[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 168 (Wednesday, October 10, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6752-S6755]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Remembering Joseph D. Tydings

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I regret to inform our colleagues of the 
death of Joe Tydings, who died on Monday, succumbing to cancer at the 
age of 90. Senator Tydings was one of the most outspoken progressive 
Democrats in this body.
  He was born to privilege. His father was a Democratic Senator from 
the State of Maryland--a conservative Democratic Senator. His 
grandfather was one of our first Ambassadors to the Soviet Union. His 
paternal grandfather married Marjorie Merriweather Post, who built Mar-
a-Lago, which most of us know is in Palm Beach. He came from a family 
of great privilege. Yet he was known in Maryland as a person of the 
people, representing the people of our State.
  His first elected office was president of the Young Democrats of 
Maryland. From there, he became a member of the Maryland House of 
Delegates, where he fought the establishment, took on the network in 
Annapolis, and investigated the savings and loan situation in our 
State. He really shined a lot of light on what was happening in abuses 
in that industry.
  He was chosen by then-Senator Kennedy to head up his campaign for 
President. Joe Tydings handled his campaign in Maryland for President 
and helped in other primaries around the Nation, leading to President 
Kennedy's election as President of the United States.
  President Kennedy asked him to serve as the U.S. attorney for 
Maryland, and Senator Tydings served as the U.S. attorney. He was known 
for his independence at the U.S. Attorney's Office. He pursued white 
collar crime and political corruption. He indicted and convicted a 
former Member of the House of Representatives, as well as the speaker 
of the Maryland House of Delegates. He recruited young talent to his 
office in the U.S. Attorney's Office, including Ben Civiletti, who went 
on to become the Attorney General of the United States, and Stephen 
Sachs, who continued to become the attorney general for the State of 
Maryland.
  In 1964 he ran and was elected to the U.S. Senate. He worked on 
progressive causes, including the Voting Rights Act, which he helped to 
get enacted under President Johnson, and also gun safety legislation.
  After leaving the Senate after one term, he continued to be extremely 
active in our community. He was best known, I believe, for his work at 
the University of Maryland. He served three terms on the board of 
regents of the University of Maryland system, giving back to the school 
where he graduated from both undergraduate and law school, and he was 
known as one of the most aggressive people in the reform of our 
University of Maryland System and also in the independence of the 
university hospital.
  On a personal note, let me tell you that he helped with my election 
to the U.S. Senate 12 years ago and gave me a great deal of support and 
friendship and was an adviser and role model for me. I remember his 
being here when I took the oath of office as a Senator, walking me down 
the aisle. I had a great deal of pride that he was with me.
  He is going to be missed by all of us--just an incredible person, a 
person who put his principles over practical politics. It may have cost 
him an election, but he did what he thought was right. I can tell you 
that we are all proud of his service to the people of Maryland and our 
Nation.
  Mr. President, we will miss this man, who was determined to help bend 
the arc of the moral universe toward justice as fast as possible.
  Joe Tydings was born as Joseph Davies Cheesborough in Asheville, NC, 
on May 4, 1928, to Eleanor Davies of Watertown, WI, and Tom 
Cheesborough of Asheville. Tydings' sister, Eleanor Cheesborough, was 
born in 1932. In 1935, his parents divorced, and his mother married 
Millard Tydings, who was then serving his second of four terms as one 
of Maryland's U.S. Senators. Several years later, Millard Tydings 
formally adopted Joe and his sister, Eleanor.
  Joe Tydings' illustrious family included his namesake grandfather, 
Joseph Davies, an early adviser to Woodrow Wilson, who later was 
appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as America's second 
Ambassador to the Soviet Union. While Joe was still a boy, his maternal 
grandfather married one of the richest women in America, Marjorie 
Merriweather Post, who owned homes in New York City and Long Island, 
the Hillwood Estate here in Washington, DC, the Topridge Great Camp in 
the Adirondacks, and built Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. Joe sailed home 
from Europe aboard the Sea Cloud, Post's luxurious 322-foot, four-
masted barque, the largest privately owned sea-going yacht in the world 
at the time.
