[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 192 (Tuesday, December 3, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6801-S6805]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Farewell to the Senate

  Mr. ISAKSON. Madam President, it is an honor to be here today on what 
is not my last day, but everybody is acting like it.
  A few months ago, I had to announce that after much consideration, to 
be able to continue to serve the people of Georgia as best I could in 
any way possible and also to keep true to the commitments I made in 
every race I have ever won, that when I knew I couldn't do the job, I 
was going to quit and let somebody do it who wouldn't be hampered. I am 
not hampered yet--I am pretty tough--but it is getting close. So in 
August, I decided to tell my wife about it, and we decided to go ahead 
and retire at the end of December, which I have announced and said I 
was going to do. The Governor of Georgia is making an appointment to 
take my place.

[[Page S6802]]

  A few days from now, you might look into the history books 
somewhere--current history--and they might have an Isakson in the 
glossary, but I doubt it. You may never see this name again.
  I have been here for 15 years and loved every minute of it. This is 
the most enjoyable thing I have ever done in my life, to be a part of 
the U.S. Senate. It is not because I like being a Senator but because I 
like to be with the people who are in the Senate.
  Politicians get a bad rap in this day and time--a real bad rap. A lot 
of things are said about them by people they are aware don't matter, 
like those in some of the media and other places, but others will take 
potshots at people who are politicians and who serve the people in 
their communities. I never do that--not because I am one but because I 
know, because I am one, what you have to do. It is a tough job, and if 
it is not done right, then it is not done and it doesn't get done the 
way it should for the people there. So I am making sure that when I 
leave, the last thing I do is to leave the people of Georgia in good 
hands, given that I am the senior Senator from Georgia who is retiring.
  Unfortunately, at lunch today, the Members gave me a luncheon and 
stole all of my material. Don't let this paper fool you--I threw it all 
away coming in here. They have stolen all of my good jokes, took over 
all of the things I was going to say, so I am going to make this very 
brief, but in the end, very brief is good.
  My dad told me one time--he said: ``Son, your words have more power 
by how few you use than how many you use.'' I always remembered that. I 
think speeches are really important. I make short speeches. I get to 
the point, and I get out. I am going to give you some reasons that 
works.
  (The Vice President assumed the Chair.)
  When I knew I was going to be outshined by the other Members of the 
Senate at this luncheon today, I decided that I would do the best I 
could to honor Mitch McConnell, who is the greatest leader I have ever 
worked for in my 45 years of public life, and people like the Vice 
President of the United States, who I am so proud is in the Chair. I 
can tell my grandkids--who are all here, by the way--I hope you 
remember that time you were there with Mike Pence, the Vice President 
of the United States--you could be President by then, Mr. Vice 
President--to hear a speech I made.
  Everybody, thank you for being here. I am not going to call out names 
because I would miss somebody, except Tester. You can't miss Tester. 
But everybody else, I would miss. I don't want to miss anybody because 
every one of you is important to me--the people who help us in the 
lunchroom, the people who help us in stores, the people who help us get 
in and out of the cars, the people who help us on bad days, snowy days, 
icy days, and everything else--just everybody who helps us. It takes a 
lot of people to run the Senate, and only one person to mess it up.
  I want to talk about one subject today and one subject alone, and it 
is going to be short.
  There is something missing in this place. I am given credit sometimes 
for being a bipartisan person. In fact, sometimes newspaper people 
write that I am known for being bipartisan or being a softy. Some of 
them say worse than that, but I am not going to address that. I am a 
bipartisan person. I never saw people get things done by not agreeing 
with each other. You have to come to an agreement. I made a living 
selling houses. You can't ever solve a problem if you have two people 
and they will not agree to a price and agree to a time to move. You 
have to find common ground. It is the same thing with the law. You 
can't pass a law--you can't solve a problem, period, end of sentence. 
