[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 40 (Wednesday, March 6, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1698-S1699]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Tribute to Don Young

  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, it is Alaskan of the Week time on the 
Senate floor, my favorite time of the week to talk about someone who 
has made a difference in my State. As you know, and as all the pages 
know, I try to come down to the floor every week to talk about someone 
who is in Alaska doing a great job for America, for their community, 
for the State, and what I believe is the best State in the country. I 
know we can all debate that.
  Some of you might take issue a little bit with the characterization 
of the best State, but we certainly have some bragging rights on some 
elements that make us the most unique State in America. For example, 
right now, the Iditarod, the Last Great Race, is underway, with 52 
mushers and their dog teams--up to 14 dogs--barreling for well over 900 
miles across the State of Alaska toward Nome in some of the most harsh, 
difficult, and rugged terrain in the world. That is just one of the 
many things that makes us unique. We have the Iditarod, the Northern 
Lights that dance in the sky, communities that still hunt whales to 
feed their villages, which they have been doing for centuries. We have 
the most fish and the longest coastline. As a matter of fact, our 
coastline is longer than the rest of the lower 48's coastline combined. 
We have the tallest mountain in the world, and we have a mountain of a 
Congressman named Don Young.
  Usually, Alaskans of the Week are reserved for people who aren't so 
visible, who aren't legends, who maybe are doing something in their 
community that not a lot of people are noticing. Today, March 6, 2019, 
I couldn't resist because Don Young, the Dean of the House, has 
officially become the longest continuously serving Republican in the 
Congress in U.S. history. Let me repeat that. Today, Don Young has 
become the longest, continually serving Republican in the Congress--
Senate or House--in the history of the United States of America. He was 
already here when every single Member of Congress was sworn in. Think 
about that. For every Member who has been sworn in, in the Senate or in 
the House, Don Young was here. In fact, according to Roll Call, there 
are at least 75 Members of the House who were not even born when Don 
Young came to Washington. That is an amazing achievement.
  He has served Alaska and our country so well for 46 years that it was 
only right to feature him as the Alaskan of the Week and to make a 
special Alaskan of the Week poster with the young Don Young and 
President Ford and many others and Don in uniform. We just love Don 
Young in Alaska. Congrats to Don.
  Where do we begin to talk about Congressman Young and the enormous 
impact he has had on Alaska and America? Let me start in Central 
California, where he was raised on a small ranch. He began the hard 
work of ranching young. ``My dad was a good man,'' Don said, ``but he 
believed that when you turned 7, you became a hired man.'' So he worked 
sunup to sundown. It was hot, riddled with snakes, and poison ivy. When 
he was still young, his dad read him the book ``The Call of the Wild'' 
by Jack London. Alaska sounded really good to Don Young. It was cold, 
not hot, and there were lots of dogs. He loved dogs. There were no 
snakes and no poison ivy.
  After he got out of the Army in 1959, the year Alaska became a State, 
he heeded the call of the wild and headed up the Alcan--much of it was 
still unpaved--in a brandnew Plymouth Fury. Alaska would never be the 
same.
  He fought forest fires. He owned a skating rink for a short time, but 
the BIA school needed a teacher in Fort Yukon, way up in the Interior 
on the Yukon River--a place he still, to this day, calls home and has a 
home there. In fact, he jokes that he is the only Congressman who uses 
an outhouse when he goes home. Anyway, he went to coach and teach fifth 
grade. He became a trapper, a gold miner, and a tugboat captain. 
Eventually, he met Lou, his wife, who stayed by his side for 46 years 
until she passed in 2009. Now he has found another partner in Ann. 
Thank you, Ann, for continuing to share him with all of us.

  Don, with Lou's prompting, caught the political bug. He served in the 
State House in Alaska. He served in the State Senate in Alaska. He 
learned some good lessons there; namely, that his time in the State 
Senate taught him that he was more of a House guy, where bills move 
fast, where elections are right around the corner no matter what, and 
where the action is.
  Along the way, they had two wonderful daughters, which to Don are 
still

[[Page S1699]]

