[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 11716-11735]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               TRIBUTE TO FORMER PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN

  Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to the life 
and the legacy of former President Ronald Reagan. President Reagan 
served our country with honor and distinction, and I feel privileged to 
have the opportunity to reflect on the contributions he made to our 
country and to the world.
  Upon hearing the news of his death, I thought back to the footprints 
he left on my memory. He was, indeed, one of the greatest leaders, I 
believe, of our time, and I was honored to know him.
  President Reagan provided our country with an enormous amount of hope 
following a period of national remorse and confusion about the 
direction of our country and about its place in the world. Let us not 
forget the context into which he emerged to seize his place in history 
and to move the United States forward with a determination and an 
optimism about the future that was so recently lacking.
  The ghost of Vietnam haunted our foreign policy and the specter of 
Watergate informed our politics.
   The election of Ronald Reagan, however, truly changed America. He 
instilled hope that every American could be optimistic about his or her 
future; hope that communism would not endure and that freedom and 
democracy could ultimately vanquish the forces that sought to pull our 
country, and many others, into the abyss of despair and hostility that 
permeated much of the world; hope that personal freedom without the 
encumbrances of big government would revitalize the economy; hope that 
the rejuvenated armed forces he would lead as Commander-in-Chief could 
make the United States once again truly the leader of the Free World in 
a struggle for survival against the Soviet Union.
   President Reagan's eternal optimism gave our country a renewed sense 
of self, a belief that the American dream was possible and that every 
individual had the opportunity to create his or her own success. Ronald 
Reagan believed that each new day was filled with high purpose and 
opportunity for accomplishment. He gave America back the hope we had 
lost for many years.
   President Reagan's leadership and courage were central to ending the 
Cold War. He was certain that freedom and democracy could prevail in 
all corners of the globe if only the one country with the capacity to 
do so would step in and show the way.
   Many Americans who were not yet born or were too young to understand 
could not appreciate what this man accomplished. The first half of the 
20th Century was marked by warfare on a global scale. The First World 
War--the war to end all wars--had decimated much of Europe. A 
generation was lost to the trenches and newly introduced technologies 
of destruction such as the machine gun and the tank.
   The war that followed, World War II, managed to go well beyond its 
predecessor, as the failure of European diplomacy once again dragged 
the continent into the horrors and devastation that man continued to 
wrought. The epic struggle against the forces of fascism, a struggle we 
remembered this past weekend with the anniversary of the Normandy 
landings, was a fight against evil in every sense of the word. Its 
ending, however, set the stage for a new type of conflict--a conflict 
that would take the second half of the century to resolve, mercifully 
without the nuclear war that existed as the logical culmination of the 
stand-off that came to be known as the cold war.
   The skills, strengths and enormous fortune that kept the cold war 
from turning hot transcended, of course, multiple presidential 
administrations. It was brought to its successful resolution, however, 
through the vision and strength of exactly one man: President Reagan. 
Decades of conflict management, in which experienced diplomats and 
elected officials sought primarily to prevent nuclear war and to 
contain the Soviet threat, had succeeded in preventing nuclear war. 
That was an incredible feat, to be sure.
   What set Ronald Reagan apart, however, was his vision of a world 
without the nuclear stand-off that had become an indelible image in the 
public psyche of virtually the entire world. What set Ronald Reagan 
apart was his visceral belief that the United States, and the freedom 
and prosperity it represented, had to, and could, not just contain the 
threat but eliminate it without the awful specter of nuclear war coming 
to fruition.
   Derided by his opponents both here and abroad as a dangerous cowboy, 
President Reagan stood firm in his beliefs and led the country to 
victory. He believed, correctly, and at variance with the views of many 
a university professor and politician, that the United States could 
force the Soviet Union over the cliff on which it rested, buttressed on 
the backs of the millions it held in its tyrannical grip.
   This was a truly great man.
   Limited government, lower taxes, and individual responsibility will 
also be part of President Reagan's legacy. He believed that each 
American and each community were the best problem-solvers. Rather than 
making Government bigger to address the challenges our country faced, 
Reagan stood firm in his commitment to the contributions that could be 
made through personal empowerment and a renewed sense of political and 
social responsibility.
   I was just a second-term congressman when President Reagan came into 
office. Although a Democrat at the time, I closely identified with his 
commitment to lower taxes, limit government and rebuild the military. I 
shared President Reagan's conservative philosophies, and he helped me, 
and millions of other Americans, have a restored faith in the purpose 
of our Government.
   I also recall a time when President Reagan asked me to breakfast at 
the White House. I, a second-term Congressman at the time, was 
certainly impressed. I had always been a conservative Democrat, and he 
had hoped that I would change parties, as he had done when the 
Democratic Party ceased to represent the values he held dear. I 
declined his offer to do so at the time, explaining my strong desire to 
work to fix the Democratic Party from within. The President knew 
better, telling me that the party was in the midst of a transformation 
that would not be reversed any time soon. It took me more years to 
fully appreciate the President's wisdom. But appreciate it, I did, and 
I followed his lead in abandoning the party of my youth in deference to 
another. While I took a little longer to change than he would have 
liked, he did provide me with much of the foundation as to why I needed 
to leave the Democratic Party. I have always appreciated his guidance, 
humility and humor.
   I believe history will treat Ronald Reagan well. He uplifted a 
frustrated country through his optimism and hope. He changed a troubled 
world with his devotion to the spread of freedom. Ronald Reagan 
embodied the American spirit, and our country and the world are forever 
grateful for his service.
   I offer my condolences to Mrs. Reagan and the entire family. They 
have endured much heartache with his illness, much grief with his 
passing, and much joy with his life. My thoughts and prayers are with 
them in this difficult time.
   May God bless Ronald Reagan and his memory.
  Mr. FITZGERALD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. President, I rise to speak as if in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. We are in morning business. The Senator is 
recognized.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. President, my colleagues and Americans, President 
Ronald Reagan will be returning to Washington tomorrow for the very 
last time. I rise to honor the memory and life of the greatest leader 
of the 20th century and to express my sympathy to

[[Page 11717]]

his wonderful and loyal family--in particular, his loving wife and 
partner Nancy.
  Nancy Reagan has always been an outstanding and inspirational role 
model for our entire Nation. And that has never been more clearly 
displayed than through her wonderful courage and love during the 
difficult journey she and President Reagan traveled during the past 
decade.
  Like so many, I was inspired to actually answer the call of public 
service because of then-Governor Ronald Reagan's positive, principled 
message. In 1976, I began as a young lieutenant in the Reagan 
revolution when I was asked to chair Young Virginians for Reagan. 
Today, I am still motivated to work to advance his individual-
empowering philosophy in government.
  Ronald Reagan entered the political stage in 1964 with a speech which 
summed up a philosophy that would guide him through his Presidency two 
decades hence, and which turned the tide of world history.
  Mr. Reagan said in 1964, ``You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. 
We can preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on 
Earth, or we can sentence them to take the first step into a thousand 
years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children say of us we 
justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.''
  Indeed, Ronald Wilson Reagan did have a rendezvous with destiny. 
President Reagan rejuvenated the spirit of America. His determined, 
optimistic leadership lit the torch of liberty and allowed it to shine 
in the dark recesses of oppressed countries around the world.
  Ronald Reagan believed in the innate goodness of mankind. He believed 
and advocated the wisdom of our country's foundational principles. He 
believed that given the opportunity, all men and women would seek 
freedom and liberty and with it unleash creativity, ingenuity, hard 
work, and economic growth.
  He touched deeply the hearts and minds of Americans through his 
genuinely believed, commonsense conservative words of encouragement--
from his first inaugural speech in 1981, to his inspirational State of 
the Union Addresses, to his moving memorial tribute to our lost 
Challenger explorer, to his strong demand to tear down the wall of 
oppression, to his passionate tribute to the defenders of liberty at 
Normandy 20 years ago this week. Those were the words he delivered. 
Those words which he delivered are now as much a part of the fabric of 
America as the threads of our flag, Old Glory. Lee Greenwood's song, 
``God Bless the U.S.A.,'' was an anthem to Ronald Reagan's renewed 
America.
  Historians will surely discuss and debate the impact of Ronald 
Reagan's 8 years as President for generations to come. But there is no 
doubt his legacy has already been revealed. In fact, he foresaw his 
legacy. He was there at the bicentennial in 1981 of the Battle of 
Yorktown. He gave a wonderful speech at Yorktown, VA.
  He said as follows, ``We have come to this field to celebrate the 
triumph of an idea--that freedom will eventually triumph over tyranny. 
It is and always will be a warning to those who would usurp the rights 
of others. Time will find them beaten. The beacon of freedom shines 
here for all who will see, inspiring free men and captives alike, and 
no wall, no curtain, nor totalitarian state can shut it out.''
  To put this in context, when Ronald Reagan became our 40th President, 
Americans had lost their faith in our leaders and in the role of 
America in the world. Government at home was restraining its citizens 
with oppressive taxation and burdensome regulations. Our national 
malaise led to historically high unemployment, high interest rates and 
inflation, low productivity, and a stagnant stock market.
  Our moral authority around the world had been eroding, and confidence 
in the ideals of liberty and democracy were replaced by the fear of 
expanding tyranny, communism, and repression.
  America yearned for a leader who could change the direction of our 
Nation and make them proud of our heritage once again. Ronald Reagan 
answered that call.
  Many tributes this week rightfully point to President Reagan's 
unwavering optimism and belief in the inner strength of Americans, and 
indeed all human beings. He understood that they could be motivated and 
inspired to higher ideals with our competitive nature. No more hand-
wringing. He wanted action. Indeed, he challenged us to look no further 
than his administration and ourselves for solutions. He said, ``If not 
us, who? If not now, when?''
  Beyond his unshakable faith in mankind was his consistent adherence 
to principles which were unfashionable and often scorned when he came 
to office but today which are solidly embraced and winning the minds of 
people across our country and throughout the world. He acted on his 
beliefs that government interference should be restrained and that free 
people should be unrestrained, without limits. We prospered and we 
thrived with the creation of jobs and opportunities.
  One of my very favorite principles of President Reagan was declared 
in his 1985 State of the Union address when he said, ``Every dollar the 
government does not take from us, every decision it does not make for 
us, will make our economy stronger, our lives more abundant and our 
future more free.''
  And so it is. Through tax cuts that return tax dollars to those whose 
hard work and ingenuity earned them, to reducing burdensome 
regulations, President Reagan presided over the beginning of the most 
robust peace expansion of our economy in the history of our Nation.
  But President Reagan believed the blessings of liberty must not be 
bestowed only on a few nations and only to those blessed to be born on 
free soil; Ronald Reagan, with the strength of his convictions, 
exported and advanced democracy to continents, countries, and people 
yearning to taste the sweet nectar of liberty.
  He knew the evil communistic empire could not be sustained and would 
collapse under the weight of a determined effort to challenge the 
Soviets on their failed policies, both foreign and domestic. He 
reversed decades of policy calling for containment of that oppressive 
tyrannical system, and he boldly asserted that the advancement of 
freedom and liberty must be America's No. 1 foreign policy objective. 
Indeed, he believed that it is our solemn moral obligation to do so.
  Now we are seeing his greatest legacy. Hundreds of millions of free 
people, from the Baltics in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia through Poland, 
Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania, 
all people once repressed behind the Iron Curtain are now joining NATO. 
They are true friends and allies. Yes, they are breathing that 
invigorating wind of freedom.
  One of the last public statements Ronald Reagan made was in 1983. He 
provided us with a vision which will guide us now and in the future. 
Ronald Reagan said, ``History comes and history goes, but principles 
endure and ensure future generations to defend liberty--not as a gift 
from the government, but a blessing from our Creator. Here in America 
the lamp of individual conscience burns bright. By that I know we will 
all be guided to that dreamed of day when no one wields a sword and no 
one drags a chain.''
  It is Ronald Reagan's inspiring character, courage, unflinching 
adherence to principles, policies, and eloquence that brought forth a 
renaissance for the United States of America, a rebirth of freedom, and 
the world also experienced that renaissance at a crucial juncture in 
history. He fanned the flames of freedom and that torch of liberty will 
continue to burn brightly by his inspiration and example. We all thank 
God for blessing the United States and the world with Ronald Reagan.
  President Reagan, as you finally enter the gates of that shining city 
on the hill you always talked about, rest peacefully, knowing you left 
the world a much better place than it was when you arrived. For that, 
the free people of your Nation are eternally grateful.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

[[Page 11718]]


  Mr. STEVENS. I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks 
Senator Kyl be recognized and then Senator Brownback.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I come to the Senate today to join others 
to remember a good friend and a great American leader.
  In 1977, I was elected to the Senate leadership and served as 
Assistant Minority Leader until the 1980 election. I don't think anyone 
at that time could have predicted the sweeping changes that were about 
to take place. When Ronald Reagan was elected, he ushered in a new era 
of government so profound it became known as the ``Reagan Revolution.'' 
That was an exciting time in Washington.
  As I became assistant majority leader and began a new life--Howard 
Baker was the majority leader. The day before I was to marry my wife 
Catherine, Howard called and asked me to replace him on a trip to China 
because Deng Xiaoping wanted to understand what ``Reaganism'' meant. My 
wife Catherine and I were married on December 30, and we left for China 
on December 31. To prepare for those talks, I reviewed all of President 
Reagan's actions as Governor of California and his promises made during 
the election. I was honored to be offered the opportunity to explain 
and defend his record.
  When Congress convened in 1981, those of us in the Senate leadership 
went down almost weekly for meetings at the White House. Occasionally, 
President Reagan came up to Howard Baker's office as Majority Leader to 
meet with us. I don't think any other President has done that as often 
as Ronald Reagan. President Reagan always tackled very serious subjects 
in these meetings, but he kept us relaxed. He usually began our 
discussions in the Cabinet room with a joke or a story. His leadership 
brought out the best of all of us.
  During his administration we were able to accomplish a lot for the 
American people and set the Nation and the world on a new course. Much 
has been said already about the mark President Reagan left on our 
national defense and foreign policy. Those were his greatest 
contributions as President, and I viewed those decisions from a unique 
advantage point.
  I was sworn in as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense 
Subcommittee just days before President Reagan took the oath of office. 
He immediately began to move toward a 600-ship Navy, new aircraft 
development, and space-based missile defense systems. President Reagan 
understood that the first thing we had to do was restore our military 
capability. The Soviets were outspending us at that time and stealing 
our secrets. The President took control of that situation, and in the 
years since President Reagan left office, either Senator Inouye or I 
have been chairman of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee. Each of 
us has carried forth the vision President Reagan had for our military.
  History has overlooked President Reagan's personal commitment to arms 
control, however. In 1985, the President supported the creation of the 
Arms Control Observer Group in the Senate, a group of Senators that 
served as official observers at any arms control negotiations involving 
the United States. I co-chaired that group along with Senators Lugar, 
Nunn, and Pell. Our goal was to avoid the problems we faced in the 
1970s when three successive arms control treaties were unable to 
achieve ratification in the Senate. Our group went to Geneva 3 or 4 
times a year and came back and briefed the President, Secretary Shultz, 
and the Senators who were involved in arms control matters.
  The President encouraged the Soviets to decrease the size of their 
arsenals and to reduce the size of our nuclear forces. This was one of 
the most significant parts of the Reagan agenda, the overall concern 
with arms control.
  The President also created a revolutionary new approach to defense 
space research. He brought down the walls between isolated research 
projects and advocated a more comprehensive approach. A lot of the 
aspects of the missile defense system, which he called Star Wars, were 
based upon the research he put into effect then.
  When President Reagan passed away on Saturday, I noted that his death 
coincided with another sad day in American history: On June 5, 36 years 
ago, another great American leader, Senator and Presidential candidate 
Robert Kennedy, was struck down by an assassin's bullet in Los Angeles. 
Although they were from different generations and different political 
parties, Robert Kennedy and Ronald Reagan had a lot in common. Both men 
were leaders who did more than just point the country in the right 
direction. In the words of Bobby Kennedy, they inspired Americans to 
envision a ``world that never was and ask `Why not?'''
  On June 12, 1987, President Reagan inspired all of us to envision a 
new world when he gave his famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate. I 
will never forget the image of President Reagan standing before that 
gate demanding that Gorbachev ``Tear down this wall!''
  Weeks before he gave that speech, the President learned that his 
remarks would be carried in East Germany over the radio, and in one 
part of the speech he spoke directly to the people of East Germany. One 
can only imagine the hope the people on the other side of that wall 
must have felt when they heard the President of the United States 
declare in their native tongue: ``There is only one Berlin.''
  Here at home, President Reagan built, as he called it, a ``shining 
city upon a hill.'' He borrowed that phrase from John Winthrop, an 
early Pilgrim who used it to describe the kind of America he 
envisioned.
  For Reagan, the idea of a ``shining city'' was:

