etched in my mind's eye and that we ultimately prevail in
this momentous decision of avoiding the fiscal cliff.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
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The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, there is a lot of buzzing going on
around the Capitol today. Here we are on New Year's Eve, and so many of
us had hoped we would have an agreement that would be really a big
agreement, a long-term agreement that we would have liked to have had
finished maybe by September, certainly by October, but that was not to
be. In fact, as we saw in the elections of this year, our country is
divided and our House here is divided as well. So it has been hard to
come to terms.
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government,
except for all the rest, because when we have opinions, when we have
free speech, when we have elections that put a Democratic majority in
the Senate and a Republican majority in the House, we know there is not
going to be a clear and precise path. But in the end, it is the best
because we have all expressed our opinions and everyone has been heard.
We have had countless meetings in the last few weeks trying to see
where people could give and where they couldn't. I have said from the
beginning that I am optimistic because I think our democracy will work
in the end. From what I am hearing from the different leaders, we are
close to an agreement. We are not there, but it is a starting point and
certainly a point at which there is already some agreement.
It may not seem as though it should be so hard, but once we do have
the framework of an agreement, there are a lot of decisions that have
to be made. We have to talk among Senate Democrats and Republicans, and
then we have to go to the House and talk to Republicans and Democrats.
I think one thing that is clear is there has to be a substantial number
of votes on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Rotunda. We
will not pass something with all Democratic votes or all Republican
votes because it will not pass in the other House. So I think there is
a lot of refining of what is a pretty good agreement in the making, but
the refining has not yet been finished. I have abiding hope that we
will get there.
Time to Reflect
Since this may possibly be my last day as a U.S. Senator--at least my
last time to vote. Up until January 2, I am a U.S. Senator, but
actually being able to participate at this late date has given me some
time to reflect. I so appreciate some of the major communications and
opportunities I have had with the real people in my home State of Texas
and beyond. I always think of the many times I have been able to meet
with our troops in harm's way.
In the early years of my tenure in the Senate, our troops were in
harm's way in Bosnia, where there were many conflicts, and I got to
visit with them and see what their concerns were and what was on their
minds, and then into Iraq and then into Afghanistan. I have visited all
of these places and had the chance to talk to our troops. What a person
comes away with when they have that opportunity is the understanding
that America is in good hands with our younger generation. They have
such a great spirit.
I went to the Brooke Army Medical Center Hospital in San Antonio and
visited with a young man who had lost both legs in an IED explosion. He
had been able to get used to that situation for maybe 2 weeks. So it is
reasonable to say he had had the shock of his life. So I went into his
room, and there is his wife and his little daughter, who was about the
same age as my daughter, sitting there with him.
He says to me: Senator, they won't let me go back, and that is where
I want to be.
Then his darling wife pipes up and says: You know what, they took
half of you and they are not getting the other half.
Now, if that isn't a story, for both of them to have such a spirit. I
was so touched by that.
Just in the last month or so, I was back in San Antonio visiting the
wonderful Center for the Intrepid they have for the wounded warriors
and their families. It is a recreation center, and it is a place where
they can go and cook food and have family meetings. They can play
games, and they have extensive learning opportunities with computer
rooms. It is a wonderful center they have put together, the people of
San Antonio.
This was all spearheaded by a wounded warrior who had been cooped up
in a room and wanted to have some ability to get outside the room with
his family and have some experiences even though he was still going
through treatment. He started raising money, and he raised it from the
community and from many other wounded warriors, as well as military
personnel, but a lot of the citizens of San Antonio and Texas stepped
forward. So this is a wonderful place.
I met a wonderful young man who lost his arm and parts of two of his
legs. He was a West Point graduate. He was sitting there, again with
his beautiful wife, and I was visiting with him.
He said: I just want to be able to continue to contribute.
And I thought, oh my goodness, here is a West Point graduate who has
so much to give and who wants to continue to give. So I came back and I
wrote a letter to General Odierno, the Chief of Staff of the Army, and
I told him about the young man who lost most of three limbs out of four
and who wants to keep contributing. What about making him a military
fellow, as we have in our offices, as the Presiding Officer knows? We
have military fellows who are Active-Duty military, and they help us.
We can have one a year. They help us by providing the military
perspective on the things we are doing. Of course, because I have
served on the Defense Subcommittee and the Military Construction
Subcommittee of Appropriations and the Veterans' Affairs Committee, I
love to have those military fellows.
I was so pleased that within just a month or so, when the choices
were made for military fellows, this young man was chosen by the Army
with the support of General Odierno, whose own son also has lost an arm
in combat.