the most important things in his life. Then Lou talked him into running 
for Congress, and with the help of people like my wife's grandmother 
who was an avid Don Young supporter, he began to introduce himself to a 
wider audience.
  Due to a tragic airplane accident that took the life of then-
Congressman Nick Begich, Don Young was appointed to his seat in 1973. 
He won the next special election, and because he has been so effective 
for our State--he passed more than 90 bills, mostly to help Alaska--and 
because he knows so many of our fellow Alaskans by name because he is 
fiercely loyal, and because he has helped hundreds of his fellow 
Alaskans since 1973, he has been reelected every year since. I can't 
count how many elections that is, but it is a lot.
  He is consistently ranked among the Congress's most effective 
legislators. He was just recently ranked the most effective legislator, 
No. 1 in the House, by the nonpartisan group the Center for Effective 
Lawmaking. Heck, even in his freshman year, Ralph Nader said he was the 
most powerful Congressman in the Congress. I imagine that he came to 
that conclusion with some trepidation.
  You will not hear Don Young talk about these things because he 
doesn't like to brag. He is a humble man, so let me do a little 
bragging on his behalf. Nearly everything, and I mean everything, that 
has advanced Alaska legislatively has Don Young's fingerprints on them, 
from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline to the Ketchikan Shipyard, to the many 
land exchanges--kind of like what we just did recently on the Senate 
floor under Senator Murkowski's leadership--to the health clinics 
dotting our State, to the state-of-the-art Alaska Native Medical Center 
in Anchorage, Don Young has played a critical part in all of this.
  He is tenacious. Just last Congress, Don Young in the House, and 
Senator Murkowski and I in the Senate, finally, after 40 years, got 
ANWR opened in terms of the ability for responsible resource 
development in the 1002 area of our State.
  One of his biggest victories was the role he played in the Magnuson-
Stevens Act, which transformed the American fishing industry. Among 
other things, the act created a 200-mile limit to keep foreign 
fishermen from plundering our fish and to sustain our fisheries. It 
wasn't easy to get that bill passed through Congress. Congressman Young 
worked it on the House side, and Ted Stevens, of course, worked it in 
the Senate.
  After it passed the Congress, he still wasn't finished. President 
Ford was considering vetoing this legislation. His Secretary of State, 
Henry Kissinger, thought it would raise tensions with key allies, 
especially Japan and Korea because they fished 3 miles right off the 
shores of Alaska, and we pushed them out to 200 miles with this 
legislation.
  So on Air Force One in 1974, I believe, with a stopover at Alaska, 
Don Young, the new Congressman, debated one of the smartest guys in 
Washington, Henry Kissinger, in front of President Ford on whether the 
Magnuson-Stevens Act, which would transform our fisheries, should be 
vetoed. Kissinger argued it should; Don Young argued it should not. 
Well, guess who won that debate on Air Force One. Legend has it that at 
the end, Henry Kissinger and Don Young met for a martini after the 
debate Don Young won. They are still good friends today. That is just 
another example.
  Don Young has been good friends with Presidents and has discussed the 
issues of the day with some of the most important people in the world, 
but through it all, he has never lost his fundamental goodness, sense 
of fair play, honor, and his willingness to reach across the aisle to 
help another Member.
  He has never forgotten who he works for. He works for the people of 
Alaska, and he has remained a man of the people since he was elected. 
He has never, not for a second, lost his love for our great State. He 
could have done anything, and he chose to stay, year after year, decade 
after decade, to serve the people of our State and the people of 
America. He recently said:

       Every day I try to do something for somebody in some group. 
     And every day I try to learn something new. We all go into 
     the ground the same way. The only thing we can leave behind 
     [here on this Earth] are our accomplishments.

  Well, he has notched numerous accomplishments, and he is far from 
finished. If I had my guess, I would also say he is far from finished 
with some of his famous theatrics too: brandishing walrus parts and 
steel traps on the floor of the House, maybe an altercation or two with 
colleagues that may or may not involve a sharp weapon, and campaign 
commercials that border on the humorous. Don Young is not finished 
speaking his mind and giving us Alaskans his heart.
  It has been an honor to serve our great State next to this historic 
figure. So Congressman Young, for your service, for your mentorship, 
and friendship with me, thank you for all you have done for all of us 
in Alaska and in America.
  Congratulations on being the longest serving Republican in the 
Congress in U.S. history today, and even more important, thank you and 
congratulations on being our Alaskan of the Week.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, before I was elected Governor of Delaware 
in 1992, I served in the House of Representatives for five terms. We 
have one congressional seat. Alaska is one of those States, as the 
Senator from Alaska knows, that also has one congressional seat.
  I got to the House on January 3, 1983, and one of the first people I 
met there was Don Young. We ended up on the same committee together, 
not the Environment and Public Works we serve on today but the Merchant 
Marine and Fisheries, which has a lot of the same jurisdiction as the 
Environment and Public Works Committee.
  So I remember going to Alaska with him and a bunch of our colleagues 
and just going through Prudhoe and just seeing all kinds of places 
around the Senator's beautiful State and going back with my family 
years later.
  My colleague is also a colonel in the Marines. I call him 
``colonel.'' He knows that John Barrasso and I like music and that 
every now and then, we will find some way to work some music lyrics 
into what we have to say. In listening to the Senator talk about   Don 
Young, it reminds me of a great song by Bob Dylan, called ``Forever 
Young,'' which is a classic song. You can find anything on the internet 
these days, and someone was nice enough to pull up the first verse of 
the lyrics of ``Forever Young'' by Bob Dylan.
  It goes something like this:

       May God bless and keep you always
       May your wishes all come true
       May you always do for others
       And let others do for you
       May you build a ladder to the stars
       And climb on every rung
       May you stay forever young
       Forever young, forever young
       May you stay forever young

    Don Young, congratulations from your Delaware buddy and former 
colleague. Thank you.
  What I really think we need to do is to join hands here in the Senate 
and sing ``Kumbaya'' and get our act together now that things have 
calmed down a little bit from earlier today.