[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 119 (Wednesday, July 12, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2348-S2349]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Business Before the Senate

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that 
notwithstanding rule XXII, if cloture is invoked on the Kotagal 
nomination, all postcloture time be considered expired at 11:30 a.m. on 
Thursday, July 13; further, that if cloture is invoked on the Uhlmann 
nomination, all postcloture time be considered expired and the vote on 
the confirmation be at a time to be determined by the majority leader 
in consultation with the Republican leader; further, that following the 
cloture vote on the Uhlmann nomination, the Senate proceed to 
legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with 
Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; further, 
that at 1:45 p.m., the Senate proceed to executive session to vote on 
the motion to invoke cloture on the Bloomekatz nomination.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SCHUMER. For the information of the Senate, the 4 p.m. votes will 
be the last votes of the day.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The junior Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to 
speak for 10 minutes prior to the scheduled vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                 Remembering Lowell Palmer Weicker, Jr.

  Mr. MURPHY. I come to the floor to talk about one of the greatest 
citizens, leaders, and public servants in the history of my State, 
Lowell Palmer Weicker, Jr., who died June 28.
  We held services for him in Greenwich on Monday, and I want to 
celebrate him for a moment with my colleagues, because they don't make 
them like Lowell Weicker any longer.
  Lowell Weicker served virtually every capacity you could helping to 
lead our State. He was a first selectman. He was a State 
representative. He was a Congressman. He was a Senator here in this 
Chamber, and he was a Governor. But throughout his long, storied tenure 
as an elected official--for most of that time a Republican, as Governor 
an Independent--he led a life that was led by one simple axiom: Do what 
is right.
  He put his principles, his convictions, and what he thought was right 
for our State above every other political consideration--certainly 
above party. He bucked his party here over and over and over again. His 
autobiography was titled ``Maverick.'' But he also made decisions for 
the betterment of the State that ran directly contrary to his own 
political interests. And I will talk about the most famous of those 
decisions, those calls that he made, in a moment, when he was Governor.
  I got to know Lowell Weicker only in the last decade of his life, and 
I am sorry for that because he played a very big role in my decision to 
pursue public service as a vocation.
  Lowell Weicker was born in Paris. He was raised on Park Avenue in 
Manhattan and Oyster Bay on Long Island. He followed his father's 
footsteps through prep school, to college at Yale. He graduated Yale in 
1953, University of Virginia Law School in 1958. He served 2 years in 
the Army as an artillery officer.
  He began his political career as a local representative serving his 
town of Greenwich. He was a State representative, and then he was first 
selectman. He ran first for Congress in 1968. He unseated a three-term 
Democrat representing Fairfield County. And from that first race, you 
could see that Lowell Weicker was going to be a different kind of 
political leader.
  He ran to the left of his Democratic opponent on the issue of 
Vietnam. He ran for Congress as a Republican who opposed President 
Nixon's war. And as Congressman, he staked out a series of contrary 
positions to his party, earning him, early on, the reputation of 
someone who was just going to do what he thought was right over and 
over and over. Later in life, he said: There is going to be this 
crucial moment in your career. The question is whether you mature or 
whether you are going to be an ideologue. Lowell Weicker was never an 
ideologue. And there is no question of whether he matured. He was proud 
of the fact that he changed his stance on issues over the course of his 
career.
  When he got to Congress, he supported prayer in schools. He ended up 
as a Senator, here, successfully leading the opposition to President 
Reagan's push for a constitutional amendment to allow organized prayer 
in public schools. He changed. He matured. He didn't run from that. He 
was proud of it.
  In the Senate, he is probably best known to be the first Republican 
to call for President Nixon's resignation. Speaking about his 
Republican Party that he was so proud of, he said:

       Let me [be] clear, because I have got to have my partisan 
     moment, Republicans do not cover up; Republicans do not go 
     ahead and threaten; Republicans do not go ahead and commit 
     illegal acts; and, God knows, Republicans don't view their 
     fellow Americans as enemies to be harassed. . . . I can 
     assure you, this Republican and those I serve with, look upon 
     all Americans as human beings to be loved and won.