If you are one of those people who say ``It is my way or the highway,'' 
then we are all in real trouble.
  I want to talk about being bipartisan and what bipartisanship really 
is. I don't think most of you really know what bipartisanship is. I 
shouldn't say that to an educated group of people like this who have 
been down a lot of tough trails like I have. Being bipartisan doesn't 
mean a Democrat and Republican talk to each other every once in a 
while; it means this: Two people come together who probably have 
differences--probably have a lot of differences--but they find a way to 
get to the end of the trail, where there is the possibility of a 
solution, and then they do the things they have to do to get to that 
solution. America today is built on people who found a way to get to 
that end of the solution, no question about it.
  I hate to ask this question, but I came in the back door. Is John 
Lewis here yet? Where is John?
  John, you are getting shorter.
  John Lewis is one of the finest people I have ever known and a great 
friend of mine. I was invited to speak to the Senate a couple of days 
ago, and I recognized John, who was there. He introduced me and said 
some things that meant more to people than anything anybody has ever 
said to me, so I said: I want you to come to my last speech because I 
want to say a few things about you. Because, in essence, really, John--
to a much greater extent than me--and I together represent how things 
can really change if people want them to change and are willing to do 
the things that let them change.
  John was born in the 1940s. I was born in the 1940s. John lived in 
Alabama. I lived in Georgia for a while. John got his good senses 
together, and he came to--Shelby was there, so he came to Alabama. He 
is a good guy. John came there, and John lived in a shotgun house. That 
is where there is a hole in the back, a hole in the front, and if you 
throw something, you don't hit anything. John was a great civil rights 
leader in his youth. He was the president of SNCC, the Student 
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. John walked the streets of Atlanta, 
GA, where I lived. I was part of the people whom Earl Warren--there 
were all these signs around Georgia. I thought he was running for 
office. They said ``Impeach Earl Warren.'' I never got that figured out 
until I got a little older. Anyway, Earl Warren had been a part of the 
Brown v. Board of Education decision. The schools' separate but equal 
doctrine had been thrown out, and the schools were going to be 
integrated. Across society, the only way to prove that you were getting 
it done was by the numbers. So they figured how much of a percentage of 
how many Black people would constitute a good number to say you were 
desegregated and vice versa, solving the problem with statistics.
  I was on some of those first buses that rode to Atlanta, GA, taking 
Black students to White schools, and I had some good friends who were 
Black. That is another thing southerners are blamed for--we always say: 
We have some really good friends who were Black. I have some really 
good friends who are Black. I still have them, and one of them is John 
Lewis.
  John Lewis is one of my real heroes in life because I watched what he 
went through to help us see the light in the South, in my part of the 
South, Georgia. He was a hero. He was a hero to me.
  When I got to Congress, one of the things I am most proud of is that 
John introduced me to be sworn in. The Speaker of the House swore me 
in, and I was down at the podium. Let me tell you what happened that 
morning. The clerk said: We will now have Mr. Isakson from Georgia, who 
won a special election yesterday in Atlanta, GA, and has been declared 
the winner by the secretary of state. We would like to ask Mr. Lewis to 
escort him to the front. We will give him 1 minute to make his 
acceptance speech, and we will go back to business.
  I said, 1 minute? I have been practicing all these years, and I am 
only going to get only 1 minute? I can't do anything in 1 minute.
  But I wasn't going to argue with the guy on my first day at work. So 
I went to the back of the room with John. John walked down the aisle on 
the House side. I was not paying a lot of attention. I figured the best 
thing to do was to follow John, so I followed John. When John got 
through introducing me, I followed him to the well, and I said thank 
you to everybody and named three or four people who had helped me get 
there and then said: Well, I am going to work, and I am honored to be 
here.
  What they didn't tell me was, if you were in the House on that 
particular day, the mike for people who were Republicans was on the 
left, and the Republicans spoke from the right. This

