[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 172 (Thursday, October 19, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5102-S5103]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO MATT SQUERI

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: The 
purpose of life is . . . to be useful, to be honorable, to be 
compassionate, to have it make some difference that you lived and lived 
well. It is not the length of life, but the depth of life that matters.
  In that spirit, I rise today to bid farewell to a member of my team, 
Matt

[[Page S5103]]

Squeri, who is one of the most useful, honorable, compassionate people 
I have ever worked with, and his public service has made a difference 
in the lives of so many, including the lives some of the most 
vulnerable people around the world.
  Not only do I want to thank him for the length of his service in the 
Senate, I want to thank him for the depth of his service. Matt joined 
my team in 2019 after several years working for our former colleague 
Senator Heidi Heitkamp and, before that, the Department of Defense and 
the Center For Strategic and International Studies.
  His legislative skill and his policy expertise were immediately 
evident. What took a little longer to emerge was his encyclopedic 
knowledge of college football--especially for our shared alma mater, 
Stanford--not to mention his love for watching boxing.
  For those of you who know Matt, that might sound surprising. But if 
you have worked with him, it makes perfect sense because, if the cause 
is worthwhile, if it is for democracy, if it is for justice, if it is 
for human rights, then Matt loves a good fight. He doesn't crash in, 
like a brawler. He works methodically, like a boxer.

  A great example of that was early on, when negotiations on a bill had 
been stuck in a stalemate with the House for months and months. We had 
gone round and round with the House, and then Matt went to work. He 
floated over conflicts, he parried the problems, and, within 2 months, 
he knocked it out and passed it into law.
  He has taken on much bigger fights since then. After joining my team 
he set out to cultivate working relationships with the staff of Members 
on both sides of the aisle of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 
and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. His goal was 
simple: to turn the CECC's--Congressional-Executive Commission on 
China--research, advocacy, and awareness-raising into bipartisan 
legislation and new laws that would make a real difference for real 
people.
  In 2019, as the Chinese Government began its brutal crackdown on Hong 
Kong, Matt led our successful efforts to protect Hong Kong's people by 
banning the export of crowd control equipment to the Hong Kong police.
  Soon, he took on an even more ambitious project: tackling the problem 
of the genocide of the Uighur people and their forced labor in Xinjiang 
Province.
  He helped coordinate with the CECC the release of a landmark report 
in March 2020. That report became the launching point for passing some 
of the most ambitious human rights legislation the United States has 
ever considered, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
  The premise of the bill was quite simple: The American consumers have 
the right to know if their products are made with forced labor in 
China, and they have the right to choose not to do business with those 
companies.
  Matt officially joined the CECC staff in 2021, and he was central to 
the negotiations that began in committee in January and continued all 
the way to final passage in December.
  And he didn't stop there. He pushed the Olympics and the NBA to stop 
using uniforms made by--or made from materials made by--forced labor in 
China.
  China, multinational corporations, the Olympics, the NBA--you see 
what I mean about him not shying away from a fight. And, since then, he 
has helped us hold hearings, introduce legislation, and improve 
policies to protect the people of Hong Kong, the people of Tibet, the 
Uighur people, and to stand up to the Chinese Government's 
transnational repression.
  There is a lot more I could say about Matt's work on legislation. 
What stands out to me though and to everyone who knows Matt is just how 
wonderful he is to work with. As one of my senior staff said about 
starting in our office, ``Matt was the person I looked up to, the 
person I wanted to emulate.''
  He is fun, he is unflappable, he is morally clear, and he is 
legislatively masterful. And he is generous with his time, whether he 
is helpful to those new to our team in learning their way around or 
helping them understand complex human rights issues in far corners of 
the world. We will miss having him as part of our team.
  I quoted Emerson at the start of these remarks. Later, in the same 
piece, Emerson wrote:

       [T]o leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy 
     child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to 
     know even one life has breathed easier because you lived. 
     This is to have succeeded.

  Countless people around the world who have never met Matt Squeri have 
breathed easier because of his work.
  So it is with gratitude that Team Merkley, the Congressional-
Executive Commission on China, and I thank Matt Squeri for his service 
to this institution, his service to this Nation, and his service to 
human rights around the world. We wish him all the best as he moves on 
to his next assignment.

                          ____________________