[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 13 (Wednesday, January 30, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S383-S389]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FAREWELL TO THE SENATE
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to begin by thanking my colleagues--
all of them--for their unbelievably generous comments to me personally,
in the committee, on the floor, and in the halls and at meetings over
the course of the last weeks. I will always be grateful for our
friendships.
I thank my wife Teresa, who is here with us, and my entire family for
their unbelievable support through this journey.
Five times Massachusetts has voted to send me to the U.S. Senate.
Yesterday, nearly three decades after the people of Massachusetts first
voted me into this office, the people with whom I work in the Senate
voted me out of it. As always, I accept the Senate's sound judgment.
Eight years ago, I admit that I had a slightly different plan to
leave the Senate, but 61 million Americans voted that they wanted me to
stay here with you. So staying here I learned about humility, and I
learned that sometimes the greatest lesson in life comes not from
victory but from dusting oneself off after defeat and starting over
when you get knocked down.
I was reminded throughout this journey of something that is often
said but not always fully appreciated: All of us Senators are only as
good as our staff--a staff that gives up their late nights and
weekends, postpones vacations, doesn't get home in time to tuck
children into bed, and all of those lost moments because they are here
helping us serve. They are not elected. They didn't get into public
service to get
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rich. That is for sure. And their names are rarely in the newspapers.
But from the staff in the mailrooms to the people who answer the front
phones to the policy experts and the managers, the legislative
correspondents who write the letters, the caseworkers who make
government accountable, and the people everywhere in between, they make
the Senate work for people.
I have been blessed to have a spectacular staff. And while I know
every one of my colleagues would say the same thing about their staff,
it is true about mine.
If I start naming names, I am going to miss somebody, so I am not
going to. But I think every one of my staff will understand why I want
to acknowledge five who are not with us any longer. They are up in
heaven looking down on all of us, and Ted Kennedy has probably drafted
all of them; Jayona Beal, Jeanette Boone, Bill Bradley, Louise
Etheridge, and Gene Heller--the latter two of whom were senior citizen
volunteers in my Boston office who opened our mail for over a decade.
They were not paid. They just did this out of love of country. We miss
them all, and we thank them for their selfless contribution.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at this point a
list of names of the people who have helped me serve this Nation.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
George Abar, Nardos Abebe, Adam Abrams, Alex Abrams, Corey
Ahearn, Robert Ahearn, Alexandra Ajemian, Paige Alexander,
Beverly Allen, Katrina Anderson, John Anthony, Margaret
Anthony, Sharde Armstrong, Felix Arroyo, Geoffrey Arvanitis,
Samuel Asher, Kerri Axelrod, Christopher Badger, Zachary
Bamberg, Diane Baranik, Janice Barbato, Timothy Barnicle,
Camilla Bartels, Janice Bashford, Shannon Batten, Lauren
Bazel, Jayona Beal, Jeffrey Bean, Camille Bedin, Jesse
Belcastro, Richard Bell, Ifetayo Belle, Daniel Benaim, Kelley
Benander, Hannah Bennett, Michael Beresik, Jennifer Bergman,
Jonathan Berman, Shideh Biela, Guljed Birce, Geoffrey Boehm,
Alison Bonebrake, Jeanette Boone.
Ryan Bounsy, Kelly Bovio, Tomeika Bowden, Charles Bowman,
April Boyd, Jim Boyle, Barbara Bracken, William Bradley,
Brigid O'Rourke-Brady, Jeremy Brandon, James Brenner, Felicia
Brinson, Amanda Brown, Geoffrey Brown, Amy Brundage, Daniel
Brundage, Richard Bryers, Scott Bunton, Sarah Buss, Joseph
Bykowski, Brian Cafferty, Ann Cahill, Joseph Callahan, Sean
Callahan, Janice Camacho, Joseph Canty, Nicole Caravella,
John Carey, Larry Carpman, Cynthia Carroll, Meghan Carroll,
Mary Carter, Jeffrey Cassin, Janeen-Marie Castetter, John
Cavanaugh, Larry Chartienitz, Adam Chase, Theodore Chiodo,
James Chisholm, Abraham Cho, Eliza Chon, Nicholas
Christiansen, Michelle Ciccolo.
Patrick Coan, Colleen Coburn, Bonnie Coder, Elizabeth
Coleman, Briana Collier, Marissa Condon, Erika Conway, Monica
Conyngham, Jasiel Correia, Amy Corrigan, Alexandra Costello,
Amanda Coulombe, Patricia Council, Arthur Coviello, Lisa
Coyle, Stephen Crane, Bonnie Cronin, Veronica Crowe, Francis
Crowley, Joan Crownover, Elizabeth Cummings, Kevin Curtis,
Amy Dacey, Jeremy D'Aloisio, Lauren Daniel, Andrew Davis,
Christopher Dawe, Andrea Defelice, Evan Dellolio, April
Dempsey, Monique Deragon, John Desimas, David Di Martino,
Richard DiMartino, Benedict Dobbs, Toni Dockett, Quentin
Donohue, Paul Donovan II, Christine Dooley, Michael Doonan,
Sarah Dugas, John Dukakis, Tracie Durden.
Amy Elsbree, Kathryn English, Audrey Epstein, Jonathan
Epstein, Sally Ericsson, Meredith Fahey, Mark Falzone, Leslie
Feinberg, Patricia Ferrone, Ronald Finlayson, John Finn,
Simon Fischer, Roger Fisk, Maura Fitzpatrick, Christopher
Flanagan, Gordon Fletcher, Michael Flynn, Kate Foley,
Patricia Foley, Eileen Force, Marcia Ford, Dia Forman, Judith
Foster, Lynn Foster, Taylor Francois, Kathleen Frangione,
Matthew Frank, Joseph Fritz, Ross Frommer, Douglas Frost,
Gordon Fung, Jennie Ganz, Lisa Garcia, Joanna Garelick,
Denise Garris, Renee Gasper, Stephanie Gerard, John Gerlach,
Erica Giers, Scott Giese, Maria Giesta, Lisa Glufling,
Jennifer Glynn.