  Joe Tydings attended public schools in Aberdeen, MD, before entering 
the McDonough School in Baltimore County as a military cadet in 1938. 
After he graduated, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1946 and served in 
one of the Army's last horse platoons as part of the postwar occupation 
of Germany. When he returned to the United States in 1948, he entered 
the University of Maryland, where he played lacrosse and football and 
was student body president and then earned his law degree at the 
University of Maryland Law School in 1953.
  Joe Tydings was surrounded by tremendous wealth and prestige and 
political power while he was growing up. The obituary that appeared in 
the Baltimore Sun notes that, despite the fact that Joe was born into a 
life of privilege, he was a frugal person and quotes his daughter, Mary 
Tydings, as saying, ``He was a man of the people despite how he grew 
up.'' His adoptive father was also a Democrat but opposed some of the 
New Deal legislation because he was a fiscal conservative. Joe, on the 
other hand, was a progressive from the get-go and attributed his 
Wisconsin-born mother as the influence, but it is clear that his 
father, who was known for taking principled, if often controversial, 
stands on many issues, also shaped Joe's approach to politics and to 
life.

[[Page S6753]]

  As I said earlier, Joe Tydings started his political career by 
serving as president of the Maryland Young Democrats. While he was 
president, he confronted a hotel owner in Ocean City who refused to let 
Black members of the organization stay at the hotel for an event being 
held there. In 1954, Joe was elected to represent Harford County in the 
Maryland House of Delegates. Once there, it was clear that he was 
willing to fight established powers. He started with the State's 
savings and loan, S&L, associations following a banking scandal. In 
``My Life in Progressive Politics: Against the Grain,'' an 
autobiography cowritten by former Baltimore Sun reporter John W. Frece 
published earlier this year, Joe reflected, ``I was appalled no one was 
doing anything about it.'' The reason, he argued, was that many too 
many Maryland politicians were profiting from the schemes that led to 
the scandal.
  While Joe Tydings had a famous last name in Maryland political 
circles, it was his early and enthusiastic association with Senator 
John F. Kennedy that pushed Joe onto the national stage. In 1960, Joe 
directed Kennedy's Presidential campaign in Maryland and then helped 
out in other primaries, at the party convention in Los Angeles, and 
throughout the fall election. After Kennedy won, Tydings was offered a 
post in the new administration, and he asked to be appointed U.S. 
attorney for Maryland. The Maryland Democratic Party establishment was 
wary of the young reformer; nearly every Democratic Congressman in the 
State opposed his appointment. President Kennedy questioned his 
brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy about the opposition, 
saying ``how can I appoint him with all these people opposed to him.'' 
Robert Kennedy replied, ``That's exactly why you are going to appoint 
him.''
  As U.S. attorney, Joe Tydings assembled a staff of neophyte trial 
attorneys that included a future Attorney General of the United States, 
Benjamin R. Civiletti, and a future Attorney General of Maryland, 
Stephen H. Sachs, and many other lawyers who would become judges and 
successful attorneys with prominent law firms. He worked hard to 
establish the nonpartisan reputation of the U.S. attorney's office in 
Maryland and build a modern Federal prosecution force that has 
effectively targeted political corruption in Maryland up to the present 
day. Joe successfully prosecuted Representative Thomas Johnson, a 
fellow Democrat, for receiving illegal gratuities. He successfully 
prosecuted Maryland House Speaker A. Gordon Boone, another Democrat, 
for mail fraud connected with the S&L scandal.
  In 1963, President Kennedy visited Oakington, the Tydings' 550-acre 
estate along the Chesapeake Bay in Harford County, to urge Joe to run 
for the Senate, which he agreed to do. On the November day that Tydings 
held his farewell luncheon with colleagues to prepare for his Senate 
run, he learned that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. 
Joe ran as a reformer and had to win a primary against the State's 
beloved comptroller, Louis L. Goldstein. Joe, whose campaign slogan was 
``Working for Maryland, Not the Machine,'' energized reformers within 
the State party, attracted an army of volunteers, and won. It was Louis 
Goldstein's only loss during six decades in public office. Joe then 
went on to defeat the incumbent Republican Senator, James Glenn Beall, 
Sr., in the general election.