       A tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, 
     wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds 
     living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that 
     hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be 
     city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to 
     anyone with the will and the heart to get there.

  I will always be grateful to President Reagan for teaching us to 
believe in that shining city and for opening its doors so Alaska could 
finally enjoy full citizenship.
  Under President Ronald Reagan, the freeze on the transfer of Alaskan 
lands to our new State and to the Alaskan Native people was finally 
lifted, and we began to receive the land that rightfully belonged to us 
under the Statehood Act that admitted Alaska into our Union. President 
Reagan instructed the Department of the Interior to move quickly as 
possible on that. I do not believe it would have happened that fast had 
he not been elected.
  Under President Reagan, the Village Built Clinic Program began, and 
we set out to establish Indian health service clinics in every Native 
village in Alaska.
  Under President Reagan, we finally addressed the injustice of Aleut 
internment during World War II by awarding reparations to Aleuts who 
had been taken from their homes and sent to what were called ``duration 
villages'' in southeastern Alaska for the duration of the war.
  President Reagan understood Alaska's military and geopolitical 
significance better than any other President. The modernization of 
Alaska's military bases accelerated during his administration.
  What most Alaskans probably remember best about President Reagan is 
how well he understood our State and our way of life. When he came to 
Fairbanks to meet Pope John Paul II, he told the crowd that every time 
he came to Alaska he thought of the poet Robert Service and threatened 
to recite ``The Shooting of Dan McGrew.'' In fact, he did that just 
that one night when Catherine and I were attending a dinner in Chicago. 
We had just flown in from Fairbanks, and I told the crowd that was 
present that the 20-degree weather in Chicago could not compete with 
the harsh weather back home, where the temperature was 50 below. Ronald 
Reagan got up to give his remarks, and he recited Robert Service's poem 
``The Shooting of Dan McGrew'' from memory.
  I distinctly remember him saying this phrase from Service's poem:


[[Page 11719]]

       When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the 
     din and the glare, there stumbled a miner fresh from the 
     creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.

  On the plane ride home, the President told my wife Catherine that his 
mother had kept a first edition of Robert Service's poetry by his 
bedside and read those poems to him as a child. Catherine later sent 
him a first edition of Robert Service that she found in a bookstore in 
New York, and he wrote her a nice letter back telling her he planned to 
memorize ``The Cremation of Sam McGee'' once more.
  I tried many times to get the President to come back to Alaska, but, 
unfortunately, he decided, as the years went by, that he wanted to go 
back to California to ride horses.
  We understood that, and honored him for it. Alaskans took comfort in 
knowing that even if his heart belonged to California, he was raised on 
the words of Robert Service, our favorite poet.
  One of my fondest memories of President Reagan is, strangely enough, 
a phone call I received from him as chairman of the Appropriations 
Subcommittee on Defense. The President called to ask me if I had placed 
funding in the Defense bill that year to procure a new pair of Air 
Force 1 airplanes. I told him that I had. President Reagan told me that 
he had not requested that funding and would veto the bill.
  He said: ``Ted, I'm the President.''
  I said: ``Sir, I understand that, but you won't be President by the 
time the new planes arrive.''
  There was silence on the other end of the line, and when he finally 
spoke, the President said: ``Ted, do you have a design for these 
planes?''
  I will never forget that because the first time a President flew in 
those new planes was when one of them took the retired President and 
Nancy back to California in 1989.
  This week, President Reagan will fly back to Washington for the last 
time. Thousands of Americans will pay tribute to him in the Capitol 
Rotunda and millions more will reflect on his life. Catherine and I 
extend our deepest sympathies to Nancy and the Reagan family, as all of 
us will mourn the loss of a true American hero.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. KYL. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is, by unanimous consent, 
Senator Brownback will follow Senator Kyl. I ask unanimous consent that 
I be allowed to follow Senator Brownback.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, America mourns the loss of an epoch-making 
leader, Ronald Wilson Reagan.
  As the biographer Lou Cannon has said, Reagan ``possessed a special 
`something' that transcended the appeal of ordinary politicians'' and 
he knew it. Even so--and this is an important point--he was neither a 
vain man nor in love with power. In not misusing that special appeal 
that he had, he showed such character and goodness. He could have been, 
but was not, a demagog. He was trying to accomplish his exalted vision 
of this country, only that. And in large measure, he succeeded.
  Militarily, he rebuilt America's capacity to defend itself and its 
allies. Reagan's defense buildup led to U.S. victories in the cold war, 
the Persian Gulf war, and beyond. In fact, dealing skillfully with a 
Congress controlled during most of his Presidency by the other party, 
he secured funding for weapons systems that are still being used.
  Diplomatically, he achieved with the Soviet Union, our adversary 
during most of the last century, an accord that eliminated whole 
classes of nuclear weapons from the stockpiles of both countries.
  Politically, he enabled us to regain confidence in America. His 
confidence in his country and its goodness was utterly unshakeable, so 
he was just the right leader to rise to the fore when the national 
spirit had been battered by our withdrawal from Vietnam, the scandal of 
Watergate, and the malaise that his predecessor identified but could 
not seem to counteract.
  Economically, he slew the dragon of double-digit inflation. He braved 
unpopularity to stay the course with Paul Volcker, Chairman of the 
Federal Reserve, in tightening the money supply. This steadfastness saw 
the United States through its worst economic crisis in 50 years. The 
economy slid deep into a recession before recovering in late 1982.
  Along with tightening the money supply to kill inflation, Reagan was 
convinced that marginal tax rates must be cut to stimulate growth. 
These anti-inflation and tax policies defied the conventional wisdom of 
that time. But they worked. They gave us what the late, great 
journalist Robert Bartley called ``the seven fat years,'' a time of 
unprecedented job creation and economic expansion in America.
  Even as Ronald Reagan won through in domestic policy, he was a 
statesman who left his mark on the world.
  During his two terms in office, early 1981 to the end of 1988, he 
championed the cause of human rights in the Soviet Union and Central 
and Eastern Europe, standing up for freedom, democracy, and civil 
society. He spoke passionately of God-given rights and said self-
government and free markets were the only way to vindicate those 
rights. He wanted the people who were living under oppression to regain 
their dignity, and his words gave hope to millions.
  In his 1982 Evil Empire speech before the British House of Commons, 
President Reagan said:

       While we must be cautious about forcing the pace of change, 
     we must not hesitate to declare our ultimate objectives and 
     to take concrete actions to move toward them. We must be 
     staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole 
     prerogative of a lucky few but the inalienable and universal 
     right of all human beings.

  The Reagan administration fostered democracy around the world in the 
1980s, in Central America, South America, Asia. The Philippines, 
Taiwan, and South Korea all liberalized their societies in ways that 
may not have been possible without the Reagan administration's support.
  President Reagan will go down in history for his doctrine of peace 
through strength. It turned this country around militarily and 
diplomatically and turned the course of the cold war dramatically in 
our favor. It was also a negotiating strategy--the right one, it turned 
out--for dealing with a Communist power that was ailing economically 
but still aggressive. The Soviet Union had last invaded a country the 
year before he was elected, Afghanistan in 1979. The U.S.S.R. was 
engaged in the 1970s in a rapid military buildup.
  Remember also that the prevailing nuclear standoff between the two 
superpowers when Reagan came into office was frightening. They were 
locked in a decades-old equilibrium under which neither attacked the 
other because each could, at the push of a button, destroy the other's 
populations with nuclear weapons. President Reagan once said this 
nuclear standoff, which was called mutual assured destruction, was ``a 
sad commentary on the human condition.''
  He had the courage and the imagination to think of a way out of it: 
erecting a defense against nuclear arms. This would end the practice of 
holding civilian populations hostage to the atomic bomb. It was, he 
believed, both militarily and morally necessary to strike off in this 
new direction. As he pointed the way, he endured heavy criticism and 
even ridicule, but it didn't faze him.
  His idea was brilliant, for even if embarking on this high-tech 
shield against missiles did not lead to a deployable U.S. system right 
away, he knew the Soviets would pour their resources into matching our 
progress toward missile defense. It was a competition they could ill 
afford. The extra burden--economically, and even psychologically, of 
keeping up with missile defense and the entire Reagan military 
buildup--hastened the collapse of the Soviet economy and the Communist 
system itself.
  People who didn't agree with President Reagan called him a saber 
rattler and worse. Opponents wrung their

[[Page 11720]]

hands at this peace-through-strength approach, insisting a buildup of 
U.S. military capabilities couldn't possibly help us if the goal was a 
safer and more peaceful world. Yet the critics were wrong. President 
Reagan, the so-called saber rattler, sat down with Soviet leader 
Mikhail Gorbachev in Washington in December of 1987 and the two men 
signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty which abolished the use 
of all intermediate and shorter range missiles by the United States and 
the Soviet Union.
  The following year the Reagan administration created the On-Site 
Inspection Agency to conduct U.S. inspections of Soviet military 
facilities and to aid Soviet inspections at our facilities. The Reagan-
Gorbachev diplomacy set the stage for the 1990 signing between NATO and 
the Warsaw Pact of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty.
  One of the well-known personal traits of Ronald Reagan was that he 
didn't care who got credit for successful policies. Goodness knows, his 
detractors, then and even now, will deny him any credit he might 
deserve for making the world safer. He did make the world safer, 
though. That is the truth of it. And history will remember him that 
way.
  We can say of Ronald Reagan what Lincoln said in praise of his, 
Lincoln's, personal role model Henry Clay:

       He loved his country partly because it was his own country, 
     but mostly because it was a free country.

  The role model of our time is Ronald Reagan. His principles are the 
principles we now embrace. They will help us to keep this a free 
country and to help others who want to be free.
  As we continue in the wake of September 11 to fight the war on 
terror, we all take comfort and inspiration from the jaunty optimism 
and the seriousness of purpose of Ronald Reagan. And President George 
W. Bush practices Reagan's doctrine of peace through strength. He has 
done so by confronting and defeating tyranny in Afghanistan and Iraq; 
by pursuing deployment of missile defenses; by leading the 
international community to stop the spread of weapons of mass 
destruction; and by demonstrating to the world that the United States 
is willing to rally free peoples in defense of our civilization and our 
democratic way of life.
  Thank you, Ronald Reagan, for showing the way.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to Ronald Reagan, 
my political guiding light. I came to Congress on the second Reagan 
wave in the 1994 election, when Republicans took over the House of 
Representatives. Many of us were raised on Ronald Reagan. His was my 
first Presidential campaign in 1976, when I was still a student at 
Kansas State University. I was riding in a tractor in Kansas when I 
heard the Evil Empire speech. I started pounding on the dashboard, 
saying: That is right, that is right. Then all the pundits came on 
afterward and said how terrible it was. I was a bit confused but 
decided Reagan was right and the pundits were wrong. He went on to 
prove that.
  He was a great contributor to our time and our legacy. I only had the 
pleasure of meeting Ronald Reagan once. I was a White House fellow in 
the Bush 1 White House. We met him in southern California. People had 
always given examples of his legendary humor. This meeting was no 
exception. We were having a meeting for a period of time, and then one 
of the people with whom I was traveling asked him a question: What one 
thing didn't you get done as President that you wish you had gotten 
done. I think he had heard this question before and he had given this 
line before, but he tilted his head back, and you could see the glint 
in his eye and the smile comes across the face, and he said: I wished I 
had brought back the cavalry. That was a line people enjoyed at the 
time, and it was the sort of humorous thing he was so known for in his 
policies. It was part of his greatness.
  While he was a great President, he didn't consider greatness to be 
inherent to him. In other words, he was not full of himself. He 
considered this country great. He considered the position of President 
to be great. But he wasn't full of the feeling of greatness for 
himself, and he always had self-deprecating humor. That was part of 
him.
  Following on the previous speaker, Senator Kyl, I had a chance 
several years back to talk with Eduard Shevardnadze, Foreign Secretary 
under Mikhail Gorbachev, about when Reagan and Gorbachev were 
negotiating on missile reduction and nuclear weapons reduction. This 
was a meeting that took place within the last 3 or 4 years with Mr. 
Shevardnadze. I asked him to reflect on that time period when we were 
having a military defense buildup here under Ronald Reagan and what 
took place in the Soviet Union in that time period. I wanted to get a 
measure from him on that.
  He said of Reagan: Reagan saw the central weakness of the Soviet 
Union. That was its inability to produce goods and services. They were 
spending somewhere between 60 to 80 percent of the GDP of the Soviet 
Union on the military. Along comes Reagan and says: I am moving more 
chips on the table. You will have to match me if you want to stay in 
this race.
  The Soviet Union then was looking around saying, how do we stay in 
the race when we are putting virtually every chip we have right now 
into this military buildup for the cold war. And it was a long way from 
secure at that point in time that the Soviet Union was going to fall 
any time soon. This was a very well-established, militarily strong 
country. What it forced in the Soviet Union was for them to restructure 
their economy and move to openness to try to get more chips on the 
table to grow their economy.
  They introduced the likes of glasnost and perestroika, openness and 
restructuring of the economy. But when you looked at the totalitarian 
Communist system, glasnost and perestroika were inherent 
inconsistencies and led to the demise of the Soviet Union, that along 
with Ronald Reagan's words. These words are from Eduard Shevardnadze. 
Many talked about star wars and how the Soviet Union, at that time when 
Reagan announced star wars--the Soviet Union's leadership sent its best 
scientists to come back and appraise it and tell the political 
leadership if the Americans could do this. The Soviet scientists came 
back after a few months of studying the American proposal--the Reagan 
proposal--for star wars and said we could not. They spent another few 
months looking at it and then returned to the Soviet leadership and 
said if the Americans are willing to stay on this path and put the 
money into doing it, they can do it.
  It sent a shock wave through the leadership in the Soviet system that 
the United States could get this accomplished. Clearly, the deciding 
factor of opening that system led to the demise of the Soviet Union and 
the end of the cold war. There was this wave of freedom for people who 
had been in oppressed societies for their entire existence, and that 
was Ronald Reagan. He understood the source of our national greatness 
was not our wealth or our military power but, rather our belief in the 
dignity of the individual and in the God-given freedom of ordinary 
people to order their lives as they wished. That was the source of his 
view of the United States being a shining city on a hill and a model to 
people the world over, and an inspiring example of a political system 
that put power in the hands of the people, not bureaucrats or judges. 
That was Ronald Reagan.
  We remember President Reagan for restoring our national confidence at 
a time when our country was on the heels of the Vietnam war and the 
impeachment of a President, uncertain about the way forward. We 
remember him for his staunch defense of innocent, unborn human life--an 
issue on which he never wavered--and for the extraordinary step he took 
in authoring a book as President, entitled ``Abortion and the 
Conscience of a Nation,'' because he felt so strongly about the pro-
life cause. We remember his brave challenge to a new Soviet leader to 
``tear down this wall,'' because it was an affront to human dignity. We 
remember his vital role in bringing the