Ian Goldin, Samantha Goldman, Caitlin Gollop, James Gomes,
John Gomperts, Augusto Grace, Justin Grad, Patricia Gray,
Tennie Gray, Christopher Greeley, Meagan Greene, Daniel
Gross, Carole Grunberg, Sasha Gsovski, Adrienne Guide, Larry
Gurwin, Dillon Guthrie, Therron Hagen, Kevin Haggerty, Susie
Hagins, Melissa Haluptzok, Eric Hamburg, Alexandra Harper,
Whitney Harrelson, Shelly Harrington, Jonathan Harris, Morgan
Harris, Jamar Harrison, Sebastian Hazzard, James Healy, James
Hedberg, Jennifer Heilig, Kevin Herbert, Elohim Hernandez-
Camacho, AJ Hetzner, Devon Hewitt, Carmen Hicks, Heather
Higginbottom, Kaaren Hinck, Maura Hogan, Meaghan Hohl, Ryan
Honeyman, Mirah Horowitz.
Kristian Horvei, Vanessa Householder, Richard Houser, James
Houton, Marcus Howard, Matthew Howard, Thomas Hubbard, Celes
Hughes, Jeremy Hunt, James Hunter, Nisharna Jackson, Jeffrey
Jacobs, David Jansen, Stanley Jean-Charles, Vanessa Jean-
Simon, Aaron Jenkins, Lorrie Jenkins, Jon Jennings, Tiffany
Jilek, Patrick Johnson-Cheatham, William Johnson, Diane
Jones, James Jones, James Jordan, Kathleen Joyce, Jeremy
Kane, Mary Kane, Helen Kanovsky, Jonathan Kaplan, Moses
Karugu, David Kass, Deborah Katz, Deborah Kearney, Antionetta
Kelley, Kimberley Kendall, Lee Kennedy, Shailagh Kennedy,
Suzannah Kerr, Amy Kerrigan, Kathleen Kerrigan, Conor Kilroy,
Haeyun Kim, Renee Kinder.
James King, Evan Kirsch, Cornell Knox, Amy Kobeta, Jackie
Kohn, Karen Kornbluh, Alexandra Kougentakis, Peter Kovar,
David Kowal, Paula Kowalczuk, Joan Kraus, Connor Kuratek,
Zachary Kurland, Thomas La Fauci, Bonnie La Rue, Rachelle
Lacque Love, Alexander Landin, Annette Larkin, Barry Lasala,
Roger Lau, Dawn Lavallee, Meghan Leahy, Janet Lebel, Michael
Leighs, David Leiter, Robin Lerner, Matthew Levin, Richard
Levitt, Carissa Lewis, Jeffrey Lewis, Shaunda Lewis, Susan
Lewis, Leslie Lillard, Simon Limage, Colleen Lineweaver, Ann
Linnehan, Sylvia Liotta, Katharine Lister, Jonathan Litchman,
Nancy Lo, Jennifer Lockhart, Frank Lowenstein, Danielle
Luber.
James Ludes, Sandra Lumpkin, Lisa Lynch, Nathan Mackinnon,
Brandon Macneill, Ian Macpherson, John Madigan, Marion
Magraw, Kristina Malek, Rachel Mann, Katherine Manning, Mary
Marcuss, Alexandra Marks, Sarah Marks, Mary Marsh, Matthew
Martin, Roy Martin, Alyssa Mastromonaco, Jennifer Masuret, D.
Gray Maxwell, Megan McCafferty, Richard McCall, William
McCann, Sybil McCarthy, Ryan McCormick, Elizabeth McEvoy,
Kelly McGovern, Kara McGuire, Kevin McGuire, David McKean,
Patrick McKiernan, Christopher McMahon, Gregory McMorrow,
Barbara McQueen, Bradford Meacham, Lisa Mead, Michael Meehan,
Jason Meininger, Dora Menefee, Stephen Meunier, Johanna
Michaels, Dimitri Michaud, Heather Mizeur.
Evelyn Monteiro, William Moody, Linda Moore, Keshia Morall,
Erik Morrill, Cara Morris, Vincent Morris, Tim Morrow, Greg
Moscow, Nassar Mufdi Ruiz, Khalifah Muhammad, Sarah Mulkem,
Marie Murphy, Harry Nathanson, Brendan Neal, Andrew Nelson,
Charlene Neu, Karena Neubauer, Joseph Newman, Kerry Newman,
David Nibert, Marvin Nicholson, Eric Niloff, Paul Nissenbaum,
Edward Noonan, Jessica Nordstrom, Ashley O'Neill, Tyler
Obenauf, Andrew O'Brien, Thomas O'Connor, Brendan O'Donnell,
Christopher Olson, Eric Olson, Leigh O'Neill, Brittney
Opacak, Barbara Opacki, Mary O'Reilly, Kathryn Ousley, Mary
Pappey, Michael Paroby, Jon Patsavos, Megan Perkins, Alexis
Perlmutter.
John Phillips, Anna-Liviya Piccione, Mary Lou Pickel, Evan
Pinsonnault, Cathryn Piscitelli, Carlos Polanco, Gareth
Porter, Jeanne Poulter, Ayanna Pressley, Daniel Prince,
Colleen Puma, Michael Queenan, David Quinn, Nancy Ramsey,
Haley Rauch, Tovah Ravitz-Meehan, Lisa Reid, Andrea Retzky,
Kathryn Rhudy, Brian Rice, John Richards, Elizabeth
Richardson, Charles Riley, Alex Rinder, Elizabeth Rios,
Jennifer Ritter, Lauren Robertson, Andrew Robichaud, Dana
Robinson, Gerri-Lynn Robinson, Rima Robinson, Theressa
Robinson, Edward Rogers, Nancy Rogers, Shauvi Rogers, Cheryl
Rolfes, Frank Rose, Lisa Rosenberg, Renita Rosenberg, Ronald
Rosenblith, Lindsay Ross, Kenneth Rossman, Gregg Rothschild.