[[Page S6803]]

dummy followed John, who was smart and went to the right, where he was 
supposed to go. I went to the left, where I wasn't supposed to go. I 
noticed these eyeballs in the front row just going around and around. 
And some guy stepped behind me after I gave my 1-minute speech and 
said: ``So you are going to start this fast demonstrating what a 
liberal guy you are?'' It was one of those voices that came over the 
back of my shoulder, just kind of like something hanging over my head. 
I turned around and looked, and this other guy--his name was Tom 
Latham--came up to me and said ``Don't pay any attention to that,'' and 
then he went on about his business.
  I asked somebody later that day: What did that guy mean by that?
  He said: Well, the problem is, you got labeled when you got elected.
  I said: What do you mean?
  He said: Well, you got elected in a Republican district, but you said 
nice things about Democrats.
  I said: Is that wrong to do?
  He said: Well, we were trying to get some way to get Boehner not to 
appoint you to any committee. We heard you helped write No Child Left 
Behind.
  That was how I started out in the House of Representatives. I was a 
Republican in a majority Democratic House who was unwanted because I 
was not--in fact, Newt lost--some of you know this; I see a few faces 
over there--Newt lost that race by seven votes in the House. Seven 
Members said: We will not vote for Newt as Speaker. Tom knows this. 
Newt couldn't get reelected as Speaker, so he resigned.
  I didn't know he was going to do that. I was going to speak at the 
national realtors' conference in Disneyland at a convention. I got to 
the hotel that afternoon, and there were 72 phone messages for me.
  A guy came up and said: Boy, I hope nobody died at your house.
  That is a great way to arrive at a hotel.
  I said: Why is that?
  He said: You have 72 messages.
  I said: Well, let me see them.
  The first 71 were from my wife. I called her, and she said: Have you 
heard?
  I said: Heard what?
  She said: Newt quit.
  I said: Quit what?
  He quit as Speaker, and he quit as Member of the House, and everybody 
is calling on you to run.
  I said: What?
  Nothing computed. Very quickly I learned a lot about partisan 
politics. A lot of people wanted to have somebody take Newt's place. 
Newt's body wasn't even cold yet, and they were picking over it. They 
wanted to have a person who wasn't squeamish in a war like that.
  Anyway, to make a long story short, partisan politics was pretty 
rough in those days. It is a lot rougher now, but it was pretty rough 
back then. People voted not with their heads but with a hammer--not 
with their hearts, either. So I learned in an era where if you were a 
Republican, you were a Republican, and if you were a Democrat, you were 
a Democrat, and they didn't ever cross. Don't work with anybody. Don't 
make it easy. If you have the votes, use them. And we kept getting 
beaten or kept getting tricked all the time because the whole game plan 
over there was to have enough Republicans beat the Democrats or vice 
versa. That is what everybody would try to do, and I thought that was 
stupid, but I didn't say that. Four hundred and thirty-five is a lot of 
people, so you don't want to get run over.
  A few weeks down the line, I made a speech on the floor of the House 
about something very important to me and my State. It was a problem we 
had in the State where our State was divided, rural and urban--not 
Republican and Democrat but rural and urban. Because Republicans were 
pretty much rural back then and urban people were Democrats in the 
suburbs, at that time, it got divided politically anyway even though it 
was an economic issue, an ag issue, a shipping issue, and things like 
that. They divided up over parties, so by the time the issue got to the 
floor on some kind of compromise vote, we couldn't pass anything. We 
couldn't pass a kidney stone, much less anything else, because we 
couldn't get anybody to agree on anything. We had the parties cross 
each other and everybody else.
  So I decided then, if I am going to be in this thing, at that age--I 
was about 60, I guess--I am not going to spend the rest of my life down 
here arguing about silly and stupid things. And there were some silly 
and stupid things said over there. I am not going to say who was saying 
them, but you know who they were. They were from both parties. It was 
bipartisan. That was the first bipartisan thing I saw--the stupid 
statements.
  To make a long story short, we had some real battles, but finally I 
decided that I was going to be an example of what we really need to be 
like. I tried to find every way I could to be bipartisan, which to me 
meant that I did what I thought was right. I think that is the way to 
do it.
  Mark Twain said:

       When confronted with a difficult decision, do what is 
     right. You will surprise a few, but you will amaze the rest.