[[Page 11721]]

cold war to an end--an end hastened by both President Reagan's military 
buildup and his revitalization of the American economy.
  In all of Ronald Reagan's political life was his passionate belief in 
two core principles: human freedom and human dignity, both inalienable 
because they were given by God. He believed in the unbounded 
inventiveness and ingenuity of the individual freed from the tyranny of 
government but firmly rooted in our recognition of a higher moral 
authority. He understood that, in his words, ``The city of man cannot 
survive without the city of God, that the visible city will perish 
without the invisible city.''
  President Reagan recognized that the vitality of our society and 
culture has always been dependent on the religious faith and practice 
of the people. As he said, ``Those who created our country . . . 
understood that there is a divine order which transcends the human 
order. They saw the state, in fact, as a form or moral order and felt 
that the bedrock of moral order is religion.''
  Ronald Reagan was never reticent in speaking about his own faith and 
the primary place it held in his life. In all of these things, 
President Reagan was, and continues to be, an inspiration to millions, 
and certainly to me. He transformed the world for the better, and we 
are thankful he graced this Nation with his life, his example, and his 
divine calling.
  Our thoughts and prayers go out to him and to his family. And for all 
of us who mourn his passing, may we continue to be inspired and 
elevated by all he was, all he achieved, and all he sought for us to 
be.
  God bless you, Ronald Reagan.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to extend my deepest sympathy 
to the Reagan family, and to send a thank you from a grateful Nation to 
someone who served this country so well. And I know that the citizens I 
represent in North Dakota feel the same way.
  President Reagan had a profound impact on the demise of the Soviet 
Union and the end of the cold war. I recall in the 1980s, in the middle 
of the cold war, when the lives of two men intersected: Ronald Reagan 
and Mikhail Gorbachev. These two men were very different in many ways, 
but they changed the course of history. Together, President Reagan and 
Mikhail Gorbachev sat down together to reduce the threat of nuclear 
weapons, to reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons in both countries.
  The Soviet Union no longer exists. Eastern Europe and the Warsaw Pact 
no longer exist. The Communist threat and cold war that stemmed from 
them is gone. And much of the credit, in my judgment, belongs to 
President Ronald Reagan.
  We all recall the historic occasion when he stood at the wall in 
Berlin and said, ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.'' It was a 
moment I will never forget.
  But President Reagan was defined by more than this moment.
  When hundreds of American troops were killed in Lebanon, it was 
Ronald Reagan who went to the press room and said: I am accountable. 
You don't see many in politics do that, but he did.
  In 1986, I served on the House Ways and Means Committee, in which we 
provided the most significant tax reform that had been done in many 
decades in this country--under the leadership of a President who said 
let's reduce tax rates for all Americans and get rid of some of the tax 
loopholes. This President led and the Congress followed. I was proud to 
be a part of that.
  His Presidency was not without substantial controversy and 
difficulty. I felt his fiscal policy would produce very large budget 
deficits, and it did. And the Iran-Contra scandal was a serious problem 
for the administration. Yet, despite those problems and setbacks and 
controversies, I think President Reagan provided leadership in some 
very important areas.
  The charm of President Reagan was considerable. He had that cowboy 
hat kind of cocked back on his head. He had movie-star good looks. He 
had that famous smile. He was a great storyteller with a gleam in his 
eye. He told the story often about the pile of manure and the child who 
insisted that if there is a pile of manure, there must be a pony 
somewhere. The President loved to regale people with stories.
  I don't pretend to have known him well, but I sat behind him on the 
west front of the Capitol in 1981, when he gave his inaugural address. 
I recall that he announced to the country that planes had just left the 
tarmac in Iran with the American hostages, now freed. It was a gray, 
cold day and the first inaugural of President Reagan. As he began to 
speak, the clouds began to part and rays of sunshine began to come 
through. It was a remarkable moment.
  And I was a freshman member of the House when, one day, I was called 
to the bank of telephones in the Democratic cloakroom. They told me it 
was President Reagan calling.
  The President wanted my vote for a policy he was proposing to the 
Congress. I listened to him, but in the end, I felt he was not right on 
that particular issue, and I said I could not support him on it. He 
said: Well, you are a good man, and thanks for taking my call. It was 
just like him to frame it that way.
  I had the opportunity to have breakfast with him, along with a 
handful of my colleagues, one morning in the White House. Once again, 
he regaled all of us with wonderful, charming stories.
  I have always said that if you could have dinner with anyone, you 
could not do better than Ronald Reagan or Tip O'Neill, both Irish, both 
wonderful people with a wit and a charm, and both great storytellers.
  I believe that for President Reagan, politics was not bitter or 
rancid. In fact, he used to talk about the ``11th commandment'' for his 
party: Thou shalt not speak ill of someone in his own political party. 
It is a commandment that has been long forgotten, regrettably. I am 
afraid that today's politics have taken a turn for the worse.
  President Reagan was aggressive in debate but always respectful. I 
believe he personified the notion that you can disagree without being 
disagreeable.
  He was a man of great strength. After he was shot during an 
assassination attempt--seriously wounded--he was wheeled into the 
hospital emergency room, and he was ready with a quip for the doctors.
  He was a remarkable person. When the Challenger accident occurred and 
this country was horrified by seeing the explosion of the Challenger 
and the death of those astronauts, it was Ronald Reagan who came on 
television and talked about that ill-fated flight. But he did it in 
such an inspiring way, and finished with the refrain from that poem: 
They have slipped the surly bonds of Earth and touched the face of God.
  Later in life, as President Reagan lived in retirement in California, 
he began a long journey into the darkness of a devastating illness 
called Alzheimer's. His last statement to the American people was a 
poignant statement, in which he described his illness and its 
consequences.
  This is a man who served his country with great distinction, someone 
with whom I had disagreements from time to time, but someone who I 
believe is owed the admiration of an entire nation.
  I am reminded of a book that David McCullough wrote about another 
President, John Adams. In the book, you learn that John Adams wrote to 
his wife Abigail, as our Founding Fathers tried to put this country of 
ours together--and he asked these questions: From where will the 
leadership come? Who will be the leaders? How will the leadership 
emerge to create this new country of ours? And then he would 
plaintively say to his wife: There is only us. There is me. There is 
Ben Franklin. There is George Washington. There is Thomas Jefferson and 
James Madison. There is George Mason.
  Of course, in the rearview mirror of history, we recognize that these 
men were some of the greatest human talent ever assembled on Earth. But 
every generation has asked that same question for this great democracy. 
From

[[Page 11722]]

where will the leadership come? Who will be the leaders? And this 
country has been fortunate that, in generation after generation, men 
and women of virtually all political persuasions have stepped forward 
to say: Let me serve this great country.
  Ronald Reagan was one of those leaders. He served in California as 
Governor and then served two terms as President of the United States. 
He had, in my judgment, a kind of a peculiar quality, a quality that 
gave him an almost quenchless hope, boundless optimism, an 
indestructible belief that something good was going to happen, and he 
communicated that to a grateful nation.
  So today we say thank you. Thank you for your service. God bless your 
memory, and God bless your family.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, some people have the capacity to change 
your life. For me, Ronald Reagan was one of those people. Ronald 
Reagan's message of strengthening individual liberties, maintaining a 
strong national defense, cutting through the thicket of Government 
regulations and lowering taxes inspired me to run for public office in 
the 1980s. He made me believe it is possible to bring about change for 
the better.
  I first ran for the Colorado State senate in 1982, the second year of 
Reagan's Presidency, and fought to pass resolutions there supporting 
the policies that the President advocated, such as the balanced budget 
amendment.
  I was a small businessman. I operated a private veterinary practice. 
So Ronald Reagan's vision of strengthening America's small businesses, 
because they are the backbone of our economy and way of life, had a 
great deal of appeal. His belief in small Government and cutting taxes 
to allow people to decide how best to spend their own money have been 
two of my guiding principles since I was first elected to public 
office. I believe him to be the father of the modern Republican Party.
  My wife Joan and I never had the opportunity to meet Ronald Reagan 
until he came to Colorado in 1988. Talking to him one on one was an 
emotional high point of my life. We smiled all the way back home to 
Loveland, CO. I have kept his picture hanging in my office, first in 
the U.S. House of Representatives and now in the Senate, ever since.
  It is hard to describe to the young people who live in our vibrant 
economy and confident culture just how unsure and discouraged Americans 
were in the late 1970s. Everything that could go wrong had. America 
seemed to be shrinking before our eyes. Those in charge of our 
Government had apparently given up on winning the cold war. The Soviet 
Union loomed dangerous and, we were told, invincible. We were being 
admonished to get used to a dysfunctional economy that combined high 
inflation with low growth, a demoralized military, an ever more 
intrusive and intruding Government, a depressed and depressing 
spiritual malaise that left many in doubt about our fundamental values. 
No one offered a way out.
  Ronald Reagan's fresh voice of optimism was like manna to our hungry 
spirits. He talked about how our idling economy could regain its 
formidable power. He talked about how great our country was and how 
much greater it could be. He talked about facing down our foes and our 
fears. He talked about restoring American pride and patriotism. He, 
more than any other individual in the second half of the 20th century, 
brought America back from the brink of self-imposed defeat and despair. 
He made us proud once again.
  Ronald Reagan was a monumentally gifted man, and a man of many gifts.
  To those in doubt, he brought the gift of optimism.
  To his supporters and allies, he brought the gift of confidence and 
assurance.
  To an audience, he brought a magnificent gift of humor.
  To his opponents, he brought the gift of disagreeing without being 
disagreeable.
  His gift to the world was even more significant. He brought about the 
end of a cold war that had cast a 50-year shadow of fear over all the 
people on the planet.
  Ronald Reagan never doubted his country's need to defend itself from 
all foes. ``Of the four wars in my lifetime,'' President Reagan said, 
``none came about because the United States was too strong.''
  It is of paramount importance for us to remember, during this period 
of threat and conflict, the wisdom of one of his favorite phrases: 
``Peace through strength.'' Among his greatest achievements was to 
rearm us, to reinvigorate the American military, and to let our 
adversaries know, beyond any doubt, that they were in a race they were 
not going to win.
  In the past 15 years or so, the United States has decisively fought 
and won two significant wars. The keys to those victories were highly 
motivated and skilled combat personnel fighting with unmatched military 
equipment and employing unprecedented tactics.
  How did this renewed and reinvigorated American military might come 
about?
  Let's look back to Ronald Reagan's acceptance speech at the 1980 
Republican nominating convention. As only the Great Communicator could, 
he laid out his vision for us with not only clarity, but with a 
conviction that rings true and is still good counsel today.
  He said:

       We are awed--and rightly so--by the forces of destruction 
     at loose in the world in this nuclear era. But neither can we 
     be naive or foolish. . . . We know only too well that war 
     comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when 
     they are weak. It is then tyrants are tempted.

  He added:

       Let our friends and those who may wish us ill take note: 
     the United States has an obligation to its citizens and to 
     the people of the world never to let those who would destroy 
     freedom dictate the future course of human life on this 
     planet. . . . This nation will once again be strong enough to 
     do that.

  He was, of course, as good as his word. Once assuming office, 
President Reagan launched a military renaissance that not only led to 
the demise of the Soviet Union, Soviet communism, and the cold war, but 
also set the course for our military leadership that continues to this 
day ensuring our safety.
  President Reagan's initiative was threefold: upgrade our military 
equipment; improve the training and morale of our service men and women 
to improve recruitment and retention; and restore national pride in--
and global respect of--the United States' military.
  A major accomplishment of President Reagan's was the development of a 
credible, modern strategic deterrent. He reinvested in our strategic 
ballistic missile weapons inventories, modernized a complement of land, 
sea, and aircraft-based platforms to project our strategic force.
  This display of offensive force proved to be an effective deterrent, 
but President Reagan envisioned a world with far fewer of these 
destructive weapons, and pressed throughout his Presidency for 
significant reductions of nuclear weapons. In 1983, President Reagan 
launched the Strategic Defense Initiative in the hopes of one day 
rendering all such ballistic missiles ``impotent and obsolete.''
  Today we are building on his legacy by deploying strategic missile 
defenses and aggressively eliminating excessive nuclear stockpiles. 
President Reagan's legacy to us, of a safer world, is one we must 
constantly guard and honor.
  There is no doubt that President Reagan was one of the greatest 
Presidents of the modern era. A man of huge confidence and unwavering 
principle, he revived the American spirit, revitalized our economy and 
engineered the fall of communism. He changed the world for the better. 
We share his family's grief, and keep them in our prayers.
  In his memory, let us recommit ourselves to President Reagan's goal 
of ensuring that America always remains the ``bright, shining city on 
the hill.''
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Chafee). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HAGEL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.