George Rudenauer, Caitlin Russi, Jennifer Ryan, Allison
Sandera, Kristen Sarri, Aaron Saunders, Brett Schenker,
Eugene Schlesinger, Jack Schnirman, Charles Scheuler, Eric
Schwager, Heather Sears, Wendy Sears, Daniel Sepulveda, Jodi
Seth, James Shaer, Robert Shapiro, Patrick Shearns, Charles
Shepard, John Sherman, Margaret Sherry, Rebecca Shore-
Suslowitz, Zachary Shore, Michelle Shwimer, Clare Sierawski,
George Sifakis, Alison Silberman, Hadid Simmons, Kyle Simon,
Kristen Simpson, Beatrice Smith, Hilleary Smith, Kathleen
Smith, Nancy Smith, Richard Smith, Whitney Smith, Alexander
Soto, Christine Spencer, Kathryn Stack, Rachele Stasny, Mark
Sternman, Nancy Stetson, Jesse Stevens.
Gregory Stewart, David Stone, Mary Strain, Casey Suchors-
Field, Kristine Sudano, Keerthi Sugumaran, Brendan Sullivan,
Kevin Sullivan, Kyle Sullivan, Nancy Sullivan, Paul Sullivan,
Matthew Summers, Katherine Swan, Shelli Sweeney, Mary Szpak,
Brandon Tabassi, Tristan Takos, Mary Tarr, Carmina Taylor,
Theresa Theobald, Megan Thompson, Lauren Tighe, Stephani
Tindall, Timothy Todreas, Jose Toirac, Atman Trivedi,
Lawrence Trundle, Christina Tsafoulias, Yakov Tsizis, Eva
Tsui, Brendan Tully, Alper Tunca, Sharon Updike, Kelsey Utne,
Ellen Vallon, Brady Van Engelen, Paul Veidenheimer, Carmen
Velazquez, Kevin Verge, Karen Vigliano, Varun Vira, Michael
Vito, Jennifer Vuona.
David Wade, Bridgette Walker, Krysten Wallace, Meghan
Walsh, Lumay Wang, Cathleen Ward, Setti Warren, Joan Wasser,
Maria Wassum, Sharon Waxman, Stephanie Wayne, Michael Wayno,
Thomas Weber, John Whiteside, Michael Whouley, Scott Wiener,
Jodi Williams, Karen Willis, Elsie Wilson, Jonathan Winer,
Hope Winship, Julie Wirkkala, James Wise, Christina
Wiskowski, Roger Wolfson, David Wood, Sarah Woodhouse, Nancy
Woodruff, Randi Woods, Diann Woods, William Woodward,
Elizabeth Wright, Sheila Wulsin, Anthony Wyche,
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Christopher Wyman, Sarah Yedinsky, Shawna Yen, David Yohn,
Brian Young, Sally Yozell, Krista Zalatores, Juan Zavala,
Heather Zichal, Anna Ziskend, Frances Zwenig.
Mr. KERRY. As I thank an entire staff of 561 incredible men and women
in Massachusetts and Washington with whom I have been privileged to
work through these 28 years, I also think about the interns, 1,393, who
have come in and out of our offices from Washington to Worcester. I am
especially proud of those who started as interns and ended up as my
chief of staff, a legislative director, and senior policy staffers, or
the Kerry interns who went on to work not just for me but who have for
the last 4 years been top speech writers, trip directors, and senior
communications staff at the White House for the President of the United
States. I am proud of our internship program, and I am grateful to the
people who built it and who sustain it.
I also thank the incredible group of unsung heroes who literally make
the Senate work, people who work not for individual Senators but work
for all of us, in every room and nook and cranny of this great series
of buildings. The men and women who operate the Senate subways--Daryl
and many others--the trains and elevators, they take us to the votes
and meetings. They are really the glue, and we couldn't function
without them; they are an extraordinary group of people; the Capitol
Police who protect us--police, whom a lot of people around here started
to notice a little bit more after that awful day in 1998 when two were
shot and killed on a busy Wednesday afternoon; the Parliamentarians and
the clerks and staff here on the floor, including Gary, Tim, Trisha,
Meredith, and all the folks in the cloakroom. And Dave on the other
side and all the folks in the Republican cloakroom--all of whom help to
keep us going and are unfailingly patient when we call for the
umpteenth time to find out whether the vote schedule is going to let us
go home to a child's dance recital or birthday party or any kind of
family event.
I want to thank the many Bertie Bowmans who came here more than 40
years ago, dug in, and made the Senate their cause and their concern;
people such as Meg Murphy of the Foreign Relations Committee, who makes
everybody's life easier.
I thank the reporters who catch us in the hallways--trap us, ambush
us in the hallways, and who, despite all the changes and challenges in
their own business, still dutifully document the first drafts of
American history. I thank all the incredible people who travel through
these Halls working incredibly hard to get it right, people of
character who cover this place as a public service, not a sport. I
thank them.
I thank David Rogers for all that he has stood for so long in this
institution. It is hard to imagine my job without seeing him in that
long green coat waiting by the elevator after a late-night vote.
Sometimes in politics it is now almost a sport in America to dismiss
the contributions of people who work in government, people who make the
Senate work, but people whom the public never sees. I have admired the
way our former colleague, Ted Kaufman, used to come down to the floor
once a week and tell the story of one individual Federal worker. The
stories are legion. Instead of tearing these people down, we ought to
be lifting them up. And I thank them all for the part they play in our
democracy.