So I think that is a wonderful thing and that on reflection is one of
the highlights of my moments to remember.
I also remember some of the great things my staff has done. I have to
say, my staff has been the can-do staff of all time. They never take no
for an answer. So when we have challenges, individuals who need help--
it may be a veterans' benefit; it may be a Social Security problem--
they have always had the reputation as the staff who tries to do
everything possible to come through.
I am very pleased the Senator who is going to take my place on
January 3 is going to have my staff director for case work, Joyce
Sibley--who has had such a great reputation--continue in that position.
She knows the issues. She knows the people. She will be great. I
applaud Senator-elect Ted Cruz for making that decision and for keeping
most of the staff who have done this wonderful work.
But let me give a couple examples. First of all, we got a frantic
call from a friend of mine about a doctor who was trapped on top of
Mount Everest. He was a Dallas doctor, and he was trapped up there in a
blizzard and not expected to live. They had a terrible loss of some of
the people in their climbing group, and a friend called and said: Is
there anything you can do?
My wonderful staff, one of whom is retired military and knows so many
of the things that could be done, Dave Davis, and Carolyn Kobey, who
handles this casework in my Dallas office. Carolyn actually got in
touch with the Nepalese Armed Forces and as a result of Carolyn's
efforts, they were able to get a helicopter up. Once you get past a
certain level--13,000 feet--you have to have oxygen in a helicopter or,
obviously, if you are climbing.
So it was something that was a real ask of the Nepalese Air Force and
we were able to get them to take that risk and to go up and they were
able to rescue Dr. Beck Weathers. He is alive and wrote a great book
about that experience from his vantage point. But we were very pleased
to be able to take part in something such as that.
I will tell you, maybe the all time great experience was in my
Houston office, led by Jason Fuller. We got a call in the Dallas
office, and so the Houston and Dallas offices together did this. We got
a call in the Dallas office from a woman in Mississippi. She said: I
didn't know who else to call, but I knew Senator Hutchison's name. My
son is having an asthma attack in Houston, and
[[Page S8565]]
I don't know how to get him the help he needs. He is in his apartment
by himself.
My staff said: Please give us the information. We will call our
Houston office, and we will see if we can get help, which they did.
They called the Houston office. The Houston office called 9-1-1. They
went out to the young man's apartment. He was, in fact, in a dire
circumstance and would have died had he not gotten help right away. But
they took him in. They gave him the help he needed, and that young man
is alive today.
So these instances are some of the great memories I will have of
having a wonderful staff who will go the extra mile and try to help the
individuals in our State as well as on the big issues where we also try
to make sure we do everything we can to get something that is very
important to us, whether it is to America or to Texas or to Texans or
to Americans.
These are some of the memories I will take with me as I leave this
great body. As I said in my actual formal farewell speech, it is easy
to be critical. I saw on television this morning that the esteem of
Congress has fallen to 5 percent favorable. I am not surprised at that.
As my colleague John McCain once said: Now we are down to blood
relatives and paid staff. It is easy to criticize, and there are a lot
of reasons to criticize. I will admit things have not been as
productive and most certainly the acrimony does show sometimes.
But I am going to say, as I leave, after almost 20 years in this
body, the people here are all dedicated. There is not one who is not a
dedicated patriotic American. We disagree, sometimes violently
disagree, on the way we should get to our goals. But our agreement is
on the goal of keeping America the beacon of freedom to the world, to
keeping our military strong, to doing right by all our people, whether
it is a small businessperson who is creating jobs who is trying to go
up the ladder of success or whether it is someone who is in trouble
because they have had a huge setback in their lives. Everyone here
wants America to continue to be the magnet for the world. We want to be
the science and technology innovators who will continue to fuel our
economy. It is just how we get there that causes the disagreement.
We have patriotic people who have been elected. I hope for the next 2
years we will put aside the partisan politics, put aside the thoughts
of future elections, and try to solve the big issues of our time,
because there is a lot of intelligence in this body. There is a lot of
ability to come together. I keep the abiding faith that our messy
democracy will, in fact, prevail because I cannot think of going to
anything else. As long as we can function and show the world we can
govern, as we disagree, that will be the example that will forever make
our country the best and, hopefully, be a model for others to not think
you have to take to the streets, not think you need guns to have the
government you want but to show that peaceful transition can be done
and also that we can have a lot of discussion, a lot of disagreements,
but we can do it civilly.
I leave this body knowing if we just remember the honor we have of
growing up in the greatest Nation on Earth, we will recognize that it
is our responsibility to give the same to our children and
grandchildren. It is the least we can do.
Thank you. I yield the floor.
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. BROWN of Ohio. Madam 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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