[[Page 11723]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HAGEL. Mr. President, on January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan, after 
being sworn in as the 40th President of the United States, looked out 
over The Mall and addressed the Nation. He told us that the challenges 
of our day required:

       Our best effort, and our willingness to believe in 
     ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great 
     deeds; to believe that together, with God's help, we can and 
     will resolve the problems which now confront us. And, after 
     all, why shouldn't we believe that? We are Americans.

  I remember the celebrations that evening as if they happened 
yesterday. It was a bitterly cold evening. As our Nation celebrated a 
new beginning, it was as if the cold January winds swept away a 
nation's doubts and fears and replaced them with a renewed American 
spirit.
  Ronald Reagan was a unique American leader who understood the 
greatness and the goodness of America. He knew who he was and what he 
believed. Over the last century, no American President was as well 
grounded as Ronald Reagan. He had faith and confidence in the people of 
America, and that trust was reciprocated.
  As much as anyone who came before or after him, Ronald Reagan 
possessed an innate understanding of the significance of the American 
Presidency. Ronald and Nancy Reagan set the gold-standard for grace, 
dignity and class in the White House. Reagan understood the weight and 
consequences of his office beyond the borders of the United States. The 
world looked to him as a standard bearer of freedom. Reagan also 
understood the importance of the Presidency to young people. The 
responsibility of being a role model to a nation's youth rested easily 
on his shoulders.
  Ronald Reagan is known as the great communicator. While he certainly 
was one of the best communicators ever to hold the Presidency, he was 
far more than just a talented communicator. Reagan was a thinker and a 
writer. He was constantly writing beautiful letters and his speeches in 
long-hand. Today, these speeches and letters are national treasures. 
Reagan thought deeply about the great issues of his time without 
getting dragged down into the underbrush of detail and trivia. He was 
not a superfluous man. Our Nation was guided by his clarity of purpose, 
understanding of the purpose of power and the limitations of 
government.
  Since President Reagan left the American political stage, we have 
missed his imagination and creativity. Since his days of sitting in a 
radio studio doing play-by-play broadcasts for baseball games from news 
wire service copy, he had a genuineness that served him well. He was a 
masterful story-teller. In today's age of processed politics and 
politicians, President Reagan's candor and humor are sorely lacking.
  Ronald Reagan was a child of humble beginnings who never forgot the 
little guy. He believed every American had something special to 
contribute. Reagan let people know that each thread of the American 
fabric mattered. In late September of 1980, I was working as an adviser 
on the Reagan-Bush campaign.
  One evening, I was part of a group invited to an estate near 
Middleburg, VA, where then-Governor and Nancy Reagan were staying. They 
wanted to thank us for the work we had done for the campaign with a 
wonderful dinner. As the evening was ending, an aide to Governor Reagan 
asked me to remain after the dinner because Governor Reagan wanted to 
speak with me. I was taken into the house where Governor Reagan was 
staying. He sat down next to me and told me he wanted to talk about 
Vietnam. He wanted to know about my experience and what I thought about 
the war. That was the kind of man he was. He wanted to understand 
things. He wanted to know things and he wanted to make the world better 
than it was.
  Though his individual accomplishments are great, Ronald Reagan will 
be remembered for something far greater than the sum of his individual 
accomplishments; he will be remembered for renewing the American 
spirit. He was a true American original. We will never see one like him 
again.
  Over the last decade as we struggled to meet the challenges of our 
time, Ronald Reagan slipped away from us. He now belongs to the warmth 
of eternity and the pages of history. However, he has not left us to 
meet our challenges alone. The lessons of his leadership and the 
strength of his spirit that swept across our country on a cold day in 
January 24 years ago, guide us still today.
  I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a man who 
meant a great deal to me and a great deal to my State and to our 
country. That, of course, is President Ronald Reagan. It is with 
sadness that he has recently passed away. But I have great confidence 
he has passed away and moved on to a better home. I express my 
condolences and sympathies to his family and also thank them for their 
generosity in sharing Ronald Reagan with us in the public life, both as 
Governor of the great State of California, and also as President of the 
United States for eight wonderful years.
  I had the privilege, in the same year as Ronald Reagan was elected 
President, to be elected to the Senate. I have many fond memories of 
Ronald Reagan. I remember very well during his Inaugural Address when 
the rumors were coming out, and then later confirmed, that the American 
citizens who were held hostage in Iran for 444 days were released. I 
remember the euphoria that came across the stage. I remember the 
euphoria that came across America. It was such an exciting, positive 
change. Americans really felt great. This was suppressing our country, 
the very fact that we had American citizens held hostage for over a 
year, in many cases being beaten or tortured or abused, with American 
flags burning in Tehran continually. It was such a great day when they 
were released.
  I happen to think it was because, in many respects, the leadership of 
Iran decided they did not want to worry about this new President, 
Ronald Reagan, and what actions he might take. I think they made a very 
good decision. I was very pleased they did so. I was very euphoric at 
the time and probably could not have been much more excited at that 
time.
  When we were sworn in, there were 18 new Senators elected in 1980 and 
sworn in early in 1981. Of the 18, 16 were Republicans. The leadership 
of the Senate changed for the first time, I believe, since 1954. So we 
had new committee chairmen; we had new leadership. Howard Baker assumed 
the responsibility and role as majority leader and did an outstanding 
job. The Senate was a great place to work and to serve, and to work 
with a President as generous, as humorous, and with such strong 
leadership as Ronald Reagan.
  I look at the economy that Ronald Reagan inherited, and I see great 
accomplishments. A lot of people do not remember that in 1980 the 
inflation rate was 13.5 percent and it fell to 4.8 percent by 1989. The 
interest rate in 1980 was 15.27 percent and fell to 10.87 percent by 
1989. Actually, the interest rate had risen to 18.87 percent in 1981. I 
remember that now. Interest rates were at 18 and 19 percent. The 
unemployment rate in 1980 was over 7 percent. In 1981 it reached 7.6 
percent but by 1989 it was down to 5.3 percent.
  So we had record high inflation rates, record high interest rates, 
and maybe not record high but very high unemployment rates. We 
inherited an economy that was going nowhere fast. It was going in the 
wrong direction. You could not afford to build a home. You could not 
afford to expand your business. It was a very difficult time.
  Ronald Reagan came in with such great enthusiasm, such an optimist. 
He did not say, ``let's moan about it,'' but ``let's do something about 
it.'' He had

[[Page 11724]]

an economic game plan for which we fought, and we passed in the House 
and the Senate. These were remarkable accomplishments when I think 
about it.
  He actually was responsible for pushing Congress, Democrats and 
Republicans, to pass enormous changes in the Tax Code. I happened to 
enjoy working on taxes, and during his 8 years he actually moved the 
maximum tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent. That is a phenomenal 
accomplishment. Phenomenal. And he was able to do it with a bipartisan 
majority. It was not a strictly partisan House and Senate. As a matter 
of fact, the House was always controlled by the Democrats. ``Tip'' 
O'Neill, who was the Democrat leader, the House Speaker at the time, 
was opposed. So we had big confrontations, political confrontations, 
big battles over the tax cuts, and over the budgets. Yet they passed 
them.
  Even though we had big battles, we had a certain dignity and respect 
in large part because of Ronald Reagan. And because of his affection 
for individuals, Democrats and Republicans, even political adversaries 
who would have political battles still had a collegial, working 
relationship. They respected each other and respected individuals 
regardless of their political philosophy. As a result, he was able to 
enact enormous changes in the Tax Code and budgets, and increase 
defense.
  Ronald Reagan came in with an agenda, and he largely accomplished 
those objectives. The result has been economic freedom in this country.
  He was not satisfied, frankly, with just expanding and improving the 
economic lot of Americans. He wanted to improve the economic lot and 
the freedom of people throughout the world. Ronald Reagan was the 
leader of the free world, and he spoke eloquently and often and 
encouraged freedom through the world and countless countries that have 
been oppressed or suppressed through Communist leadership. Ronald 
Reagan was speaking to them. He would go right over the leaders of 
Congress. If he wanted to get something done budget-wise, tax-wise, or 
defense-wise, and if Congress was not listening, he would go to the 
American people. And when he would travel internationally he would go 
over the leadership of those countries and speak to their people with 
great success.
  We all remember his speech when he was in Berlin, the speech that 
says: ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.''
  The favorite picture of all my memorabilia that I have in my home is 
a picture of me standing before the Berlin Wall, and behind it somebody 
spray-painted on the wall: ``When this wall falls, the rest will, 
too.'' And they did. The Berlin Wall did fall, and I think it was in 
large part because of Ronald Reagan's leadership.
  When that wall fell, other countries that had been suppressed and 
under the reins of the Iron Curtain of communism began speaking up, 
exercising their rights, and demanding freedom and obtaining it.
  Ronald Reagan was the leader in winning the fight in the cold war. As 
Mr. Gorbachev said, probably no one else in the world could have done 
it, but Ronald Reagan did it. And he was able to do it with Mr. 
Gorbachev. Many times they were political adversaries in negotiating 
arms control treaties and so on. Yet they still became friends as only 
Ronald Reagan could do. He could become friends with his adversaries 
and eventually that kind of friendship and bond would lead to arms 
control reduction, would lead to a significant reduction in nuclear 
weapons, would lead to agreements with our NATO allies and other 
countries to expand freedom.
  Ronald Reagan, probably more than any individual since Churchill or 
Roosevelt, was responsible for expanding freedom throughout the world. 
I compliment him for his great contributions in doing so.
  He became somewhat of a role model for many of us. I was elected with 
this group in 1980. Many of us called ourselves Reaganites and 
considered ourselves part of the soldiers in the field trying to get an 
agenda done to expand freedom. I am proud to have been part of that. I 
am proud to have had the opportunity to serve with such a great 
individual.
  I remember many times going down to the White House, talking issues. 
I remember Ronald Reagan almost always having humor, almost always not 
caring who got the credit as long as we accomplished our objective.
  I remember many times he let other people wrestle with the details, 
but he knew where he wanted to go. He knew the course he was trying to 
direct our ship of state, and he managed it very well.
  I have a lot of fond memories. I remember Ronald Reagan coming in to 
campaign for me in 1986. We had him visit Norman, Oklahoma, the 
University of Oklahoma, Lloyd Noble Arena. We packed the place. It was 
more than packed. The fire marshal had to turn down people who could 
not get in. We had thousands and thousands of people. I told President 
Reagan: This is Reagan country. They love you here. You don't need to 
make a prepared speech. You can say whatever you want. They will 
applaud. They love you here.
  There was a nice, big sign: ``This is Reagan country.'' Very 
positive. The entire rally speech could not have gone better from my 
standpoint. There were thousands and thousands of people. It was great.
  Ronald Reagan concluded his speech. He said: ``That is why we need 
Don Rickles in the Senate.'' And I thought: Did he really say that? I 
told him to wing it, and he did. I have had that honor of being able to 
call myself Don Rickles for a long time.
  But Ronald Reagan leaves a legacy. He leaves a legacy of decency. He 
leaves a legacy of integrity. I think he helped restore so much pride 
in America. He was a true patriot, a patriot who loved this country 
from the very inner core of his being. And it was contagious. It was 
contagious through the fact that not only did he love America, but he 
made Americans feel better about our country.
  He made other people envy us to some extent. They wanted to be like 
us. They wanted to be free. What does America have that we don't have? 
They have freedom, optimism. And that freedom would be economic 
freedom, personal freedom, and political freedom.
  Ronald Reagan wanted to expand it all for all people. He believed 
everybody--even if they lived in China or Russia or North Korea or El 
Salvador--if people were trying to take that freedom away, he was 
freedom's friend. He carried that banner very well.
  He helped people learn to love and respect the United States. I can 
honestly say I have the greatest admiration and respect for Ronald 
Reagan. I loved Ronald Reagan. He has moved this country forward in a 
way that I think all of us can be very proud.
  Again, I express my condolences and sympathy to Nancy Reagan and to 
the family. Nancy Reagan was one great First Lady. The love and 
affection she showed toward her husband throughout not only his 
Presidency and governorship but, frankly, throughout the last 10 years 
is more than commendable, and it is the kind of role model that, 
frankly, we expect from Nancy Reagan. She is a first-class First Lady, 
a first-class lady for all of us.
  Again, my condolences and sympathy to her. And I thank her and her 
family for allowing us to share Ronald Reagan for many years as the 
leader of our country. He has made this country and, frankly, this 
world a much better place to live.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I, too, rise in memory of President 
Ronald Reagan. President Reagan will be remembered for his strong 
convictions, his unfailing optimism, and his deep and abiding 
patriotism.
  My heartfelt condolences go out to the Reagan family. They have been 
through so much in the last 10 years.
  Our former First Lady, Nancy Reagan, has met one of the greatest 
challenges that one can face with grace, dignity, and dedication. Her 
courage is a model for the Nation. I know how tremendously difficult it 
is for a family when a loved one has Alzheimer's. My own dear father 
suffered from this disease. And, my family and I know what the long 
goodbye meant.

[[Page 11725]]

So, I speak for my family, and I think all families who have endured 
this disease when we salute Nancy Reagan as we pay our respects to our 
President.