I will share with you, now that I have come to this moment in the
journey, I can say without reservation that nothing prepares you for
it. Many times now in 29 years I have been at my desk on the Senate
floor--starting way over there, No. 99--listening as colleagues bid the
Senate farewell. Sometimes a farewell speech signals a complete
departure from public life, sometimes a new journey altogether,
sometimes forced departure, sometimes a leap for freedom.
I am grateful that at this moment, thanks to my colleagues,
serendipity, and the trust of our President, while I am closing a
chapter, it is not the final one. But I assure you, amid the excitement
and the possibility, I do feel a wistfulness about leaving the Senate;
and that is because, despite the obvious frustrations of recent days
and years--a frustration that we all share--this place remains one of
the most extraordinary institutions of any kind on the face of the
Earth.
On occasion we have all heard a Senator leave here and take their
leave condemning the Senate for being broken, for having become an
impossible setting in which to try to do the people's business. Well, I
want to be very clear about my feelings. I do not believe the Senate is
broken--certainly not as an institution. There is nothing wrong with
the Senate that can't be fixed by what is right about the Senate--the
predominant and weighty notion that 100 American citizens, chosen by
their neighbors to serve from States as different as Massachusetts and
Montana, can always choose to put parochial or personal interests aside
and find the national interest.
I believe it is the honor of a lifetime--an extraordinary privilege--
to have represented the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the Senate for
more than 28 years. What a remarkable gift it has been to carry the
banner of ``Senator from Massachusetts,'' just as each of you feel that
way about your States--a banner, in our case, that was passed from the
sons of the American Revolution, such as Daniel Webster, to the sons of
immigrants such as Paul Tsongas, and to know that a State where the
abolitionists crusaded at Faneuil Hall and the suffragettes marched at
Quincy Market could send to Washington sons, such as Ted Kennedy and Ed
Brooke, who fought to expand civil rights; now, a woman, Elizabeth
Warren, who proved that in Massachusetts the glass ceiling has finally
been forever shattered. And what a remarkable gift Massachusetts has
given me to come here and learn so much about the rest of our country.
I have had the privilege of learning what truly makes our Nation
tick. What a gift, to have been the nominee of my party, to have come
within a whisper of winning the Presidency against a wartime incumbent;
but more important, to have experienced the magic of our Nation in such
a personal way, to experience the gift of traveling along the banks of
the mighty Mississippi through Iowa and South Dakota and along the
rivers where Louis and Clark marked and measured the dream of our first
Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, who foresaw an America that would
advance into the West; to experience a journey that took me to Alabama,
where I stood silently in the very pulpit from which Dr. King preached
his dream of an America united, and dipped my fingers into the fountain
in Birmingham where water flows over the names of those murdered trying
to vote or just registering to vote, to see the water trickle over the
words of Dr. King's prayer that ``justice might roll down like waters
and righteousness like a mighty stream.'' I drove across the Hoover
Dam, and I wondered, as I did, at what America can accomplish when we
want to, when we put our minds to it. Driving across the Golden Gate
Bridge at dawn I was reminded it was built at the height of the Great
Depression, when so many feared our best days were behind us. What I
have seen and heard and learned in traveling across our country as a
Senator from Massachusetts has prepared me more for my travels to other
countries as Secretary of State than any travel to any foreign Capitol.
I already know I will miss the best reward of carrying the title
``Senator,'' and that is when you open a letter from someone who has
traveled every route and exhausted every option and who ultimately
turned to you as the last resort in public life and they finally got
the help they needed. I know my colleagues who have experienced this
will say there is nothing better than getting that ``I have tried
everything, but nobody would listen to me, but you got it done'' letter
or sometimes when you are walking a street in a community at home and
somebody comes up to you and thanks you for a personal response they
never expected to receive. That is when public service has more meaning
than the war of words our constituents dodge on the cable news.
Standing at this desk that once belonged--at this desk that once
belonged to President Kennedy and to Ted Kennedy, I can't help but be
reminded that even our Nation's greatest leaders and all the rest of us
are merely temporary workers. I am reminded
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this Chamber is a living museum, a lasting memorial to the miracle of
the American experiment.
No one has captured this phenomenon more eloquently or
comprehensively than Robert Caro did in his masterpiece about the
Senate called ``Master of the Senate.'' I am sure many in this room--I
know most people have read it. In that book, before we learned of the
levers Lyndon Johnson pulled to push our Nation toward civil rights,
Caro described the special powers the Founders gave the Senate and only
the Senate, powers, Caro writes, ``designed to make the Congress
independent of the President and to restrain and act as a check on his
authority, power to approve his appointments, even the appointments he
made within his own administration, even the appointments to his own
Cabinet.''
This body has now exercised that power on my behalf and I will always
be grateful.
Another master of the Senate, Massachusetts' Daniel Webster,
delivered 183 years ago this week what has often been praised as the
greatest speech in Senate history. He stood at the desk that now
belongs to the senior Senator from New Hampshire and argued forcefully
in favor of the very idea that makes us the United States, that we are
all in this together, that we each have a stake in the successes and
failures of our countrymen, that what happens in Ohio matters to those
in South Carolina or in Massachusetts or to Montanans. ``Union and
liberty,'' Webster shouted, ``now and forever, one and inseparable.''
As Caro retells it, those words spoken among the desks in the Senate
left those in the gallery in tears and cast a model for how those of us
in this Chamber must consider the constituents of our colleague's as
well as our own. But the truth is that none of us ran for this office
because of a great debate held centuries ago. None of us moved here
because of the moving words of a Senator long since departed. We honor
this history because we are here because of the legacy that we can and
want to leave. It is up to us, to my colleagues here today and to those
who come after us, it is up to us to keep the Senate great.