  I tried to start amazing everybody. I voted for some things. They 
would send somebody over to see me from the whip side. They would say: 
What did you do? Did you get confused?
  No, I didn't get confused.
  Finally, they realized they had somebody they could deal with, which 
is the good part of bipartisanship. The first time the partisan people 
figure they have somebody they can deal with, they come deal with you. 
The next thing you know, you are sitting at a table with the guys who 
were making fun of you, and they are not.
  That is the way you go with bipartisanship. That is the way I did it 
on my own, going through 6 years in the House of Representatives and 15 
years in the U.S. Senate, trying to find that little thing that could 
bring two people together, notwithstanding what party they were in. I 
never look at the party first. That is the last thing I look at.
  Chuck Schumer said some nice things today. One of the nicest things 
he said was that he liked the kindness part of it. He said I was a kind 
person. My wife might differ with that, and some other people might 
differ with that. I try to be a kind person. I try to be someone who 
somebody would like to sit down with because you can't get a problem 
solved if you can't sit down across the table from somebody you have a 
problem with. You can then build everything that way.
  I hope this Senate and this Congress--all of us--in the years ahead--
we have some big problems. Let's start having a main goal personally 
that we are going to do everything we can to be a part of the solutions 
and the decisions that are going to have to be made. If you don't want 
to do it, don't do it, but you are going to find out, if you figure it 
out, that if you try to do it, others watch you do it, and you start 
making decisions and solving problems, you are going to be more popular 
than the other people.
  This is not a popularity contest. Governing is not a popularity 
contest. This is a will of minds. Bipartisanship is a state of being. 
It is a state of mind.
  There are people in the U.S. Senate whom I work with and I love 
working with every day--I am looking at some of them right here in the 
eye. They have an attitude that I like. I know I can go sit down and 
talk to them. If they say no, I will take it, and I will not stick my 
tongue out at them or call them bad names or anything else, but they 
know I will be there tomorrow to ask them to do something for me.
  The best way to get somebody to do something for you, when you hadn't 
done something for them the day before, is, well, maybe if I help them 
out, I will get some help on my side. It is a quid pro quo--well, that 
is a bad term. I am glad I remembered that joke. But those are the 
types of things you have to do, even in levelling the playing field.
  My words to you today are these: When you are fortunate enough to see 
a   John Lewis from Georgia, or someone like him, step out of his 
comfort zone and do what he thinks is right, and somebody tells you 
``He is wrong; don't do that,'' judge your conscience and your heart, 
not some TV commentators or somebody who is loyal to hate.
  We still have some people in the United States of America who will 
play the hate card. We have some politicians who will dance around the 
issue of hate. They will not use the buzz words, but they will get 
awful close to it. They did it in Charlottesville. I have

[[Page S6804]]

had people in the basement of my house from law enforcement from time 
to time because the issues get pretty tough, whether it is college 
scholarship admissions or whatever it may be. We have to stand up to 
the evils of society today. If we don't do it, nobody will.