           Ronald Reagan Alzheimer's Breakthrough Act of 2004

  Mr. President, as our country reflects on President Reagan's life, 
many will ask, how should we honor him? I believe the greatest tribute 
we could give to President Reagan and the Reagan family is a living 
memorial, something that he would want to see us do, not something we 
would like to do, and something that would have lasting value. 
Therefore, I would like to issue a bipartisan call to support 
legislation that Senator Kit Bond and I will be introducing next week, 
legislation to create breakthroughs for Alzheimer's disease.
  Let's honor President Reagan's life with new research and new 
initiatives on how to prevent Alzheimer's, how to care for those who 
have it, how to support the gallant caregivers, and how, ultimately, to 
find a cure.
  President Reagan was a man of vigor. Let's attack Alzheimer's with 
the same type of vigor that President Reagan demonstrated during his 
life.
  The time to act for real breakthroughs is now. Just last month, 
Senator Bond and I held a hearing on Alzheimer's research. Expert after 
expert told us: We are on the verge of amazing breakthroughs; we will 
lose opportunities if we don't move quickly; we are at a crucial point 
where NIH funding can make a real difference.
  Researchers, families, and advocates all said the same thing, we need 
to do more, we need to do better.
  Let's answer that call by introducing and passing the Ronald Reagan 
Alzheimer's Breakthrough Act of 2004.
  Friends, we are on the brink of something that could make a huge 
difference in the lives of American families. We know that families 
face great difficulties when a loved one has Alzheimer's. There is 
great emotional cost as well as financial cost. We know that for our 
public investment we could get new treatments that would prolong a 
patient's cognitive abilities.
  Each month we delay admission to a long-term care facility is 
important to the family and to the taxpayer. Everybody wants a cure; 
that is our ultimate goal. But even if we keep people at home for 1 or 
2 more years, to help them with their memory, their activities of daily 
living, it would be an incredible breakthrough, and what a great 
tribute it would be to President Reagan.
  It is amazing how far we have come. From the time President Reagan 
took office in 1981 until the time he wrote that incredibly moving 
goodbye letter to the Nation--and I note it with great emotion because, 
again, I know how my own father felt. Back in the early 1980s, when 
President Reagan first came to office, Alzheimer's was a catch-all 
term. Today, doctors diagnose Alzheimer's with 90-percent accuracy. 
Every day NIH is making progress to identify risks, looking at new 
kinds of brain scans for appropriate detection, and understanding what 
this disease does to the brain.
  How did we get this far, this fast? With a bipartisan commitment like 
the one represented by Senator Bond, Senators Specter and Harkin, the 
Alzheimer's Task Force that is lead by Senators Collins and Clinton, 
and all of us who are working on this issue. With a bipartisan 
commitment of the authorizers and appropriators, we have been working 
to increase the funding for the National Institute on Aging. Remember, 
there are 19 institutes at the NIH. One of them is the National 
Institute of Aging.
  In 1998 the National Institute on Aging was funded at approximately 
$500 million. Thanks to our bipartisan effort, it is at $1 billion. Now 
is the time to do more.
  That is why I want to join with my esteemed colleague, Senator Kit 
Bond, who himself has been a very strong advocate for research and 
breakthroughs, to introduce the Ronald Reagan Alzheimer's Breakthrough 
Act of 2004.
  We want to strengthen our national commitment to Alzheimer's 
research, to increase and double the funding of research at NIA, to 
give them the resources they need to make those breakthroughs they say 
they are on the horizon of doing. This will mean more clinical trials 
to test the best way to detect, prevent, and treat Alzheimer's.
  NIH is looking at a range of behaviors and therapies that can make an 
incredible difference.
  In our legislation, we also call for a national summit on Alzheimer's 
to bring together the best minds to examine current research, to look 
at priorities, and also to look at how we can help families.
  While we are looking at research to find the cure or the cognitive 
stretch out, we have to support the caregivers. God bless the 
caregivers. These are family members, often spouses, who take care of 
someone with Alzheimer's. The first caregiver is always the family. We 
saw that with Nancy Reagan who went from being First Lady to first 
caregiver.
  We need to support families. We need to give help to those families 
practicing self-help. We now have legislation on the books to do that. 
But, we need to add more to the Federal checkbook. Most families don't 
know where to turn to get what services are available. I have a family 
caregiver tax credit that would reimburse families for prescription 
drugs, home health care, and specialized daycare. Too often, for 
families with Alzheimer's, family responsibility brings them to the 
brink of family bankruptcy.
  There are other things we want to be able to do with this 
legislation, such as providing news people can use. The legislation 
would establish a network so information can get out people about the 
advances, and things that could be done right now to slow the onset of 
symptoms. We need to get the word out, such as the wonderful program 
developed by the Alzheimer's Association called ``Maintain Your 
Brain.'' But, private philanthropy cannot be a substitute for public 
policy and public funding. We have to fund these initiatives.
  I believe very strongly in this. There are 4.5 million people with 
Alzheimer's. They live in every State, in cities and suburbs and on 
farms. They are from every walk of life, like my father, who owned a 
small grocery store, or a man who was the President of the United 
States. Alzheimer's is an all-American disease. It affected an all-
American President. Now we need an all-American effort to find the 
breakthroughs.
  I encourage everyone to consider this when Senator Bond and I 
introduce this legislation. This research and treatment is very 
important. I do not want to be so bold as to speak for Mrs. Reagan, but 
based on what I know she has gone through and what other families have 
gone through, I believe the legacy she would approve of is an all-
American effort. An effort to speed up the day when no family ever has 
to have that very long goodbye.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I thank and commend my colleague from 
Maryland who has been a great champion of the effort to deal with the 
terribly distressing and fatal disease of Alzheimer's in proposing--and 
I am happy to join her--a measure to honor Ronald Reagan, his memory, 
his life, his work, and his family with a living tribute, a redoubled 
effort on behalf of this Nation to deal with Alzheimer's.
  Senator Mikulski and others who have lived with and lost a loved one 
from Alzheimer's can say very clearly how difficult it must have been 
for Mrs. Reagan and the Reagan family as this true leader went through 
the final stages of his life, crippled and debilitated by Alzheimer's, 
to see this man who was so vigorous, who had contributed so much be 
reduced to the indignities of Alzheimer's.
  His life and legacy can be honored in many ways. People will remember 
him for many reasons. I will speak of those in a moment. But by 
increasing research for Alzheimer's disease, helping to limit the 
number and maybe even eliminate Alzheimer's, providing assistance to 
families who must deal with patients with Alzheimer's, and providing 
assistance in identifying and preventing Alzheimer's is vitally 
important.

[[Page 11726]]

  One of the facts that struck me as we listened to the experts was 
that as we get older more and more of us are going to suffer from 
Alzheimer's disease. We were told in our hearing about a month ago that 
if you reach 85, you have a 50-percent chance of getting Alzheimer's 
disease. What a tragic figure. There is something we must do, and we 
believe this legislation is one way of making a major effort, showing a 
commitment, reaching out a hand of hope to the families of those who 
have Alzheimer's, providing information to all of us on what we might 
be able to do to lessen the likelihood we will be struck with 
Alzheimer's.
  As Senator Mikulski said, this bill will serve as a tribute to 
President Reagan by doubling the funding for Alzheimer's research at 
the National Institutes of Health. It would increase funding for the 
National Family Caregiver Support Program to $250 million. It would 
reauthorize the Alzheimer's demonstration grant program that provides 
grants to States to fill in gaps in Alzheimer's services, such as 
respite care, home health care, and daycare.
  I have done a fair amount of work in home care and daycare. I can 
tell you that a family living with a patient with Alzheimer's needs a 
break. They need someone to care for that loved one so they can get out 
and renew their batteries, refresh their view on life. This can help.
  We would authorize $1 million for a safe return program to assist in 
the identification and safe, timely return of individuals with 
Alzheimer's disease and related dementias who too frequently wander off 
from their caregivers. We hear the tragedies where they can't find 
their way home and fall victim to natural or even automobile accidents 
while they are gone. We would establish a public education program to 
educate members of the public about prevention techniques, how you can 
maintain your brain, as you age, based on the current research being 
undertaken by NIH.
  We would establish a $5,000 tax credit to help with the high health 
costs of caring for a loved one at home.
  Today, as Senator Mikulski said, about 4.5 million Americans have 
Alzheimer's, costing about $100 billion a year. But if current trends 
continue, and as more of us age, by 2050, 11 to 16 million individuals 
could have this disease.
  Over the past 20 years tremendous progress has been made in the 
prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of Alzheimer's. It is now possible 
to diagnose Alzheimer's with more than 90-percent accuracy. There are 
new drugs, new treatments introduced each year, and investments in 
research have set the stage for scientific and medical advances to 
prevent or slow down the progression of Alzheimer's. Quite frankly, 
most of the successful research to date has been in slowing the impact, 
not preventing it. But this research offers hope for the 4.5 million 
people and their families who suffer from the disease today.
  These are some of what we can do as an honor to the President. It is 
my great pleasure to speak in this Chamber about the life and 
leadership and the truly remarkable legacy of the 40th President of the 
United States, Ronald Reagan.
  We mourn his loss. We pray for comfort for his family. But most of 
all, we give thanks for his life, his leadership, and his 
contributions. Truly, he is a man who changed the mood of the country. 
He changed the economy of the country. And in many ways, he changed the 
mood and the attitude of the world.
  People talk about President Reagan as the Great Communicator. Nobody 
could deliver a line better than he could. But do you know something 
about communication? Communication is only as good as the message you 
have to communicate. The power of Ronald Reagan was that he delivered 
with enthusiasm, with optimism, with cheer, with love, a message of 
hope, freedom, and opportunity, not just for Americans but for the 
world.
  I had the pleasure of getting to know Ronald Reagan. He was a 
genuinely optimistic person who brought the spirit of optimism and hope 
to us as Americans and to enslaved peoples around the world. Ronald 
Reagan was a man who took disappointment and moved on. He was a man of 
unfailing good humor, care, and thoughtfulness. Even people who 
disagreed with his policies across the board could not help but like 
him.
  And those of us who may have disappointed him found it did not 
interfere with his friendship. He campaigned for me in 1972 when I was 
a 33-year-old kid running for Governor of the State of Missouri. I had 
never seen anything like it. When he came into town, we had all of the 
security and escorts. But it wasn't until he went up on stage and 
started making his presentation that I saw what it was that had brought 
so many people from southwest Missouri in to hear this leader. He had a 
message then--the same message--of optimism, growth, and hope for the 
future.
  I was fortunate enough to be elected and to serve with him for 2 
years. Two years after that, I hosted the Republican National 
Convention, and I had made a commitment to our President at the time, 
who selected our State for the national convention. So I supported him 
and not President Reagan. But about 10 years later, when I was running 
for the Senate, he came to Missouri three times and he put on the most 
amazing campaign rallies I ever had. We still talk about it, because 
people came to hear his message. I stood there, side by side with Jack 
Danforth, and we smiled and glowed in the wonderful feeling he 
generated. He helped me a great deal.
  President Reagan helped the United States. He came to the Presidency 
at a time when a lot of people were saying maybe the Presidency cannot 
work, maybe nobody can govern this country, maybe it is too much to 
expect somebody to lead. Well, he led very boldly. Quite simply, he 
thought that if you returned tax dollars to the average American and 
took off the fetters on small business, you would create jobs and build 
the economy. By the significant lowering of the tax rates, as my friend 
from Oklahoma, Senator Nickles, said, he put money back into the 
pockets of small businesses, and small business became the engine of 
economic growth, creating three-quarters of the new jobs. He built an 
economy, and that economy allowed us to put money into defense.
  He tried to negotiate with the Soviets. He asked Mr. Gorbachev if he 
would sit down and talk with him about how we could end the competition 
between Soviet communism and the United States. Mr. Gorbachev didn't 
respond. So he built up our defenses and showed the Russians, the 
Soviets, that they could not defeat us. He went boldly to Berlin and 
called on Mr. Gorbachev--much to the distress of the State Department, 
I might add, and some of his own team--``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this 
wall.''
  Well, that wall came down literally and figuratively. He had a 
message that went far beyond Mr. Gorbachev. That message went to the 
enslaved peoples behind the Iron Curtain. I had the pleasure of 
visiting some of those countries right before and right after they 
fell, a few years after President Reagan had set in motion the 
inexorable machine of freedom. His message of hope, freedom, and 
opportunity continues to reverberate around the world. I have had the 
pleasure of meeting with people and traveling to other countries and 
seeing how this message--the American dream--he championed is taking 
hold. He wasn't the only one responsible for it, but we never had a 
better proponent of it. I believe this message of the American hopes 
and the American ideals, for which Ronald Reagan spoke so eloquently, 
is winning the battle.
  Finally, in his last and boldest move, when Ronald Reagan learned he 
had Alzheimer's--a disease which was not spoken about often because 
people hated to think of what would happen to their loved ones, so they 
didn't talk about it--he said, ``I have Alzheimer's disease,'' and 
Americans woke up and they thought, this is a world leader who is 
suffering from this disease; let's do something about it. Let's get 
serious about Alzheimer's disease. That public announcement gave us a 
push

[[Page 11727]]

that I believe we can continue by carrying on with his work with a 
living memorial.
  So as we say goodbye to this remarkable American, we join in our 
prayers and thoughts with Mrs. Nancy Reagan and her family, and we 
celebrate the life of a great American who made a real difference for 
people throughout the world. Let us honor his memory by helping 
millions more whom we might be able to save from the scourge of 
Alzheimer's disease and the burdens and the sorrow that imposes on 
their families.
  I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.
  Mr. SMITH. Mr. President, in the elections of 1980 and 1984, the 
State of Oregon sent its electors to the electoral college to vote for 
Ronald Reagan. He was the last Republican to win the State of Oregon in 
a Presidential election, and he did so at a time of great peril both 
for my State and our country.
  When that occurred, America was in economic malaise, communism seemed 
to be in its ascendency, and America was struggling for leadership. 
Winston Churchill once said of a predecessor as British Prime Minister, 
``He had had the misfortune to live in a time of great men and small 
events.'' When you think of where America was and where it ended after 
8 years of the administration of Ronald Reagan, truly it can be said 
that all free men and women are better and freer, more prosperous and 
more at peace because Ronald Reagan was a great man called to a great 
time.
  As I contemplated what I could do in my small way to add some measure 
of tribute to the life of Ronald Reagan and to express to Nancy Reagan 
and her family my heartfelt condolences, I thought I should keep my 
words to a minimum and focus, instead, on the warm and wise words of 
President Reagan in his farewell address. It has been the practice of 
the Senate for the last 140 years that on or around the birthday of 
George Washington, a Senator is selected to read Washington's farewell 
address. I thought I would begin that tradition this day, with 
President Reagan's great speech, to come to the floor on or around 
President Reagan's birthday, and share his speech--or if one of my 
colleagues would like to do so, I would offer them the opportunity. I 
believe that this new tradition would be a fitting tribute to Ronald 
Reagan, to let Ronald Reagan's words speak again to the American 
people, far more eloquently than I could on an occasion when we all 
struggle to find the right superlatives to say thank you to him.
  So with the Chair's indulgence, I will read the farewell address of 
President Ronald Reagan, given shortly before he left the Oval Office 
and George Herbert Walker Bush became the President.
  The words of President Reagan:

       This is the 34th time I'll speak to you from the Oval 
     Office and the last. We've been together 8 years now, and 
     soon it'll be time for me to go. But before I do, I wanted to 
     share some thoughts, some of which I've been saving for a 
     long time.
       It's been the honor of my life to be your President. So 
     many of you have written the past few weeks to say thanks, 
     but I could say as much to you. Nancy and I are grateful for 
     the opportunity you gave us to serve.
       One of the things about the Presidency is that you're 
     always somewhat apart. You spent a lot of time going by too 
     fast in a car someone else is driving, and seeing the people 
     through tinted glass--the parents holding up a child, and the 
     wave you saw too late and couldn't return. And so many times 
     I wanted to stop and reach out from behind the glass, and 
     connect. Well, maybe I can do a little of that tonight.
       People ask how I feel about leaving. And the fact is, 
     ``parting is such sweet sorrow.'' The sweet part is 
     California and the ranch and freedom. The sorrow--the 
     goodbyes, of course, and leaving this beautiful place.
       You know, down the hall and up the stairs from this office 
     is the part of the White House where the President and his 
     family live. There are a few favorite windows I have up there 
     that I like to stand and look out of early in the morning. 
     The view is over the grounds here to the Washington Monument, 
     and then the Mall and the Jefferson Memorial. But on mornings 
     when the humidity is low, you can see past the Jefferson to 
     the river, the Potomac, and the Virginia shore. Someone said 
     that's the view Lincoln had when he saw the smoke rising from 
     the Battle of Bull Run. I see more prosaic things: the grass 
     on the banks, the morning traffic as people make their way to 
     work, now and then a sailboat on the river.
       I've been thinking a bit at that window. I've been 
     reflecting on what the past 8 years have meant and mean. And 
     the image that comes to mind like a refrain is a nautical 
     one--a small story about a big ship, and a refugee, and a 
     sailor. It was back in the early eighties, at the height of 
     the boat people. And the sailor was hard at work on the 
     carrier Midway, which was patrolling the South China Sea. The 
     sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, smart, and 
     fiercely observant. The crew spied on the horizon a leaky 
     little boat. And crammed inside were refugees from Indochina 
     hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a small launch to 
     bring them to the ship and safety. As the refugees made their 
     way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck, 
     and stood up, and called out to him. He yelled, ``Hello, 
     American sailor. Hello, freedom man.''
       A small moment with a big meaning, a moment the sailor, who 
     wrote it in a letter, couldn't get out of his mind. And, when 
     I saw it, neither could I. Because that's what it was to be 
     an American in the 1980's. We stood, again, for freedom. I 
     know we always have, but in the past few years the world 
     again--and in a way, we ourselves--rediscovered it.
       It's been quite a journey this decade, and we held together 
     through some stormy seas. And at the end, together, we are 
     reaching our destination.
       The fact is, from Grenada to the Washington and Moscow 
     summits, from the recession of '81 to '82, to the expansion 
     that began in late '82 and continues to this day, we've made 
     a difference. The way I see it, there were two great 
     triumphs, two things that I'm proudest of. One is the 
     economic recovery, in which the people of America created--
     and filled--19 million new jobs. The other is the recovery of 
     our morale. America is respected again in the world and 
     looked to for leadership.
       Something that happened to me a few years ago reflects some 
     of this. It was back in 1981, and I was attending my first 
     economic summit, which was held that year in Canada. The 
     meeting place rotates among the member countries. The opening 
     meeting was a formal dinner of the heads of government of the 
     seven industrialized nations. Now, I sat there like the new 
     kid in school and listened, and it was all Francois this and 
     Helmut that. They dropped titles and spoke to one another on 
     a first-name basis. Well, at one point I sort of leaned in 
     and said, `My name's Ron.' Well, in that same year, we began 
     the actions we felt would ignite an economic comeback--cut 
     taxes and regulation, started to cut spending. And soon the 
     recovery began.
       Two years later, another economic summit with pretty much 
     the same cast. At the big opening meeting we all got 
     together, and all of a sudden, just for a moment, I saw that 
     everyone was just sitting there looking at me. And then one 
     of them broke the silence. `Tell us about the American 
     miracle,' he said.
       Well, back in 1980, when I was running for President, it 
     was all so different. Some pundits said our programs would 
     result in catastrophe. Our views on foreign affairs would 
     cause war. Our plans for the economy would cause inflation to 
     soar and bring about economic collapse. I even remember one 
     highly respected economist saying, back in 1982, that `The 
     engines of economic growth have shut down here, and they're 
     likely to stay that way for years to come.' Well, he and the 
     other opinion leaders were wrong. The fact is what they call 
     `radical' was really `right.' What they called `dangerous' 
     was just `desperately needed.'
       And in all of that time I won a nickname, `The Great 
     Communicator.' But I never thought it was my style or the 
     words I used that made a difference: it was the content. I 
     wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things, 
     and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came 
     from the heart of a great nation--from our experience, or 
     wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us 
     for two centuries. They called it the Reagan revolution. 
     Well, I'll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like 
     the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our 
     common sense.
       Common sense told us that when you put a big tax on 
     something, the people will produce less of it. So, we cut the 
     people's tax rates, and the people produced more than ever 
     before. The economy bloomed like a plant that had been cut 
     back and could now grow quicker and stronger. Our economic 
     program brought about the longest peacetime expansion in our 
     history: real family income up, the poverty rate down, 
     entrepreneurship booming, and an explosion in research and 
     new technology. We're exporting more than ever because 
     American industry became more competitive and at the same 
     time, we summoned the national will to knock down 
     protectionist walls abroad instead of erecting them at home.
       Common sense also told us that to preserve the peace, we'd 
     have to become strong again after years of weakness and 
     confusion. So, we rebuilt our defenses, and this New Year we 
     toasted the new peacefulness around the globe. Not only have 
     the superpowers actually begun to reduce their stockpiles of 
     nuclear weapons--and hope for even more

[[Page 11728]]

     progress is bright--but the regional conflicts that rack the 
     globe are also beginning to cease. The Persian Gulf is no 
     longer a war zone. The Soviets are leaving Afghanistan. The 
     Vietnamese are preparing to pull out of Cambodia, and an 
     American-mediated accord will soon send 50,000 Cuban troops 
     home from Angola.
       The lesson of all this was, of course, that because we're a 
     great nation, our challenges seem complex. It will always be 
     this way. But as long as we remember our first principles and 
     believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours. And 
     something else we learned: Once you begin a great movement, 
     there's no telling where it will end. We meant to change a 
     nation, and instead, we changed a world.
       Countries across the globe are turning to free markets and 
     free speech and turning away from the ideologies of the past. 
     For them, the great rediscovery of the 1980's has been that, 
     lo and behold, the moral way of government is the practical 
     way of government: Democracy, the profoundly good, is also 
     the profoundly productive.
       When you've got to the point when you can celebrate the 
     anniversaries of your 39th birthday you can sit back 
     sometimes, review your life, and see it flowing before you. 
     For me there was a fork in the river, and it was right in the 
     middle of my life. I never meant to go into politics. It 
     wasn't my intention when I was young. But I was raised to 
     believe you had to pay your way for the blessings bestowed on 
     you. I was happy with my career in the entertainment world, 
     but I ultimately went into politics because I wanted to 
     protect something precious.
       Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind 
     that truly reversed the course of government, and with three 
     little words: `We the People.' `We the People' tell the 
     government what to do; it doesn't tell us. `We the People' 
     are the driver; the government is the car. And we decide 
     where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost 
     all the world's constitutions are documents in which 
     governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our 
     Constitution is a document in which `We the People' tell the 
     government what it is allowed to do. `We the People' are 
     free. This belief has been the underyling basis for 
     everything I've tried to do these past 8 years.
       But back in the 1960's, when I began, it seemed to me that 
     we'd begun reversing the order of things--that through more 
     and more rules and regulations and confiscatory taxes, the 
     government was taking more of our money, more of our options, 
     and more of our freedom. I went into politics in part to put 
     up my hand and say, `Stop.' I was a citizen politician, and 
     it seemed the right thing for a citizen to do.
       I think we have stopped a lot of what needed stopping. And 
     I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not 
     free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and 
     effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of 
     physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.
       Nothing is less free than pure communism--and yet we have, 
     the past few years, forged a satisfying new closeness with 
     the Soviet Union. I've been asked if this isn't a gamble, and 
     my answer is no because we're basing our actions not on words 
     but deeds. The detente of the 1970's was based not on actions 
     but promises. They'd promise to treat their own people and 
     the people of the world better. But the gulag was still the 
     gulag, and the state was still expansionist, and they still 
     waged proxy wars in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
       Well, this time, so far, it's different. President 
     Gorbachev has brought about some internal democratic reforms 
     and begun the withdrawal from Afghanistan. He has also freed 
     prisoners whose names I've given him every time we've met.
       But life has a way of reminding you of big things through 
     small incidents. Once, during the heady days of the Moscow 
     summit, Nancy and I decided to break off from the entourage 
     one afternoon to visit the shops on Arbat Street--that's a 
     little street just off Moscow's main shopping area. Even 
     though our visit was a surprise, every Russian there 
     immediately recognized us and called out our names and 
     reached for our hands. We were just about swept away by the 
     warmth. You could almost feel the possibilities in all that 
     joy. But within seconds, a KGB detail pushed their way toward 
     us and began pushing and shoving the people in the crowd. It 
     was an interesting moment. It reminded me that while the man 
     on the street in the Soviet Union yearns for peace, the 
     government is Communist. And those who run it are Communists, 
     and that means we and they view such issues as freedom and 
     human rights very differently.
       We must keep up our guard, but we must also continue to 
     work together to lessen and eliminate tension and mistrust. 
     My view is that President Gorbachev is different from 
     previous Soviet leaders. I think he knows some of the things 
     wrong with his society and is trying to fix them. We wish him 
     well. And we'll continue to work to make sure that the Soviet 
     Union that eventually emerges from this process is a less 
     threatening one. What it all boils down to is this: I want 
     the new closeness to continue. And it will, as long as we 
     make it clear that we will continue to act in a certain way 
     as long as they continue to act in a helpful manner. If and 
     when they don't, at first pull your punches. If they persist, 
     pull the plug. It's still trust by verify. It's still play, 
     but cut the cards. It's still watch closely. And don't be 
     afraid to see what you see.
       I've been asked if I have any regrets. Well, I do. The 
     deficit is one. I've been talking a great deal about that 
     lately, but tonight isn't for arguments, and I'm going to 
     hold my tongue. But an observation: I've had my share of 
     victories in the Congress, but what few people noticed is 
     that I never won anything you didn't win for me. They never 
     saw my troops, they never saw Reagan's regiments, the 
     American people. You won every battle with every call you 
     made and letter you wrote demanding action. Well, action is 
     still needed. If we're to finish the job. Reagan's regiments 
     will have to become the Bush brigades. Soon he'll be the 
     chief, and he'll need you every bit as much as I did.
       Finally, there is a great tradition of warnings in 
     Presidential farewells, and I've got one that's been on my 
     mind for some time. But oddly enough it starts with one of 
     the things I'm proudest of in the past 8 years: the 
     resurgence of national pride that I called the new 
     patriotism. This national feeling is good, but it won't count 
     for much, and it won't last unless it's grounded in 
     thoughtfulness and knowledge.
       An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a 
     good enough job teaching our children what America is and 
     what she represents in the long history of the world? Those 
     of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a 
     different America. We were taught, very directly, what it 
     means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, 
     a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If 
     you didn't get these things from your family you got them 
     from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who 
     fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or 
     you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all 
     else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the 
     popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and 
     implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV 
     was like that, too, through the mid-sixties.
       But now, we're about to enter the nineties, and some things 
     have changed. Younger parents aren't sure that an 
     unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to 
     teach modern children. And as for those who create the 
     popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the 
     style. Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized 
     it. We've got to do a better job of getting across that 
     America is freedom--freedom of speech, freedom of religion, 
     freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's 
     fragile it needs production [protection].
       So, we've got to teach history based not on what's in 
     fashion but what's important--why the Pilgrims came here, who 
     Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo 
     meant. You know, 4 years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-
     day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late 
     father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa 
     Zanatta Henn, and she said, `we will always remember, we will 
     never forget what the boys of Normandy did.' Well, let's help 
     her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won't know 
     who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American 
     memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the 
     American spirit. Let's start with some basics: more attention 
     to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual.
       And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great 
     change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow 
     night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins. And children, 
     if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be 
     an American, let 'em know and nail 'em on it. That would be a 
     very American thing to do.
       And that's about all I have to say tonight, except for one 
     thing. The past few days when I've been at that window 
     upstairs, I've thought a bit of the `shining city upon a 
     hill.' The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to 
     describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was 
     important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom 
     man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little 
     wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for 
     a home that would be free. I've spoken of the shining city 
     all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite 
     communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was 
     a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, 
     windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds 
     living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that 
     hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be 
     city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to 
     anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I 
     saw it, and see it still.
       And how stands the city on this winter night? More 
     prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was 8 years ago. 
     But more than that: After 200 years, two centuries, she still 
     stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has 
     held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, 
     still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the 
     pilgrims from all the lost places who

[[Page 11729]]

     are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.
       We've done our part. And as I walk off into the city 
     streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan 
     revolution, the men and women across America who for 8 years 
     did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did 
     it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We 
     made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left 
     her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.
       And so, goodbye, God bless you, and God bless the United 
     States of America.