I fully believe we will meet that obligation if, as the President
told the Nation and the world last week, we seize this moment together.
Yes, Congress and public life face their difficulties these days but
not because the structure our Founding Fathers gave us is inherently
flawed. For sure there are moments of much great frustration, for the
American people and for everybody in this place. But I don't believe
they are the fault of the institution itself. It is not the rules that
confound us per se. It is the choices people make about those rules.
The rules we work by now are essentially the same ones that existed
when I joined the Senate and found things to move much more easily than
they do today. They are essentially the same rules under which Daniel
Webster and Lyndon Johnson operated, and they did great things. They
are almost the same rules Mike Mansfield and Everett Dirksen and Ted
Kennedy and Orrin Hatch used to pass great pieces of legislation. They
are the same rules under which the Senate Democrats and President
George Herbert Walker Bush passed an agreement, including tax
increases, to at least begin to tackle the deficit. I remind everyone,
as I take my leave from the Senate, when President George H.W. Bush
returned from agreeing to a deficit reduction agreement at Andrews Air
Force Base, he wrote in his personal diary that he might well have
sealed his fate as a one-term President. He did what he thought was
right for the country, and he laid the groundwork for our ability to
three times balance the budget at the end of the 1990s. That is
courage, and the Senate and the Congress and the country need more of
it.
Frankly, the problems we live through today come from individual
choices of Senators themselves, not the rules. When an individual
Senator or a colluding caucus determines that the comity essential to
an institution such as the Senate is a barrier to individual ambition
or party ambition, the country loses. Those are the moments in which
the Senate fulfills, not its responsibility to the people but its
reputation as a sanctuary of gridlock.
I ask colleagues to remember the words of Ben Franklin, as that long
Philadelphia summer yielded our remarkable Constitution. Late at night,
after their work was complete, Dr. Franklin was walking down the steps
of Constitution Hall, of Independence Hall, and a woman called out to
him and she said: Well, Doctor, what have we got, a Republic or a
monarchy? Franklin answered: ``A Republic, if you can keep it.''
Sustaining a functioning Republic is work and it is, more than ever,
I believe, our challenge today. I am hardly the first and I will, I
hope, probably not be the last to call on Congress to remember why we
are here, to prioritize our shared interests above the short term, to
bridge the breadth of the partisan divide and to reach across the aisle
and take the long view. Many have stood here delivering farewell
speeches and lamented what became of the Washington where President
Reagan and Speaker O'Neill could cultivate an affiliation stronger than
party or a Congress that saw true friendships between Senators such as
Kennedy and Hatch, Inouye and Stevens, Obama and Coburn; the odd
couples, as they have been dubbed.
I cannot tell you why, but I do think it is possible this moment may
see a turn in the spirit of the Senate. There are new whispers of
desire for progress, rumors of new coalitions, and a sense of
possibility--whether it is on energy or immigration.
I am deeply impressed by a new generation of Senators who seem to
have come here determined not to give in to the cynicism but to get the
people's business done. I am confident that when today's freshmen take
their turns in leaving the Senate, they will be able to tell of new
Senators added to that estimable list of odd couples, and with any luck
by then it will not be odd.
So I leave here convinced we can keep our Republic strong. When
President Kennedy observed that ``our problems are manmade; therefore
they can be solved by man,'' he was talking about a much more literal
kind of nuclear option than the euphemism we use today to discuss
Senate rules. But his vision is just as important for us to recognize
in our time, whether we are talking about the ability of Senators to
debate and vote or about the issues on which they do so. It is still
true today, as he said 50 years ago, that ``reason and spirit have
often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe,'' he said,
``they can do it again.''
I believe that too.
So what effort do we need to put into our reason and spirit in order
to do it? I believe there are three most significant challenges that
have conspired to bring about a dangerous but reversible erosion in the
quality of our democracy: the decline of comity, the deluge of money,
and the disregard for facts.
First, I have witnessed what we all have, a loss of simple comity,
the respect that we owe one another, and the sense of common cause that
brings all of us here. The Senate as a body can change its rules to
make itself more efficient, sure. But only Senators, one by one in
their own hearts, can change the approach to legislating which Henry
Clay correctly defined as the art of consensus.
I came to the Senate in 1985 as a Member of a hopeful and hard-
charging class of freshmen. Paul Simon, Tom Harkin, Al Gore, Phil
Gramm, Jay Rockefeller, and I all have at least three things in common.
We were all sworn in as Senators at the same time. We each explored
running or ran for the White House, and none of us made it there.
(Laughter.)
The last remaining Member of that class, Senator Mitch McConnell, has
now again been elevated by his peers as the Republican leader.
I see a lot of a very similar aspiration that we felt when I came
here in 1985 in today's freshmen and sophomores. Many came to the
Senate running on the premise that it is broken beyond repair. I
encourage each and every one of them to reject that premise in order to
restore the promise of the Senate. The Senate cannot break unless we
let it. After all, the value of this institution, similar to any
instrument of power, is how you use it. But we can't ignore the fact
that today, treaties that only a few years ago would have passed 100 to
nothing, don't pass at all. People who want to vote for
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something they believe in actually don't do so for fear of retribution.
That is a reflection on all of us. As I prepare to represent our Nation
in capitals around the world, I am more than conscious that my
credibility as a diplomat and ours as a country is determined, to a
great degree, by what happens right here in our own Capital City.
The antidote to the current narrative of American decline--and you
will hear it in China, in Iran, in other parts of the world--the
antidote to that, and it is pushed by rival countries, is to
demonstrate that we can get our economic house in order because we can
be no stronger abroad than we are here at home. It is that simple. The
unwillingness of some to yield to the national interest is damaging to
America's prospects in the world. We are quick to talk about the global
economy and about global competition, but it is our own procrastination
and outright avoidance of obvious choices that threatens our own
future. Other nations are both quick and glad to fill the vacuum that
is brought about by our inaction.
