[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16652-16653]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                     WELCOME TO SENATOR ZELL MILLER

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brownback). The majority leader.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, in just a moment we will hear the maiden 
speech of the new junior Senator from Georgia. First, I want to say he 
is certainly going to have an excellent senior Senator from Georgia 
with whom to work. I hope he will follow Senator Cleland's admonition 
to ``go for the max'' every day.
  We extend our congratulations and our hearty welcome to the new 
junior Senator from Georgia, Mr. Zell Miller. We spoke briefly, and he 
knows we have heavy hearts still for our friend, Senator Paul 
Coverdell, but we appreciate the way in which he has approached this 
position already.
  He is one of our colleagues. He is a Senator. We welcome him, and we 
commit to him to work with him on behalf of the people of Georgia and 
the United States.
  Congratulations and welcome.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I join the majority leader and my 
colleagues in welcoming the newest Member of the Senate, Senator Zell 
Miller of Georgia.
  Two things bring Zell Miller to the Senate. The first is the sudden 
death of our friend Paul Coverdell which has left us all very deeply 
saddened. The other thing that brings Zell Miller to the Senate is his 
own profound sense of duty to his State and his Nation.
  Zell Miller did not seek this job. In fact, he did not want it. Two 
weeks ago, he and his wife Shirley were living in his hometown, a tiny 
speck on the map, a place called Young Harris in the mountains of north 
Georgia. They were living in the same house his mother built herself 
nearly 70 years ago with yellow stones she hauled out of a nearby 
river.
  He was teaching history and politics at Young Harris College where he 
began his working life more than 40 years earlier and where his father 
had taught before him. He was happier than he could ever recall being. 
He had no intention of ever holding public office again and certainly 
no intention of moving to Washington.
  Then came the awful shock of Senator Coverdell's death. In the days 
that followed, when he was asked if he would serve out the term, Zell 
Miller realized there was something that had a stronger claim on his 
heart than that old yellow stone house and hills surrounding it; that 
was serving the people of Georgia.
  Zell Miller has spent more than 40 years doing exactly that. He began 
his public life in 1958 when he ran for mayor of his hometown. In 1960, 
he was elected to the Georgia State Senate at the age of 28. In 1974, 
he won his first statewide race for Lieutenant Governor, an office he 
held for 16 years. In 1990 and again in 1994, the people of Georgia 
chose him to be their Governor.

[[Page 16653]]

  During his first term as Governor, Zell Miller guided Georgia through 
a serious recession without raising taxes or cutting vital services. 
Throughout his years as Governor, Zell Miller invested heavily in all 
levels of Georgia's public education system, including statewide 
prekindergarten, school technology, and new school construction. A 
cornerstone of his legacy as Georgia's Governor is the HOPE Scholarship 
Program, which covers college tuition for every Georgia student who 
graduates high school with a B average or better.
  Years before others, he saw how technology could bring new hope and 
opportunities to rural communities. In his first 2 years as Governor, 
he established a long-distance learning program and a telemedicine 
network in Georgia. He cut taxes for working families and oversaw the 
passage of tougher penalties for violent and repeat criminals. Through 
it all, he remained Georgia's most popular Governor since political 
polling began. When he left the Governor's office in 1999, polls showed 
him with an approval rating of about 85 percent.
  One reason he was such a successful Governor is that, like Paul 
Coverdell, Zell Miller builds bridges, not walls; like Senator 
Coverdell, he is committed to bipartisan progress. They are not from 
the same party, but in some fundamental ways they are cut from the same 
cloth.
  Zell Miller's success is that he has always taken the long view. As 
he once told a reporter:

       I'm enough of a history professor to know that your real 
     judge is not your contemporaries, but history.

  In deciding public policy, he has said, the most important question 
is not, How will this affect my chances in the next election? The 
proper question is, What will this mean for my grandchildren?
  Mr. President, I can't think of a better standard by which to judge 
our decisions in this body, nor can I think of a better person to fill 
the seat vacated by our friend Paul Coverdell.
  Senator Miller, welcome to the Senate. We are honored to have you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from the great State of Georgia.

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