  As a Senator, Joe Tydings backed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and 
the Fair Housing Act of 1968. He supported controversial decisions of 
the Warren Court, including the one-man, one-vote requirement for 
apportionment of State legislatures; the prohibition of prayer in 
public schools; and the guarantee of the rights of defendants to remain 
silent and to be represented by counsel. He was an early advocate for 
family planning and worried all his life about the detrimental health 
and environmental effects of worldwide overpopulation. He reached 
across the aisle to get things done, working with Republican colleagues 
such as then-Representative George H.W. Bush. He regularly decried the 
lack of bipartisanship in the Congress today.
  Like many of his congressional peers, Joe Tydings came to office 
supporting American involvement in Vietnam, but as the war escalated, 
deaths mounted, and protests spread throughout the country, Tydings 
finally broke with President Lyndon B. Johnson and came out against the 
war.
  Although Joe was ranked 100th in seniority when he arrived in the 
Senate, he authored legislation to make long overdue improvements to 
the Federal court system, many of which are still in place today. He 
helped to create the system of Federal magistrates to lighten the 
workload of Federal judges; improved jury selection so that Federal 
juries more fairly represent the make-up of their communities; and 
worked to keep unfit, unqualified, or mentally or physically 
incapacitated judges off the bench. Joe became an ``enemy'' of 
President Richard M. Nixon by helping to defeat two of the President's 
Supreme Court nominees, Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., and G. Harrold 
Carswell.
  Joe Tydings was an avid outdoorsman and hunter, but supported 
sensible gun safety laws, including the Firearms Registration and 
Licensing Act, which earned him the enmity of the gun lobby and the 
National Rifle Association.
  By the time he stood for reelection in 1970, Joe later admitted, he 
had probably supported one liberal position too many. The country had 
changed, and Joe's progressive outlook had been supplanted by the 
backlash to new civil rights laws, fear over race riots in American 
cities, and a deep division over Vietnam. Vice President Spiro Agnew, 
who had been Governor of Maryland, called Joe a ``radical.'' Joe 
narrowly lost his reelection bid to John Glenn Beall, Jr., the son of 
the man he had defeated in 1964, 51 percent to 48 percent.
  I mentioned that Joe was an avid outdoorsman. He was also a great 
horseman. One of the many causes to which he dedicated his energies 
after he returned to private life was the protection of Tennessee 
Walking Horses from the inhumane practice of ``soring.'' He sought 
vigorous implementation of the Horse Protection Act of 1970, which he 
had authored while still in the Senate, and was honored by the U.S. 
Humane Society for his efforts.

  After Joe left the Senate, he kept his hand in Maryland politics, 
supporting various reform candidates and pushing for legislation to 
protect his beloved Chesapeake Bay. He went on to serve as a member and 
later as chairman of the board of regents of his alma mater, the 
University of Maryland. He was appointed to three separate terms on the 
regents by three different Governors in three different decades. In 
1977, Joe called for the board of regents of the University of Maryland 
to divest its endowment from companies doing business with the 
apartheid regime in South Africa. In September 2008, then-Maryland 
Governor Martin O'Malley appointed Joe to the board of the University 
of Maryland Medical System.
  Joe Tydings was indefatigable. He built a national and international 
career in law, offering his legal services pro bono in cases 
challenging the death penalty. As the Baltimore Sun obituary noted, 
``At an age when his peers were considering retirement, Sen. Tydings 
worked as an attorney with the Washington law firm Blank Rome LLP. `He 
didn't need to be here for the last 20 years of his life,' said Jim 
Kelly, chairman of Blank Rome's Washington office. But Sen. Tydings 
chose to continue to work toward causes he deemed important. `It sounds 
a little trite, but he really was committed to basic notions of justice 
and fairness,' Kelly said. `He was not afraid to wear that on his 
sleeve, and he was not afraid to stand up and be counted.' ''
  When I was sworn in as U.S. Senator for the first time in the 110th 
Congress, I was honored to have Joe Tydings join Senators Paul Sarbanes 
and Barbara Mikulski and escort me to the well to take the oath of 
office. One of his political slogans was ``Joe Tydings doesn't duck the 
tough ones.'' So true. Joe's life of service serves as an example to so 
many people, including me, particularly in these difficult times. 