  In 1981, he was the only Republican to vote against President 
Reagan's first budget. As I mentioned, he fought hard against that 
constitutional amendment to allow organized prayer in schools because 
he came to believe very deeply in the separation of church and State. 
But maybe what defines Lowell Weicker's career in the Senate, more than 
Watergate, was his ability to see the future. He always talked about 
the fact that he was living for the future.
  When standing up for people living with HIV and AIDS was 
controversial, Lowell Weicker was leading the fight on the Senate floor 
to put early money into AIDS research. When it wasn't a foregone 
conclusion that we would make sure that people with disabilities had 
access to buildings in this country, Lowell Weicker wrote the Americans 
with Disabilities Act. It passed just

[[Page S2349]]

after he left the Senate, but he was the originator of that 
legislation.
  Today, Sheldon Whitehouse reminds us of our obligation to our oceans. 
Before anybody else was talking about the oceans, it was Lowell Weicker 
down here talking about the need to invest in oceans and oceans' 
research.
  But I remember Lowell Weicker when he became Governor. Lowell Weicker 
ran as an Independent for Governor. He won a three-way race. And he was 
facing a State crisis, a fiscal crisis of epic proportions. He didn't 
like the idea of a State income tax. He, frankly, opposed the idea 
earlier in his career. But he surveyed every other option necessary to 
rescue Connecticut from its political and fiscal crisis, and he judged 
that an income tax was the only path forward.
  And so he took a step that he knew would mean that he could only 
serve one term in office. He was a young man when he became Governor. 
He was in his late fifties or early sixties, but he stood up and said 
the only way for Connecticut to be fiscally sound going into the future 
is to have an income tax. He fought both Republicans and Democrats to 
get that done, and he got it done.
  I was 17 years old at the time when Lowell Weicker became Governor 
and made that proposal. I don't think I had any thoughts on whether an 
income tax was the right or the wrong thing, but what I saw, for the 
first time, was a political leader standing up and doing what they 
thought was right, even though they knew it was unpopular, even though 
he knew it was likely going to be the end of his political career. And 
I was mesmerized. I was mesmerized by this act of political courage, by 
this act of political statesmanship, and it was one of the early 
examples that convinced me that there was honor in public service.
  And so I am deeply grateful to the example that Lowell Weicker set 
for all of us, during his time in the Senate, the first Republican to 
call for Nixon's resignation, to the time as Governor, where he set the 
State on a course of fiscal sanity.
  During those income tax debates, thousands of people would show up at 
the capitol. In fact, one day 40,000 people showed up at the State 
capitol. They hung Governor Lowell Weicker in effigy. He didn't sit in 
his office. He walked into the crowd to try to reason and negotiate 
with them. It didn't last long. He was pelted with cans and bottles of 
sodas. He had to be hustled out of the crowd as quickly as he went in, 
but it caused Howard Baker, one of his great friends in the Senate, to 
say: Lowell Weicker, ``[t]hat is the only man I ever met who would 
strike a match to look into a gas tank.''
  It has been popular to say, over the last few days as we have been 
eulogizing Lowell Weicker, that he belonged to a different era in which 
you could just be for what you thought was right and not worry about 
the political consequences. But I think that is a copout, and I think 
my friend Lowell would say that is a copout. Doing the right thing 
should be timeless. Putting country over party should be timeless.
  There is no reason why all of us can't learn a little bit about 
Governor Senator Lowell Weicker's record upon his passing and use him 
as a model for how we act as public servants as well.
  Lowell Weicker died last week at age 92, one of the most 
consequential people in Connecticut's history, and I choose to remember 
Lowell Weicker and the example he set as timeless.
  I yield the floor.