  I would only add, God bless Ronald and Nancy Reagan, and God bless 
the United States of America.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Voinovich). The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, this past weekend, the news quickly made its 
way across the country and around the world. Ronald Reagan, our 40th 
President, had died. For many of us, we received the news with a 
mixture of sadness together with a sense of relief that his long battle 
with illness was now over and he had now found peace at the end of his 
life.
  I first met Ronald Reagan when I was president of the Wyoming Jaycees 
at the national convention which was held in California, and he was the 
Governor. I next met the President when I was mayor of Gillette, WY, 
and the National League of Cities held its national meeting and the 
President flew to California and addressed it.
  Now the greatest thinkers and writers will take up their pens in an 
attempt to determine his place in history and his significance as one 
of our greatest Presidents. For those of us who observed his service as 
our President and admired his leadership, those questions had been long 
since answered. For us, his place in history was long ago determined by 
his place in our hearts.
  Many of those who will examine his life in detail will tell a story 
about a man who was born without the great privileges and trappings you 
might expect of such a successful life. That is true, but there is so 
much more to the story.
  Ronald Reagan was born in Illinois, the son of a traveling shoe 
salesman. Growing up he was strongly influenced by his mother who 
taught him how to read at an early age. She urged him to read good 
books that would encourage him to dream and set goals in his life. She 
knew that he could be anything he wanted to be if he was willing to 
work hard and expect more of himself than anyone else had any reason to 
expect. That, more than anything else, really determined his character 
and ultimately mapped his destiny.
  His natural confidence and determination began to show itself during 
his school years and again, later, when he began his career as an 
actor. He was a natural leader and he took a leadership role at 
virtually every stage of his life. In his college days he served as 
student body president. In his acting days he served as the president 
of the Screen Actors Guild. In between he worked hard and built a 
career as a successful actor in film and on television.
  If that had been all he had done, it would have been a remarkable 
life. He would have earned the rags to riches label and inspired others 
to follow his path just by his success in Hollywood and on television. 
That would have been enough for just about everyone. It was not, 
however, enough for Ronald Reagan.
  With his beloved wife, Nancy, by his side, Ronald Reagan began to 
pursue his dream. He wanted to make a greater impact on the world than 
he could by being a television and movie star, so he began to take a 
more active role in politics. He discovered he had a talent for that, 
too. After a great deal of thought and deliberation, he decided to put 
his vision for America to the test. He took his case to the people and 
began a run for Governor of California.
  People thought it was an impossible dream and he could never win a 
State like California. Ronald Reagan proved them wrong. He put together 
a coalition of both Republican and Democratic voters and, when all the 
votes were counted, he had made it happen and he was elected Governor 
by almost a million votes.
  Reagan then set his sights on the Presidency of the United States 
and, after a narrow loss to Gerald Ford, he spent the next few years 
traveling around the country, sharing his dream for a better United 
States with the people who came to hear him speak. Many doubted he 
could do it, but once again, he found the support he needed to win the 
Republican nomination. The contest for the Presidency put him up 
against an incumbent who talked about the serious problems facing the 
Nation. Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, spoke with passionate 
certainty that working together the Nation could overcome them. When 
the votes were counted, Ronald Reagan had won the presidency in a 
landslide.
  As President, Ronald Reagan proved himself to be a man of principle, 
someone who said what he believed and believed what he said. He had 
excellent communication skills, and his speeches on television were 
extremely effective.
  When he took the oath of the office as our 40th President, he took 
over the reins of a country that had great problems. He had often 
referred to our economic woes as the ``misery index.'' There was high 
inflation, high interest rates, and high unemployment. Perhaps worst of 
all, the Nation seemed to have lost its confidence in its ability to 
dare to do great things--and succeed.
  There was a lot of doubt and cynicism that any one individual could 
do much to change things and re-energize the Nation. Again, Ronald 
Reagan proved the doubters wrong. As President, his spirit of optimism, 
patriotism and personal pride in his country proved to be infectious. 
Before long, there was a new spirit in the United States, a renewed 
sense of pride and excitement about our Flag and our Nation that hadn't 
been around for a while. Ronald Reagan was just what we needed. He 
inspired a generation to look toward the future with hope and a renewed 
commitment to the principles upon which our Nation was founded. It is 
still alive today. It is his legacy that he left with us, his gift to 
the younger generations of the Nation.
  During his two terms in the White House, Ronald Reagan spoke the 
truth, regardless of the sensitivities of those who might not want to 
hear it. It was over the objections of much of his staff that he 
challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to ``tear down this wall'' 
when he was in Berlin. It was against the advice of much of his staff 
to refer to the Soviet Union as an ``evil empire.'' For Ronald Reagan, 
it was simple. If it was the truth, it must be said. For him, there was 
good guys and bad guys in the world. If the good guys worked hard and 
were determined to succeed, they won. In Ronald Reagan's world, we were 
the good guys. And, during Ronald Reagan's Presidency, more often then 
not, we won.
  For historians and the history books, Ronald Reagan will be 
remembered as the President who brought a successful end to the cold 
war; had a great deal to do with the collapse of communism in the 
Soviet Union and the destruction of the Berlin Wall; and, dramatically 
turned the Nation's economy around. For those of us who observed his 
style as our President, he will also be remembered for his spirit, and 
his attitude of patriotic optimism, which rejuvenated the Nation when 
our spirit was low. He was a great leader and a great American. His 
words and his actions will long be remembered.
  Ronald Reagan dared to do the impossible, not because it was easy but 
because it had to be done. The challenges he encountered in his life 
brought out the best in him, and the challenges we faced as a Nation 
under him brought out the best in all of us. His is a legacy that we 
will always cherish. We will miss him.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, does the Senator from Florida wish to 
speak about the subject of the day?
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. That is correct.
  Mr. INHOFE. I yield for the Senator and ask unanimous consent that I 
follow the Senator from Florida.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[[Page 11730]]

  The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. I will be very brief. I thank the Senator from 
Oklahoma.
  Mr. President, on this occasion, when the Nation is mourning the loss 
of President Reagan, I wish to bring to the attention of the Senate a 
couple of stories which are fresh in my memory about President Reagan.
  I had the privilege during his two terms as President of serving in 
the House of Representatives, representing a district from the State of 
Florida.
  The first story I wish to share is of a time of great loss to this 
country, the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger. The American people 
could hardly believe it. The entire technological prowess of our 
country was symbolized by America having a very successful space 
program. We were the first to the Moon. This new contraption called a 
space transportation system was reusable, with new technologies that 
had been developed. America was quite proud.
  I had the privilege of flying on the 24th flight of the space 
shuttle, 6 days in orbit, returning on January 18, 1986. Only 10 days 
later, the crew that we had stayed with in quarantine--we had been one 
of the most delayed flights in the history of the space program--was 
the crew of the Challenger.
  We all know the story. Ten miles high in the Florida sky, the 
Challenger's solid rocket booster had hot gasses escaping from a field 
joint in that rocket. They happened to come out at a place where the 
strut was burned. That caused the solid rocket motor to then cantilever 
and it punctured the big apricot-colored fuel tank that held all of the 
liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The whole space shuttle then 
disintegrated.
  Naturally, the feelings I had were very raw and very emotional on 
that day, having trained with that crew and having just returned from 
space 10 days earlier.
  America's feelings were as raw and as emotional because our whole 
symbol of technological and scientific prowess had suddenly 
disintegrated in front of our eyes on our television screens.
  At a time of a grieving nation, there can be only one person who can 
speak for the country. That is the President. President Reagan rose to 
the occasion. That speech on television that night, delivered from the 
Oval Office, was a masterpiece, in which he ends up quoting a Canadian 
pilot from World War II--a pilot who had experienced the joys of 
flying--and those immortal words that ended the poem that he had 
reached out and he had touched the face of God.
  President Reagan applied that poem to the feelings of the country at 
the time about what the seven astronauts had experienced. That is 
political genius. That is a leader. That is a leader who has the 
ability through communication to connect, to inspire, and in this 
particular case, on January 28, 1986, to help the Nation through the 
process of grieving, to accept what had happened and then pick up and 
move on, which we have.
  And of course, 17 years later, we had another very similar kind of 
experience when we lost an additional seven astronauts.
  That speech, in my mind, was only exceeded by the speech that 
occurred 3 days later by President Reagan at the Johnson Space Center 
in Houston in a memorial service for the astronauts, the astronauts, 
whose bodies at that point still had not been recovered from the floor 
of the Atlantic Ocean where, hopefully, they had perished before they 
ever hit the water. Hopefully, somehow that crew compartment had been 
punctured at that altitude and therefore there would have been instant 
decompression and there would have been instant loss of consciousness.
  But with all of that swirling in all of our minds, with all of that 
swirling in the minds of that NASA community--NASA really is a family--
again, the leader of the Nation had to rise to the occasion to 
summarize and to continue the process of healing in the time of grief.
  I saw rough, tough test pilots who were some of the best of the best 
of our astronaut pilots grabbing each other and hugging in that time of 
grief. And President Reagan, in the moment, gave comfort to all of 
those, especially to the families of that crew who were lost, led by 
the commander of that mission, Dick Scobee.
  Another story I wish to tell about President Reagan is very personal 
to me as well. It was just about the middle of the decade of the 1980s. 
I was a Member of the House of Representatives. There was a particular 
vote coming up that was critically close. I had already made up my mind 
that the way I was going to vote in this particular case was the way 
President Reagan had wanted the vote to go but had not telegraphed that 
to the leadership of either side because there was something I wanted 
to tell the President.
  There was a 6-month-old infant in my hometown of Melbourne, FL, who 
was dying because he needed a liver transplant. Mind you, this is 20 
years ago. Twenty years ago we did not have the very sophisticated 
system we have set up today which allowed people to exchange 
information about organ donors. Twenty years ago it was catch as catch 
can. Twenty years ago, if a donor became available, it was just almost 
accidental that you found out if there was a donor of a particular 
organ. And when it involved an infant, like a 6-month-old infant, you 
not only had to match the blood type for a liver transplant, but the 
liver had to be the exact size in order to successfully transplant. You 
can see the difficulty. You can see this child lie dying, with only 
hours to live.
  The preparation had been made for the jet airplane to fly the child 
to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center where all the surgeons 
were standing by. They kept waiting and waiting for a donor. No donor 
was produced because we did not know when any became available. There 
was not an exchange of information.
  So at my home in Melbourne, on a weekend, the call from the President 
of the United States came. He said: Bill, this is President Reagan. We 
are going to have a close vote and I need your vote. I said: Mr. 
President, I have already decided that I am voting with you. Now there 
is something that I would like to ask you, to help in the saving of the 
life of a child. I told him the story, and he said he would have 
Margaret Heckler, the Secretary of HHS, call me the next day and get 
the particulars, which he did.
  Margaret Heckler immediately held a press conference, and because of 
that press conference, within 3 days, a tragic death of a child on the 
west coast of the United States that we would have never known about 
was known, and the parents donated the child's liver, which was of the 
same blood type and the same size. That liver was packaged and cooled 
and flown to Pittsburgh, arriving at the same time Ryan Osterblom 
arrived, as they wheeled him into surgery.
  Mr. President, as you can see, I have a catch in my voice because 
that little boy is going to college this year. He wants to be a 
surgeon. After that successful transplant, the President had called the 
mother, Karen Osterblom, and for years he continued to correspond with 
them.
  It is going to be my pleasure to have the family come up here on 
Thursday as the President is lying in state and have them walk through 
the line in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol to show their respects to 
President Reagan.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, we have heard so many stories about a 
great man, the Gipper, and none of them are surprising because he was 
always such a gentle person. I have to share with you that I had the 
honor, about a month ago, of giving the commencement address at Oral 
Roberts University. When I did, I used a lot of the 1964 speech ``A 
Rendezvous With Destiny.'' I said it should be required reading for 
anyone to graduate at any level in America to read ``A Rendezvous With 
Destiny.'' It is a speech that changed my life. Ronald Reagan gave it 
in 1964. I remember I almost memorized that speech. In fact, I still 
have most of it

[[Page 11731]]

memorized. As a result of that, the next year I decided, well, if he 
did it, if he really feels this concerned, I should, too, and I went 
and filed for office and ran for the State legislature. So that is how 
I happened to get started.
  But that is not as far back as we go. I believe I have had the honor 
of knowing Ronald Reagan longer than any other Member of this U.S. 
Senate. In fact, I am sure that is true. Even though I represent the 
State of Oklahoma, I moved to the State of Oklahoma when I was 8 years 
old. I moved from Des Moines, IA. We were enjoying the poverty of the 
Depression at that time. Everyone was poor, not just us.
  My dad was an insurance adjuster. Ronald Reagan was a sports 
announcer for WHO Radio in Des Moines, IA, and they shared the same 
office. They became very close friends, and they used to play the 
pinball machine at that time. You guys would not know what that is. I 
guess they don't have those anymore. On Saturdays they would play cards 
for a couple hours. All I know is, it was a room above the drugstore.
  But the man I had seen occasionally at that time I thought of as a 
giant. He was a very large person. We were not all that large. I 
remember that when I was growing up.
  Well, we moved to Tulsa, OK, shortly after that. But we did not lose 
contact. As the years went by, Ronald Reagan, who my dad affectionately 
referred to as ``Dutch,'' ``Dutch Reagan''--every time there was a 
``Dutch'' Reagan movie we would see it. You see, we never went to 
movies. In those days, we just didn't go to movies except when there 
was a ``Dutch'' Reagan movie. It did not matter what it was conflicting 
with.
  One time we went to Durant, OK, in the southern part of Oklahoma. My 
home was in the northern part. I remember driving on those roads at 
that time. I say to my good friend from Minnesota, the roads were--if 
you could average 30 miles an hour, you were doing well. So we drove 5 
hours down, watched a ``Dutch'' Reagan movie, and drove 5 hours back. 
We never would consider missing a ``Dutch'' Reagan movie.
  Then, of course, the famous speech took place in 1964. That is when 
he expressed his interest in politics. But at that time my father had 
gotten to where he was much better off, our family was. So when 
``Dutch'' Reagan was going to run for Governor of California, my father 
became one of his first large contributors. Again, the friendship had 
never stopped at any point. So he won.
  At the time, after he served in that capacity and ran for President--
I know that the Presiding Officer right now knows what I am talking 
about because he and I were both mayors of major cities back at the 
same time in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was elected President. I was the 
mayor of Tulsa, OK, for 4 years. Ronald Reagan and I were closer 
together than we had ever been before--I was out in Oklahoma--because 
he had me do his domestic policy stuff. He would have me on TV. At that 
time, they did not have CNN and Fox, but they had ``Good Morning 
America'' and the ``Today'' show. So I would be debating all these 
liberal Democrat mayors on the Reagan policy, which was the dynamics of 
the free enterprise system as opposed to the Government doing 
everything, and they worked beautifully. So I am sure I spent 10 times 
as much time with him at that time than I do with George W. today, and 
I am here in Washington. But it was a real pleasure.
  Those of us present--and right now I see in the Chamber the Senator 
from Minnesota, Mr. Norm Coleman, and the Senator who is presiding, Mr. 
Voinovich--all three of us were mayors. We understand what a hard job 
it is. When I was mayor, I was able to build a low-water dam, and 
President Reagan referred to it in his speeches as the largest totally 
privately funded public project in America. That was the dynamics of 
Ronald Reagan. That is what he thought, that Government should be doing 
less, people doing more. And it worked.
  What a visionary the guy was. When I see things that are going on 
today and I remember things that he said many, many years ago--right 
now, we have a serious problem in America. Probably one of our most 
serious problems is we do not have an energy policy. So we make 
speeches. All of us make speeches on a regular basis about why we do 
not have an energy policy and why we should have one. I would like to 
read to you what Ronald Reagan said. This was in 1979. Listen carefully 
because this applies to today, but it was 1979:

       Solving the energy crisis will not be easy, but it can be 
     done. First we must decide that ``less'' is not enough. Next, 
     we must remove government obstacles to energy production. And 
     we must make use of those technological advantages we still 
     possess.
       It is no program simply to say ``use less energy.''

  Sound familiar?

       Of course waste must be eliminated and efficiency promoted, 
     but for the government simply to tell the people to conserve 
     is not an energy policy. At best it means we will run out of 
     energy a little more slowly. But a day will come when the 
     lights will dim and the wheels of industry will turn more 
     slowly and finally stop.
       The answer obvious to anyone except those in the 
     administration it seems, is more domestic production of oil 
     and gas. We must also have wider use of nuclear power within 
     strict safety rules, of course. There must be more spending 
     by the energy industries on research and development of 
     substitutes for fossil fuels.