Former Vice President Joe Biden wrote in the forward to ``My Life in 
Progressive Politics: Against the Grain,'' ``In reading this memoir, 
you can't miss the salient parallels to challenges facing our nation 
today. The issues on which Joe staked his Senate career a half-century 
ago are the same ones that still require

[[Page S6754]]

our advocacy and attention. Protecting voting rights. Safeguarding our 
environment. Pushing back against the forces of inequality that are 
hollowing out the middle class. Standing up for common-sense gun safety 
laws.''
  In the Gospel of Luke, there is the saying, ``Every one to whom much 
is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit 
much they will demand the more,'' Luke 12:48. Joe Tydings was given 
much; he gave back more.
  I know my Senate colleagues will want to join me in sending our 
condolences to Joe Tydings' family: his sister, Eleanor Tydings Russell 
of Monkton, MD; his four children from his first marriage, Mary Tydings 
Smith of Easton, MD, Millard Tydings of Skillman, NJ, Emlen Tydings 
Gaudino of Palm Beach, Australia, and Eleanor Tydings Gollob of McLean, 
VA; and Alexandra Tydings Luzzatto of Washington, DC, the daughter of 
his second marriage. He is also survived by nine grandchildren: 
Benjamin Tydings Smith, Jill Campbell Gollob, Sam Tydings Gollob, 
Margaret Campbell Tydings, Jay Davies Gollob, William Davies Tydings, 
Ruby Anne Luzzatto, Emerson Almeida Luzzatto, and Maeve Chaim Luzzatto.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                                S. 3021

  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise today to thank my colleagues for 
passing America's Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 and to discuss the 
importance of it to the State of Washington. This legislation is going 
now to the President's desk, and it is very needed to help make our 
ports more competitive, to protect thousands of jobs, and to help 
protect our salmon habitat in the State of Washington.
  This legislation means the ports of Seattle and Tacoma will be able 
to deepen their harbors to allow them to meet the much larger cargo 
demands to compete with other ports on the west coast, specifically in 
Canada.
  This legislation also improves the critical habitat for salmon and 
waterways like the Puget Sound and the Columbia River, and it also 
helps utilities make commonsense investments for the future and helps 
to protect our ratepayers and the environment.
  I am proud to have worked on this legislation with our colleagues 
because we need to keep moving forward on investments that help make 
our region competitive.
  Our ports are essential to our economic growth in the Northwest. I 
always say ``ports are us'' because we have so many along the Columbia 
River and on the west coast, and trade is a cornerstone of our economy, 
with $95 billion in exports and $92 billion in imports each year.
  The fact that this legislation helps us on important maintenance and 
operations for both large and small ports and for locks, dams, and 
waterways is so important to our future. It also helps us with the 
important alliance that Seattle and Tacoma formed together to help our 
marine cargo operations at the ports, which generate $4.3 billion in 
economic activity and on which 48,000 jobs are dependent.
  What happened is that as the world market changed and large 
containerships could double in size the amount of products they were 
shipping, it was so important for our west coast ports to be 
competitive and to be able to serve these large ships. These megaships, 
which are twice the length of the space needle and wider than a 
football field, carry twice the number of containers compared to ships 
that typically call on west coast ports and need deeper waterways.
  To maintain a top-grade lane through the Pacific Northwest and to 
compete with the Canadian ports, the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma have 
to deepen their ports and make the navigational changes to address the 
large container ships.
  The Army Corps and the Northwest Seaport Alliance teamed up with the 
Seattle Harbor Navigational Improvement Project study, the Tacoma 
Harbor Navigational Improvement Project study, and many other partners 
to make sure we were making the right investments.
