[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 102 (Monday, June 30, 2014)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1097]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




IN TRIBUTE TO HOWARD H. BAKER, JR. ``MAJORITY LEADER, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF 
   OF STAFF, AMBASSADOR TO JAPAN, AND THE `GREAT CONCILIATOR' OF THE 
                                SENATE''

                                  _____
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, June 30, 2014

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to Howard Henry 
Baker, Jr., a great American, a man who personified civility and 
bipartisanship; one of the most passionate advocates for good 
governance, fiscal responsibility, and global security; a man who 
served his body with distinction in the Armed Services and the United 
States Senate. Senator Baker died at his home in Huntsville, Tennessee, 
today, June 26, 2014, at the age of 88.
  Born November 15, 1925, in Huntsville, Tennessee, Howard Henry Baker, 
Jr., the son of Howard Henry Baker, Sr. and Dora Ladd Baker, was heir 
to a distinguished political tradition. His grandfather was a judge and 
his grandmother was the first woman to serve as sheriff in Tennessee.
  His father, Howard Henry Baker, Sr., represented eastern Tennessee in 
the U.S. House of Representatives from 1951 until his death in 1964, 
whereupon he was succeeded by his wife and Howard Baker's stepmother, 
Irene Bailey Baker.
  Howard Baker was educated at The McCallie School, a military academy 
in Chattanooga, and Tulane University in New Orleans. During World War 
II, he trained at a U.S. Navy facility on the campus of the University 
of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee in the V-12 Navy College Training 
Program.
  He was commissioned as a lieutenant, junior grade, and served on a PT 
boat in the South Pacific as World War II was ending. After his 
discharge, Howard Baker attended the University of Tennessee College of 
Law, from which he graduated in 1949 and embarked upon a highly 
successful career in the private practice of law.
  Howard Baker began his political career in 1964 when he sought and 
won the Republican nomination to fill the unexpired term of the late 
Senator Estes Kefauver but was defeated in the special election by Ross 
Bass. Undaunted, he came back two years later to capture the Senate 
seat, this time defeating former Tennessee Governor Frank Clement, who 
had defeated Senator Bass in the Democratic primary.
  In winning the race, by the decisive margin of 56-44 and supported by 
a coalition of African Americans, young persons, and moderates, Howard 
Baker became the first Republican elected to the Senate from Tennessee 
since Reconstruction. He was reelected in 1972 and 1978, serving 18 
years in total before retiring from the Senate in 1984 at the end of 
the 98th Congress.
  In the Senate, Howard Baker's record marked him, as he described 
himself, as ``moderate to moderate conservative.'' He supported fair 
housing and voting rights legislation, and was a leading advocate of 
the Clean Air Act. He also was instrumental in the bitter but 
ultimately successful fight to ratify the Panama Canal Treaty.
  Howard Baker also was a young man in a hurry. Upon the death of his 
father-in-law and mentor, the great Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, 
whose daughter, Joy, he had met and married in 1951, Howard Baker 
sought the post of Senate Republican Leader.
  He was narrowly defeated by Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania. But 
after the retirement of Senator Scott in 1976, Howard Baker was elected 
by Republican Leader by his colleagues and Senate Majority Leader in 
1980 when Republicans regained the Senate for the first time since 1954 
in the wake of the 1980 landslide election of Ronald Reagan.
  Howard Baker is perhaps best known for his service as the Vice-
Chairman of Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign 
Activities, better known as the Senate Watergate Committee. He is 
remembered for asking the question: ``What did the president know and 
when did he know it?''
  That question would go on to become a national catchphrase and a part 
of the nation's cultural lexicon.
  In 1980, Howard Baker was a candidate for the Republican presidential 
nomination won by Ronald Reagan. After retiring from the Senate in 
1984, he considered a second run for the presidency but put aside those 
personal ambitions in 1987 to accept President Reagan's request to 
serve as White House Chief of Staff at the nadir of the Reagan 
Administration brought on by the Iran-Contra scandal.
  As Majority Leader, Howard Baker supported Reagan's supply-side 
economic program of massive tax cuts for the wealthy and draconian cuts 
to Great Society programs. In response to the resulting massive 
structural deficits, Howard Baker helped broker the deal and shepherd 
to passage legislation in 1982 that raised taxes. He also worked with 
President Reagan and House Speaker Thomas P. ``Tip'' O'Neill to put 
Social Security on a sound financial footing for 75 years.
  For his lifetime of service to our nation, Howard Baker was awarded 
the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan in 1984. But his service to 
our nation did not stop there. In 2001, Howard Baker was nominated by 
President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the 27th 
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Japan in which capacity 
he served until February 17, 2005.
  In 2007, he joined with former congressional leaders Tom Daschle, 
George Mitchell, and Bob Dole to found the Bipartisan Policy Center, a 
non-partisan organization that promotes bipartisanship solutions to the 
major challenges facing the nation.
  In 1996, after the death of his first wife, Joy Dirksen, he married 
Nancy Landon Kassebaum from Kansas. In 2001 he was appointed U.S. 
ambassador to Japan and served faithfully.
  Mr. Speaker, Howard Baker was a legislator's legislator. Our prayers 
and condolences go out to his widow, former U.S. Senator Nancy Landon 
Kassebaum Baker, to his son Darek and daughter Cissy, and to his family 
and loved ones.
  Howard Baker touched so many lives in so many helpful ways that he 
will always be remembered as one of the finest public servants of the 
20th century.
  I ask that the House observe a moment of silence in memory of the 
distinguished senator from Tennessee, Howard Henry Baker, Jr., the 
``Great Conciliator of the Senate.''

                          ____________________