If the Senate favors inaction over courage and gimmicks over common
ground, the risk is not that we will fail to move forward, it is that
we will fall behind, we will stay behind, and we will surrender our
promise to those who are more than willing to turn our squandered
opportunity into their advantage.
The world keeps turning. The Senate cannot afford to forever stand
still. Just as failing to deal with our deficit and our debt puts our
long-term interests at risk, so does taking America to the brink of
default. Our self-inflicted wounds reduce our leverage and our
influence in the world. By failing to act, Congress is making it harder
to actually advance America's interests and making it harder for
American business to compete and for American workers to succeed. If
America is to continue to lead the free world, this must end.
We have all bemoaned the lack of comity in the Senate. Those of you
who remain here will have the power to restore it. The choice to work
respectfully with one another is about as simple as it gets. I have one
suggestion, perhaps. While I am honored by the presence of so many
colleagues who are here now--Republicans and Democrats--I have to say
we all look forward to more days when the U.S. Senate desks are full
with Senators debating, deliberating, learning, listening, and leading.
We would all be stronger if this Chamber is once again crowded because
it is the world's greatest deliberative body, the home of debate and
deliberation, and not only when it becomes a departure lounge.
There is another challenge we must address, and it is the corrupting
force of the vast sums of money necessary to run for office. The
unending chase for money, I believe, threatens to steal our democracy
itself. I used the wording--and I want to be clear about it--I mean by
it not the corruption of individuals but corruption of a system itself
that all of us are forced to participate in against our will.
The alliance of money and the interest it represents, the access it
affords to those who have it at the expense of those who don't, the
agenda it changes or sets by virtue of its power, is steadily silencing
the voice of the vast majority of Americans who have a much harder time
competing or who cannot compete at all.
The insidious intention of that money is to set the agenda, change
the agenda, block the agenda, define the agenda of Washington. How else
could we possibly have a U.S. Tax Code of some 76,000 pages? Ask
yourself: How many Americans have their own page, their own tax break,
their own special deal?
We should not resign ourselves to a distorted system that corrodes
our democracy. This is what is contributing to the justifiable anger of
the American people. They know it, they know we know it, and yet
nothing happens. The truth requires that we call the corrosion of money
and politics what it is: It is a form of corruption and it muzzles more
Americans than it empowers. It is an imbalance that the world has
taught us can only sow the seeds of unrest.
Like the question of comity in the Senate, the influence of money in
our politics also influences our credibility around the world. So too
does the unacceptable and extraordinary difficulty we continue to have
in 2013 operating the machinery of our own democracy here at home. How
extraordinary and how diminishing it is that more than 40 years after
the Voting Rights Act so many of our fellow citizens still have great
difficulty when they show up on election day to cast their vote and
have their voices heard. That too matters to all of us.
For a country that can and should extol the virtues of democracy
around the world, our job is made more difficult through long lines and
overt voter suppression and efforts to suppress people's ability to
exercise the right that we extol. So many still struggle to exercise
that right here at home.
The last of the three obstacles we have the ability, if not the will,
to overcome is the unbelievable disregard for facts, for science in the
conduct of our affairs. It, like the first two, degrades our
credibility abroad as well as at home.
My friends, the persistent shouting match of the perpetual campaign--
one that takes place in parallel universes, thanks to our polarized,
self-selected media, to some degree--makes it harder and harder to
build consensus among people. The people don't know what to believe. So
in many ways it encourages an oversimplification of problems that too
often retreat to slogans and not ideas for real solutions.
America, I regret to say, is increasingly defaulting rather than
choosing, and so we fail to keep pace with other nations in the renewal
of our infrastructure, in the improvement of our schools, in the choice
of our energy sources, in the care and nurturing of our children, in
the fulfillment of our God-given responsibility to protect life here on
Earth. That too must change or our experiment is at risk.
To remain a great Nation we must do the business of our country, and
that begins by putting our economic house in order. It begins by
working from the same set of facts. Although I believe we cannot solve
any of these problems unless we solve all of them, I note these three
challenges because I believe the Senate is going to be locked into
stalemate or our politics are going to be irreversibly poisoned unless
we break out of it. I say this hopefully as someone who respects and
loves this institution and loves this country and wants to see us move
forward.
Some things we know are moving forward. In the same time that comity
has decreased and the influence of money has increased, I have seen the
Senate change for the better. This Chamber used to be filled with the
voices of men, and men only. Decisions affecting more than half the
population were made by people representing the other half. When I
walked into the Senate Chamber to take my first oath 28 years ago, I
was joined by my two teenaged daughters. It struck me that I had twice
as many daughters as there were women in the U.S. Senate. Today, with
the service of 20 women--including Massachusetts' new junior Senator--
this is a stronger and smarter place, more representative of our belief
that out of many, we are one; more capable of fulfilling the vision
carried from Washington to Webster to our current President; that we
are a stronger Nation when our leadership reflects our population.
We have made huge strides on turning the page on gay rights. In 1993,
I testified before Strom Thurmond's Armed Services Committee, pushing
to lift the ban on gays serving in the military, and I ran into a world
of misperceptions. I thought I was on a ``Saturday Night Live'' skit.
Today, at last, that policy is gone forever, and we are a country that
honors the commitment of all willing to fight and die for our country.
We have gone from a Senate that passed DOMA--over my objections--to one
that just welcomed its first openly gay Senator.
These are good changes for our Senate and our country, but we have
more work to do. This place needs more women, more people of color,
more diversity of background and experience, but it is still a
remarkable place.