  In this legislation, the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma are big economic 
winners. They are economic winners because we are authorizing over $29 
million to deepen the East and West Waterways in the Port of Seattle to 
57 feet. When the project is completed, the Port of Seattle will be the 
deepest in the country. It will allow us to serve those megaships. 
Instead of having just 1,000 to 12,000 cargo containers, it will be 
18,000 cargo containers or more. We are expecting to complete a 
feasibility study at the Port of Tacoma, which is currently at 51 feet.
  These two projects are going to help us continue to build the 
reputation of the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma, moving our products 
throughout the United States to Asia quickly and reliably and reaching 
critical markets.
  We don't want our shippers to have to pay more because we haven't 
made these infrastructure investments. Moving freight is what we do.
  This bill is about making it in our waterways as well. Deepening the 
waterways in the Ports in Seattle and Tacoma will ensure they can 
compete with Canadian ports. It will help us to continue to grow our 
jobs in the maritime sector, and it will help us to continue to be a 
gateway from North America to Asia and around the world.
  This legislation also helps us in restoring waters adjacent to Puget 
Sound and helps us with our salmon recovery efforts. For the last 18 
years, the Puget Sound Adjacent Waters Restoration Program has focused 
on protecting and restoring habitat within the Puget Sound Basin.
  Using this program, the Army Corps was able to work with places like 
the city of Burien to remove a seawall on the Seahurst Park shoreline. 
Now that shoreline is a habitat for endangered salmon and the home to 
bald eagles and osprey, and it is attracting visitors to the park.
  The Army Corps was also able to use the program to work with the 
Tulalip Tribe to restore critical habit along the Snohomish River. That 
was lost in the early 20th century. The estuary now provides access to 
spawning, rearing, and feeding areas for salmon.
  Puget Sound--the second largest estuary in the United States--is home 
to thousands of species that this bill will also help. Over a dozen of 
these species are listed as endangered or threatened, and our helping 
by making these improvements to clean up Puget Sound and restore 
habitat is so important to the viability of the Pacific Northwest.
  The bill increases funding for the Puget Sound Adjacent Waters 
Restoration Program from $40 million to $60 million and the per-project 
funding from $5 million to $10 million.
  These are just expanded numbers, but they mean everything to meet the 
goals of the projects around Puget Sound. We are returning to Puget 
Sound waterways that are unblocked and providing cleaner habitat for 
salmon--for threatened juvenile salmon--and opportunities in areas like 
Spencer Island in the Snohomish River estuary near Everett, WA.
  Another project will restore tidal flows and create open coastline 
inlets at the creek originating near Joint Base Lewis-McChord, in South 
Puget Sound. This will help us to restore spawning habitats for forage 
fish, support salmon recovery, and improve those shoreline conditions 
that are so important.
  These projects are an example of the diversity that our region uses 
when it helps our ecosystem, known as Puget Sound, and in helping 
salmon recovery.
  This legislation also helps in making sure those who make great 
improvements to water infrastructure, particularly our hydrosystems, 
get rewarded for doing that and ensures that they don't wait or 
hesitate to get that done. This legislation provides an early action 
provision for licensees on hydrosystems to make improvements and makes 
sure they will be recognized later. This provision would remove an 
impediment, and it encourages people to take corrective action sooner 
rather than later.
  That is good for our environment, and it is good for taxpayers and 
helps us save on energy. Most importantly, it does not take away any 
regulatory oversight from the agency but simply rewards people earlier 
for doing the right thing.

[[Page S6755]]

  I know that Chelan PUD is a good example of this and will take 
advantage of this as they plan to rehabilitate units at Rock Island 
hydro project--a significant investment of over $500 million. This area 
needs to have these upgrades, and this provision will help them get 
them done sooner.
  In this legislation, we are also helping with one of the most 
challenging things we see in our waterways, and that is protecting the 
physical infrastructure and waterways in our hydro system from invasive 
species. The highly invasive Quagga and Zebra mussels have invaded our 
waterways in 20 different States. If invasive mussel populations invade 
the Pacific Northwest, it is estimated that it could cost our region 
over $500 million in annual costs. That would be devoting way more of 
our resources just to manage that infestation.