  I decided I was going to tell you what I really believe, and that is, 
America, we have a problem, just like Apollo had. Our problem is we are 
not going to repeat ourselves. We are not going to exist much longer.
  We live in the greatest country on the face of this Earth. There is 
not anybody any better than the United States of America. Everybody is 
trying to break in. Nobody is trying to break out.
  We are always passing laws, not because they are breaking out; they 
are all trying to break in. Why? Because it is the safest, happiest, 
richest place in the world. We have the best people to protect that 
wealth and that happiness. We have enough people go in the military on 
a voluntary basis. Less than 1 percent of our population serves in the 
military. It makes us the strongest defender of freedom and opportunity 
in the world.
  If we ever lose that--if we ever lose the club or the two-by-four 
that the mule gets used to, we are going to lose our coverage of 
ethics, standby support, and all the other things we love and things we 
do. We are that close.
  I see things happening--which I am asked about by people--that scare 
me. I have heard some people I know say some things that terrify me. We 
are better than the hate and the vile statements that some people make. 
We have to do better than that. We have to talk not over them or under 
them, but we have to talk to them. We have to sit down and say: Why did 
you say that? What is your problem? If we have a problem, let's get it 
out in the open and talk about it.
  This is the best country in the world. The strongest country in the 
world cannot succumb to crushing itself inwardly if we look the other 
way in the challenges of life. The challenges of life today are 
America's changing. It is changing for lots of reasons.
  There are a lot of people who are big internet people and all that, 
and they have all the solutions. I think the solution is right here. It 
is in their heart.
  I am telling you from my heart that after 45 years in elected office, 
raising three children and eight grandchildren--and my kids have done a 
great job of raising them, living in a great community and working, 
attending a great church, and doing the things I have done--I see some 
of it slipping away. Churches don't have the memberships they used to 
have, and it is significant. School curriculum is getting a whole lot 
tougher than it used to be. I was chairman of the board of education 
for the State for a few years. A lot of the traditional things we all 
love and believe in, like God and country, like school curriculum, 
religion, Sunday school, and things like that--they have their 
challenges.
  I am going to roll up my sleeves and do whatever I can with the life 
I have left. I said I am going to leave on December 31, but it is not 
because I am leaving you. I am not leaving you. I am going to be with 
you a lot longer than I thought I would because of what I am doing. I 
want to be here for you, and I want to be here when that bell rings to 
say: America, we don't have a problem anymore. We solved it. You helped 
us do it through our tax policies, through our Federal policies, 
through our education policies, and how we treat people. We helped you 
do it. Let's not get back in that shape again.
  We have the people and the spirit of   John Lewis and other people I 
know in this room who are willing to do it. Some think this is all just 
a bunch of Sunday school folly that somebody who is leaving believes 
in. Don't believe that. I will be back to make a speech again sometime 
and give you a progress report. We need some progress.
  Now, the last thing I want to talk about--the best thing--the example 
to me of what bipartisanship means is a picture taken of   John Lewis 
and me last week. Bipartisanship doesn't mean one is Black and one is 
White--could be one Black and one White, could be. But John is Black 
and I am White, and we are different about other things.
  When John and I were addressing the House at a tribute to me, 
unfortunately for everybody else, I liked it. We had a great time. When 
John's time to speak came, he made a beautiful speech too. It was very 
meaningful to me because we know what the buzz words were. We know what 
we said to make it sound like we were really liberal or positive. We 
knew we really weren't.
  John knew. John knew who deserved cover and who didn't, which takes 
as much guts as somebody who knows what is right and what is wrong. So 
John made this beautiful speech, and I said: You know, this is my time 
to pay John back. All these years he has helped me out with so many 
things I have done.
  I went to his 75th birthday because I am 75, and I wanted to see what 
I was going to look like. I looked in the mirror, and I didn't look 
like me.
  John and I turned out to be really good friends. I went to John and 
said: John, I thank you for that speech. That was the best I ever 
heard.
  I opened my arms and hugged him, not for show and not for display and 
not for any purpose except to hug him because I love him. I know what 
he has done for me and this country, as well as so many other things.
  But John hugged me, and it got pretty long there for a minute, and 
that didn't bother me. But the TV people went crazy, so the best 
picture you could have seen last week among the popular pictures in 
magazines and the like was John hugging me on the floor of the House.
    Tom Graves and all the others from the Georgia delegation are here. 
I am sorry I haven't called out everybody's name; I haven't been able 
to see everybody. But they all came up and said: Thank you for doing 
that. I hope everybody back in Georgia sees that.
  I said: That is what you are going to tell them. Here in the Senate 
at a luncheon next Tuesday, we all need to be seen doing the things 
they don't expect us to do. We are doing what is right for a change, 
and I just want them to feel good.
  Politics doesn't need to be a feel-good business anymore. It needs to 
be a do-the-right-thing business. I tell you, I am big on 
bipartisanship. Whether you are Black or White, Republican or Democrat, 
whatever it might be, find a way to find common ground. Give it a 
chance to work, and if it doesn't, be a future friend. That is my 
slogan. When I started my business and people wouldn't buy a house from 
me, I would shake their hand and say: Thank you for looking for me, and 
when you buy your next one, call me, and I will do a better job because 
all I have are customers and future customers. I addressed everybody as 
a future customer, and I got some.
  When I got into politics and I started asking people to vote for me, 
I said: All I have out there in Georgia are friends and future friends. 
So when we walked away from a Republican meeting somewhere and somebody 
had given me their right hand in the face and said, ``We are not going 
to vote for you,'' I said, ``I tell you what. I will give you another 
chance in 2 years so we can be a future friend, not less of a friend.''
  Friends and future friends are what it is all about. If you find 
anybody in business who helps you make it through life, you will make 
it through life and be treated that way. Life is a win-win proposition 
if you do it good. It is not a win-lose proposition. It is win-win. But 
you have to demand it, whichever side of the transition you are on.
  So on a day in which I have had more nice things said about me than I 
deserve, it has brought clarity to me. I am going to tell you how much 
this place really means.
  I am the happiest guy who could ever be. I am happy because I haven't 
cried yet. I am more happy because of all of you. I think you know what 
I am talking about. We can do it. We can do anything. We may be called 
liberal and may be called a RINO and may be called whatever it is. 
Let's solve the problem, and then see what happens.
  Most people who call people names and point fingers are people who 
don't have a solution themselves but just want to make damn sure you 
don't solve it. We have to start doing that, and then bipartisanship 
will become a way you accomplish things, a way you live, a state of 
being. It will be the end of a bad time and the beginning of a new one, 
and I want to live long enough to see both.

[[Page S6805]]

  God bless all of you, and thank you for your support and your 
friendship. It means more to me than I can ever tell you. I will always 
be there for you, whether it is buying dinner, going to church, or just 
listening to one of your speeches when I don't have anything else to 
do. God bless all of you.
  (Applause, Senators rising.)
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Capito). The Senator from Georgia.