I am reminded of the letters of Harry Truman that he used to write
home to wife Bess as he sat in the back row of the Chamber. Late one
night after the great debate of the New Deal Era, he wrote:
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I hear my colleagues, and I pinch myself and ask, How did I
get here?
Several months later, he wrote Bess once more:
Again it is late at night and I am sitting here listening
to the debate, I look across the aisle at my colleagues and I
listen and listen, and I hear my colleagues, and I ask
myself, How did they get here?
Well, I have no doubt that colleagues have asked that question about
me or any one of us, and it has been back and forth. But 29 years later
I have learned something about myself. I learned that the Senate runs
on relationships. I know that some of my more recent colleagues--sent
here in tumultuous election cycles--hear that and think it is code for
checking their beliefs at the door and going Washington. It is not. And
I would add: Don't kid yourself; no one got here on a platform of
pledging to join an exclusive club and forget where they came from.
When I say that relationships matter, I don't mean back-slapping,
glad-handing, hail-fellow-well-met, go-along-to-get-along
relationships; I mean real relationships. And to today's hard-charging
colleagues who came to Washington to shake things up, I would remind
them, so did I, so did Tom Harkin, and the others I mentioned. If I
told you that a 40-year-old newly minted Senator John Kerry was going
to tell you that relationships mattered most, I would have looked at
you as if you had three heads. I cut my teeth in grassroots activism. I
didn't come up through the political ranks. I burst onto the scene as
an activist, and when you are an activist, all that singularly matters
to you--to the exclusion of almost everything else--are the issues.
Where are you on an issue? Right or wrong, that is the ballgame.
Wrong. It is not the ballgame. That is not what makes a good Senator.
That is not what makes the Senate work. My late colleague of 25 years
Ted Kennedy taught me that. I saw him late at night on the Senate floor
sitting with his colleagues talking and listening. He wanted to know
about your State; he wanted to know about your family; he wanted to
know why you came here. He had a unique ability to know not just what
he needed from you on a vote or a piece of legislation but to know what
you needed on a personal level as a friend, as a colleague, as a
partner.
My old friend--now Vice President Joe Biden--had a saying in his
family: If you have to ask, it is too late. With Teddy, you never had
to ask. He always knew, and he was there. He was there on a foggy
morning on Nantucket when my father passed away, and Teddy materialized
almost out of nowhere. There he was at my porch door. He didn't call
ahead; he didn't ask. He came to mark the passage. He was there. It was
an instinct for people and an impulse to help.
He taught so many of us during that period of time. Somewhere along
the line, he passed it on not only to me but to every colleague here
who was privileged to work with him.
I will never forget in 2007 on the day I announced I would not be
running again for President. Another rough day, another passage. I got
a call. Tom Harkin wanted to see me. My staff surmised that he was
probably coming to ask for money for the Iowa Democratic party. They
were wrong. It was a visit where Tom just came to share a few words
that were very simple but which meant the world to me; a colleague
visiting just to say he was proud that I had been the nominee of the
party in 2004, and he looked forward to working with me more in this
institution.
Let me tell you, those are the conversations that make the
difference, those are the conversations you never forget, and that is
the U.S. Senate at its best. It is a place where relationships matter
the most. And it matters because Teddy, Tom, and so many others here
understood instinctively that if 100 Senators knew each other--and our
leader has worked very hard to try to find a way to make this happen--
then you can find the ways to work together.
To my surprise, I learned it here in a way that I never could have
predicted, alongside people I never thought I would count as one of my
proudest friends. Last week John McCain introduced me at my
confirmation hearing. John and I met here in the Senate, coming from
very different positions and perspectives. We both loved the Navy; I
still do to this day. But I have different feelings from John about a
war.
For both of us, Vietnam was a demarcation point in our lives, the way
it was for so many of our generation. Well, late one night on a CODEL--
for people who are listening and don't know about CODELs, it is a trip
of Senators and Congressmen going somewhere in the world--to Kuwait
after the first gulf war, John and I found ourselves in a C-130 sitting
opposite each other. Neither of us could sleep, so we talked. We talked
late into the night about our lives and our war. Shortly thereafter,
George Mitchell and Bob Dole flew us together on a select committee to
investigate the fate of Americans missing from the war in which we had
fought. It was a tough time, an emotional issue in an era where Rambo
was a box office smash and a Newsweek magazine cover printed
provocative photos which asked whether Americans were still alive over
there.
Into that cacophonous cauldron, John McCain and I were thrown
together. Some were suspicious of both of us, but together we found
common ground. I will never forget standing with John in the very cell
in the Hanoi Hilton in which he spent a number of years of his life,
just the two of us alone in this cell, listening to him talk about that
experience.
I will always be grateful for his partnership in helping to make real
peace with Vietnam by establishing the most significant process in the
history of our country--or of any country--for the accounting of the
missing and dead in any war and afterwards and then working to lift the
embargo and ultimately normalize relations with an old enemy. John had
every reason to hate them, but he didn't. We were able to heal deep
wounds and end a war that divided an awful lot of people for much too
long. That is a common experience, and only the relationships that are
forged in the Senate could have made that happen.
John has this great expression: A fight not joined is a fight not
enjoyed. He loves to debate, he loves to battle, and so do I. But I
will tell my colleagues, having fought beside him and having fought
against him, it is a heck of a lot better and more fun to have John
fighting alongside of you. We still have differences. There has been a
lot of newsprint used up covering some of them, but I will tell my
colleagues this: We both care about the Senate as an institution, and
we both care about the country's leadership and the world even when we
see it differently, and we both know that at some point America has to
come together.
We shared this common experience, and we have seen a lot together. We
both were able to travel the country as Presidential nominees for our
party, and both returned to the Senate to carry on in a different way.