  The Columbia Basin is the last major uninfected watershed in the 
United States, much of it to the credit of watercraft inspection 
stations on the Columbia River. The Columbia River inspection stations 
help inspect the boats that travel up and down the river for such 
invasive species, and an inspection of all watercrafts is required. I 
am pleased that this bill authorizes money specifically for the 
Columbia River inspection stations. This helps us because, as I said, 
with a river that hasn't seen these invasive species, the fact that we 
still do these inspections is critical.
  Last year, over 9,000 boats were inspected throughout Washington, and 
because of the funding for the Columbia River, these invasive species 
were kept out of our waters. That means they were kept out not just in 
Washington but in other parts of the Pacific Northwest as well.
  This legislation also continues the great downpayment on the Drinking 
Water State Revolving Fund, which was created in 1997 and has helped 
our State--millions of dollars in annual grants. This is so important. 
As we saw with the many problems in Flint, MI, and other places, many 
of our colleagues know that this Drinking Water State Revolving Fund is 
necessary for us to keep clean water in the United States.
  These funds helped the city of Lynden replace its 1926 surface water 
treatment plant and ensured a reliable water supply to the Lynden 
community and surrounding area. The funds also helped the city of 
Prosser make improvements to its aging water system to ensure that 
communities have access to a clean water supply. At the end of this 
week, the city of Kelso will be celebrating the completion of the Minor 
Road Reservoir, which replaced two aging reservoirs that were leaking 
and that would have failed in the event of a natural disaster in the 
area. The city was able to complete the project with the help of the 
Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, and I am so glad that is going to 
help secure more resources for that part of our State.
  This also provides States and communities with additional financial 
resources to make investments in their economies for the future, and it 
also helps to right wrongs from the past.
  I am pleased that the bill also delivers on an 80-year-old promise 
from the Army Corps to complete the Tribal Village Development Plan for 
four Tribes who were displaced when the dams of the Columbia River were 
constructed. The Yakama, Nez Perce, Umatilla, and Warm Springs Tribes 
all signed treaties with the Federal Government in the 1850s, and these 
treaties reserved the right of the Tribes to fish, hunt, and gather at 
``all usual and accustomed fishing places.'' The Army Corps and treaty 
Tribes entered into agreements on fishing access. These sites were 
designed for day-to-day fishing, but out of need and the desire to be 
close to the Columbia River, they have turned into permanent housing. 
This has resulted in very challenging and unsafe living conditions 
along the river. I am so glad that my colleague Senator Murray and my 
colleagues from Oregon, Senator Merkley and Senator Wyden--that we have 
been able to make it crystal clear to the Army Corps of Engineers that 
we need to correct this problem. This bill ensures that those families 
will get what they were promised years ago.
  In closing, I want to thank our colleagues Senator Barrasso and 
Senator Carper, as well as the leadership of the House Transportation 
and Infrastructure Committee, for all the hard work on this bipartisan 
legislation.
  When it comes to our waterways, infrastructure investment means jobs. 
It means the continued protection of clean water, and for us in the 
Northwest, it means helping us preserve our salmon populations.
  I am so happy that we have finally taken another step to strengthen 
the competitiveness of our ports in the Northwest. These are real jobs. 
In the future--near future--with this deepening, we will be able to 
serve larger cargo container ships, which will help us keep our 
competitiveness in moving product.
  While we move about $77 billion worth of products in Washington, we 
move much more than that from all States of the United States, moving 
through our ports. So while it sounds like an investment in two very 
large port infrastructures on the west coast, I guarantee you that it 
affects many Midwestern States and many products and the ability to 
cost-effectively ship to other parts of the world.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, before my friend from Washington State 
leaves, I want to thank her for her advocacy on water infrastructure, 
and I agree with her that this is a great bipartisan bill. The 
distinguished Senator from Washington State mentioned Flint, MI, and I 
just want to thank her one more time. No one stood stronger with me and 
Senator Peters in trying to help the people in Flint, and I greatly 
appreciate her help, support, and advocacy.