Few people know what that feels like. But just being by his side in
Hanoi made it impossible for me not to be overwhelmed by his sense of
patriotism and his devotion to country. It meant something else: If you
can stand on the kind of common ground that we found in the Hanoi
Hilton, then finding common ground on issues here at home isn't hard at
all. I will always thank John McCain for that lesson.
One of the magical things about the Senate is this amazing mix of
people and how they could come together to make something happen. I
have learned and been impressed by the experiences of every single one
of my colleagues, and I honestly marvel at the reflection of each
State's special character in the people they send here. I have learned
from all--from a fiery, street-smart social worker from Maryland; from
a down-to-earth, no-nonsense farmer from Montana; from a principled,
conservative doctor from Oklahoma; from an amazingly tenacious advocate
for women and the environment who blazed a trail from Brooklyn to
Rancho Mirage and the Senate, who teams with a former mayor of San
Francisco who took office after the assassination of Harvey Milk,
committed to stand against violence and for equality; from a
cantankerous, maverick patriot and former prisoner of war from Arizona,
whom I just talked about; to a songwriting, original, compassionate
conservative from Utah; from a fervent, gravel-voiced people's champion
from Ohio; from a soft-spoken, loyal, Medal
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of Honor winner from Hawaii who used to sit right here; and from a
college professor turned proud prairie populist and Senate Pied Piper
who was taken from us far too soon and far too quickly. From every
Member of the Senate, there are characteristics, passions, quirks, and
beliefs that bring this place alive and unite to make it the most
extraordinary legislative body on Earth. That is what I love about the
Senate.
I love that instead of fighting against each other, Bill Frist, the
former Republican leader, and I were able to join forces to fight HIV
and AIDS around the globe and to convince an unlikely conservative
named Jesse Helms to support and pass a bill unanimously that saved
millions of lives on our planet. That is what makes this place so
special.
Instead of ignoring a freshman Senator, Chairman Claiborne Pell
allowed me to pass my very first amendment to change our policy on the
Philippines. So I found myself with Dick Lugar, paired as Senate
election observers who helped expose the voter fraud of the Marcos
regime, ending a dictatorship and giving a nation of more than 90
million people the opportunity to know democracy again. That is what
the Senate can do, and that is what I love about it.
Instead of focusing on our different accents and opposite ideologies,
Jesse Helms and I found that our concern for illegal drugs was greater
than any political differences between us. So Jesse made it possible
for an investigation to proceed and for the Senate to expose the
linkages between the Contras in Nicaragua and the flow of drugs to
American cities. That is what the Senate can do.
The Senate can still work if we learn from and listen to each other--
two responsibilities that are, like Webster said about liberty and
union, one and inseparable.
So as I offer my final words on the Senate floor, I remember that I
came of age in a Senate where freshman Senators didn't speak that
often. Senators no longer hold their tongues through whole sessions of
Congress, and they shouldn't. Their voices are just as valuable and
their votes count just as much as the most tenured Member of this body.
But being heard by others does not exempt them from listening to
others.
I came to the National Mall in 1971 with fellow veterans who wanted
only to talk to our leaders about the war. President Nixon tried to
kick us off The Mall. We knocked on door after door on Capitol Hill but
too often couldn't get an audience of representatives. A precious few,
including Ted Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, came to where we were camped
out and heard what we had to say. I saw firsthand that our political
process works only when leaders are willing to listen to each other but
also to everyone else. That is how I first came to the Senate--not with
my vote but with my voice--and that is why the end of my tenure here is
in many ways a bookend.
Forty-two years ago, I testified before Senator Fulbright's Foreign
Relations Committee about the realities of war in Vietnam. It wasn't
until last week that I would sit before that committee again, this time
testifying in my own confirmation hearing. It completed a circle which
I never could have imagined drawing but one our Founders surely did.
That a citizen voicing his opinion about a matter of personal and
national consequence could one day use that voice as a Senator, as the
chairman of that same committee before which he had once testified as a
private citizen, and then as the President's nominee for Secretary of
State, that is a fitting representation of what we mean when we talk
about a government ``of the people, for the people, and by the
people.''
In the decades between then and now, this is what I have learned
above all else: The privilege of being here is in being able to listen
to your constituents. It is the people and their voices much more than
the marble buildings and the inimitable institutions they house that
determine whether our democracy works.
In my first appearance before the Senate, at the Fulbright hearings,
I began by saying, ``I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one
member of the group of 1,000, which is a small representation of a very
much larger group.''
I feel much the same way today as I leave. We are still symbols,
representatives of the people who have given us the honor to speak and
advocate and vote in their name, and that, as the Bible says, is a
``charge to keep.'' One day, the 99 other Senators who continue on for
now--and soon to be 100 again in a few days--will also leave in their
own turn--in your own turn--some by their own choosing and some by the
people's. Our time here is not meant to last forever. If we use the
time to posture politically in Washington, we weaken our position
across the world. If democracy deadlocks here, we raise doubts about
democracy everywhere. If we do not in our deeds prove our own ideals,
we undermine our security and the sacred mission as the best hope of
Earth. But if we do our jobs right, if we treat our colleagues with
respect and build the relationships required to form consensus and find
the courage to follow through on our promises of compromise, the work
we do here will long endure.
So let us in the Senate or in the House be bigger than our own
districts, our own States. Let us in spirited purpose be as big as the
United States of America. Let us stand for our beliefs but, above all,
let us believe in our common history, our common destiny, in our common
obligation to love and lead this exceptional Nation. They say politics
stops at the water's edge. That is obviously not always true. But if we
care for our country, politics has its limits at home and abroad.
As I leave here, I do so knowing that forever the Senate will be in
my soul and that our country is my cause and yours. I thank you all for
your friendship and the privilege of serving with you.
(Applause, Senators rising.)
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