  And on and on and on. That speech very well could have been made 
today because the problem still exists today. And he knew it was 
coming.
  When he talked about the SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative, that 
was something no one seemed to care about. They did not see there was 
any great risk facing the American people. Yet he saw that risk. The 
risk was there. We all know now the risk is very real, even today. So 
he looked back at the ABM treaty that was put in place in 1972.
  He said: This is senseless now. It may have made sense in 1972 when 
Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon put this in, but the policy of mutual 
assured destruction is not a good policy. So he said: What we will have 
to do is have a very strong country. And he was quite scriptural. He 
quoted from Luke: If a strong man shall keep his court well guarded, he 
shall live in peace. And that is exactly what he was doing in his 
rebuilding of the defense system of America. We are so thankful he did 
that in those days. But he was saying we must do away with the ABM 
treaty. Finally, after all this time, we recognized 2 years ago he was 
right, and we got rid of the ABM treaty--how prophetic.
  Tax cuts, this is something that he gave credit to his predecessors. 
He said: We do need more money. The best way to get more revenue for 
Government is to reduce tax rates. He said: That is what President 
Kennedy did 25 years ago. He said: He reduced tax rates. And keep in 
mind, that was a Democratic President. And by reducing tax rates, he 
almost doubled the revenue coming in at the end of his term. It gave 
people the freedom and money to invest and to breathe and to reinvest 
in the country. So that is the problem. That is what this President 
George W. Bush has been trying to do. That is the reason we are out of 
the recession he inherited, and we are now coming out because we have 
reduced some of those marginal rates. We know we need to do more. This 
is what the President did.
  If you remember, in 1980, the total amount of revenue that was 
generated from marginal rates, taxes paid by people, was $244 billion. 
In 1990, it was $446 billion. It almost doubled in that 10-year period. 
Yet that 10-year period was the period where we had the largest 
reduction in taxes, thanks to Ronald Reagan, of any 10-year period or 
8-year period in our Nation's history: marginal rates going down from 
70 percent to 28 percent. Yet it had the effect of doubling the 
revenues. This guy knew it, and he did it. That is good advice for us 
today.
  I have mentioned quite often that it should have been required 
reading for all of our graduates to read ``Rendezvous With Destiny.'' 
Let me read a couple things to remind us on this very solemn occasion 
how grateful we are now to have had a President who was so prophetic.
  In talking about the freedom of our country, he told a story about 
Castro

[[Page 11732]]

and how a Cuban had escaped Cuba in a small craft and had floated over 
to the south shores of Florida. As his small craft came up there was a 
lady there, and he told the lady about the atrocities of Castro's 
Communist Cuba. After he was through, she said: I guess we don't know 
how lucky we are in the United States.
  He said: How lucky you are? We are the ones who are lucky. We had a 
place to escape to.
  That is what Ronald Reagan said, that we would be the beacon of 
freedom, the last place in the world to escape to. If we lose it here, 
there is nowhere else to escape to.
  On the recognition of the dynamics of the free enterprise system, he 
said:

       They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its 
     legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as 
     economically as the private sector of the economy.

  He practiced that. It worked. His domestic policies worked.
  He was prophetic. He accurately described such things as:

       We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing 
     beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the 
     fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one.

  Ronald Reagan talked about bureaucracy, how difficult it would be for 
him to cut down the size of Government. He is the one who said, in that 
very famous speech in 1964, there is nothing closer to life eternal on 
the face of this Earth than a Government agency once formed. And he 
went on to explain the reason for it. The reason for it is very simple. 
Once a Government agency is formed to respond to a problem, the problem 
goes away, and the bureaucracy stays there. The longer they stay there 
with nothing to do, the stronger they become. So that happens. He was 
able to cut that down by reminding people that that problem did exist.
  He said in 1964:

       Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over 
     the choice between peace and war, but there is only one 
     guaranteed way that you can have peace--and you can have it 
     in the next second--surrender.

  That was the message he had. You had to be strong. You had to have a 
Nation that believes in God, and you had to stand up for those things 
and not lie down and surrender. That is what people were trying to do 
at that time.
  He said in that speech:

       There is a price we will not pay. There is a point beyond 
     which they must not advance.

  That was his rendezvous with destiny.
  I look at American heroes like the senior Senator from Hawaii who 
fought so valiantly and is very familiar with what this President did 
for our U.S. military.
  I will say this: The rendezvous with destiny was a very real one. 
Military historians have looked at us and said there is no way we could 
have won the Revolutionary War. Here we were, a handful of farmers and 
trappers with crude weapons and the greatest army on the face of the 
earth was marching toward Lexington and Concord, and they fired the 
shot heard round the world.
  As Ronald Reagan would reflect on that great speech by Patrick Henry, 
he said there are three sentences in that speech that answer the 
questions of military historians, but people have forgotten about it. 
We are not weak when we make the proper use of those means which the 
God of nature has placed in our power. Armed in the holy cause of 
liberty in such a country as that which we possess, we are invincible 
by any force our enemy will send against us. And besides, we will not 
fight our battles alone. There is a just God who reigns over the 
destiny of nations who will raise up friends to fight our battles with 
us.
  Those are the favorite three sentences out of the ``give me liberty, 
give me death'' speech Patrick Henry made.
  For me, I think about the honor to be able to stand here in the 
Senate and, on behalf of the American people and on behalf of my wife 
and myself and our family of 20 children and grandchildren, to say we 
thank Ronald Reagan for his sacrifices. We thank God for Ronald Reagan. 
We thank God for his life. We thank God for allowing us to share that 
rendezvous with destiny with Ronald Reagan.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, I share that sense of humility that has 
been so eloquently expressed by my friend from Oklahoma, to be able to 
stand on this Senate floor and to thank God for Ronald Reagan, for what 
he gave us and what we learned from him. I must admit to being a bit 
envious to be in the Chamber with my friend from Oklahoma who knew 
Ronald Reagan when he was a young man.
  My friend, the Presiding Officer, on the way to the Chamber--again, 
we were all fellow mayors--talked about when he was mayor of Cleveland. 
There were some difficult times, and he talked to the President. He 
talked about what a good man the President was. What a good man, that 
he really cared, that he listened, and that he wanted to do things, 
wanted to make a difference. Sometimes when those around him were not 
making a difference, he took care of it and got it done. I think my 
colleagues were part of history being made.
  I was able to watch history during that time. But I am honored and 
humbled to be here today. To those of us who grew up in the Midwest and 
for those like myself who made it our home, Ronald Reagan has a very 
special significance. Places like Dixon, IL have been dubbed fly-over 
zones by sophisticated, powerful people who live on the coast. But we 
know places like that are the heartland, strong, simple, and true. That 
was Ronald Reagan.
  What we love about the Midwest is what America and the world came to 
know and understand and love about Ronald Reagan.
  To go on and on in flowery rhetoric about Ronald Reagan would not fit 
the subject matter. Like he did so well, his life deserves a few well-
chosen words.
  Oscar Wilde once said:

       Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple and the 
     simple thing is the right thing.

  Ronald Reagan could have said that because, surely, he lived it.
  Democracy is superior to communism. America is the world's best hope. 
Liberty requires limited government. The best is yet to come. Those 
were Ronald Reagan's moral anchors from the start of his public life to 
the end. Without deviation, they shaped his outlook and actions for 
half a century.
  He certainly didn't originate any of them, but we all know they are 
far more prominent in the fabric of American life today because of the 
power of his witness, as he lived his life, the power of what he did 
with those moral anchors as part of him.
  In the last few days, we are hearing a lot about Reagan as the Great 
Communicator. I think we put too much emphasis on the craft. As far as 
Ronald Reagan was concerned, the key to being a good communicator was 
having something to say. He was the message he delivered, and so he 
touched hearts and changed minds.
  He understood the key to American progress was our spirit. Resources, 
wealth, and past accomplishments have ruined more people and nations 
than they have made. He knew we needed a sense of the heroic, a 
stirring of our souls to rise above selfishness, division, and fear. He 
inspired us.
  He restored our confidence in the idea of leadership. Vietnam, 
Watergate, inflation, gas lines, and the hostage crisis were causing 
many to wonder if the American hour had passed. Not Ronald Reagan. He 
stubbornly held onto a wonderful vision of the future rather than focus 
on temporary negative circumstances. He led us.
  And perhaps of greatest importance, by his own choice, Ronald Reagan 
was not the star of our dramatic national resurgence. Neither was 
Government. In Reagan's mind and words, the heroes who restored the 
American economy and won the cold war were ordinary Americans doing 
simple things, doing their duty--kind of like a national bond raising. 
He united us.
  Mr. President, I also grew up as a Democrat. President Reagan deeply 
inspired me, and he had a lot to do with the fact that I am standing on 
this side

[[Page 11733]]

of the aisle today. He inspired me with ideas, such as if you want to 
grow an economy, you cut taxes and put money in people's pockets; they 
will spend it on a product or service, and there is a job connected to 
that. He understood that. He showed the power of it. I understood that. 
It wasn't just about policy, it was about optimism.
  When I ran for mayor in St. Paul in 1993, my slogan was ``St. Paul's 
best days are yet to come.'' When I switched parties in 1996, Jack Kemp 
came over to my house, and I made the announcement. It was that spirit 
of hope, optimism, entrepreneurship, and opportunity that he showed 
worked. That was the key, by the way. For him, it was not about 
politics; it was about results.
  My friend from Oklahoma quoted President Reagan saying that solving 
the energy crisis wasn't easy, but that it can be done. He understood 
the importance of getting it done.
  I think Ronald Reagan would be honored to know we are shutting down 
the Federal Government on Friday. His only concern might be that we are 
starting it again on Monday. He changed us and transformed the world, 
without a doubt. Some days, Mr. President, I get concerned that we are 
changing back.
  As we remember his life, I hope we all remember that the simple 
things are the right things: Freedom, hope, liberty, and optimism.
  I thank God that he gave us Ronald Reagan when we needed him most. 
Now, this is our time. I pray that we will courageously follow his 
example and embrace America's destiny in this challenging hour.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, the strength of Abraham Lincoln's resolve 
to restore the Union, whatever the terrible cost to do so, was his 
unshakeable faith that in America any father's child could come to 
occupy the same place that his father's child had attained. That 
uniquely American conviction also inspired Ronald Reagan to reach his 
great place in our country's history and in the hearts of his 
countrymen. I doubt Ronald Reagan was much surprised to become 
President, despite his humble origins. And I know for certain he never 
took for granted a single day he occupied the office. He believed such 
an honored privilege was within the reach of any American with 
principles, industry and talent, and that once attained, it was to be 
held with great care to preserve for succeeding generations the 
blessings of liberty that had so enriched his own life. His patriotism, 
which he expressed eloquently and often in his public remarks, was 
never affected. He believed every word. Nor was his unfailing good 
humor and optimism an actor's performance. He lived in a shining city 
on a hill, and he never forgot it.
  I first met President Reagan and his lovely wife, Nancy, not long 
after I returned from Vietnam. But I knew of him in the years before I 
regained my liberty, when my fellow prisoners-of-war and I would 
discuss in tap codes and whispered conversations the Governor of 
California who was giving such eloquent voice to the convictions we 
believed we had been sent to war to advance. In the more than 30 years 
that have passed since I first met him, I have never lived a day that I 
wasn't grateful for the privilege of the Reagans' friendship, and the 
strength of his faith in America that inspired my own, and so many 
others.
  His accomplishments in office were historic, and will be long 
remembered as will the humility, grace and decency with which he 
achieved them. It was an honor to have known him, and Cindy and I shall 
miss him very much. We offer our sincerest condolences to Nancy, and to 
Michael, Patti and Ron, and pray that God grants this good man eternal 
life, reunites him with his daughter, Maureen, and with all his loved 
ones who have preceded him.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, at a luncheon with Bernard Baruch, Mr. 
Baruch commented that Harry Truman ``had a good memory'' and ``he also 
had a good bad memory.'' We are hearing both at the passing of former 
President Ronald Reagan. There is no question that if a President is to 
be credited for the end of the Cold War that credit should go to Ronald 
Reagan. We were anxious about the depletion of our defenses in the U.S. 
Senate in the year preceding President Reagan's administration so we 
passed a 5 percent across-the-board increase in the Defense budget. But 
President Reagan came on board and really moved to strengthen our 
defenses, building a 600-ship Navy and not hesitating to deploy 
intermediate missiles in Europe. He also moved to formalize our 
ballistic missile defense system, calling it the Strategic Defense 
Initiative and increasing its support. President Reagan can also be 
credited with a competitive trade policy. Though he had the power to 
rescind the anti-dumping order on the importation of motorcycles, he 
let the order stand; reviving as we all know the Harley Davidson 
industry. Moreover, he imposed voluntary restraint agreements in steel, 
semiconductors, machine tools and automobiles. There is no question, 
for example, that Intel would have had a hard time surviving had it not 
been for Sematech and Reagan's VRA on semiconductors.
  But at this time of praise, those with ``good bad memory'' forget it 
was Ronald Reagan who started supply side economics. Former Senator Bob 
Dole led the opposition to its forerunner, Kemp-Roth, and former 
President George Herbert Walker Bush characterized this cutting 
revenues to increase them as ``voodoo.'' With Reagan looking for an 
issue at a low point in his administration, he locked onto supply side, 
ignoring his campaign pledge to ``balance the budget within one year.'' 
It is good to note that in this country after 200 years existence, with 
the cost of all the wars from the Revolution up to the War in Vietnam, 
the national debt stood at less than $1 trillion. Reagan's supply side 
or ``voodoo'' gave us the first trillion dollar debt and he left office 
having increased the national debt $1.7 trillion. Under Bush 41, in 4 
years the debt increased $1.4 trillion. President Clinton over 8 years 
slowed the increase of the debt to $1.6 trillion with spending cuts and 
tax increases, leaving a projected surplus. President George W. Bush, 
with three tax cuts or Reagan ``voodoos,'' has eliminated the surplus 
and increased the debt over $2 trillion in 4 years. As his chief 
counselor Vice President Cheney said, ``Deficits don't matter.'' Since 
the beginning days, this country has shown sacrifice at a time of war 
by adopting a tax measure to pay for the war. But not for the War on 
Terrorism. We in the Congress need a fourth tax cut, voodoo, to get 
reelected. Today the GI fighting the war is also going to have to pay 
for the war. At this time of remembrance, let's not forget that Reagan 
dignified ``voodoo.''
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, on Saturday, our Nation lost a strong 
leader and the State of California lost an adopted son.
  As a citizen, Ronald Wilson Reagan embodied the American dream. He 
personified the image of California--can-do, risk-taking, cutting-edge. 
Ronald Reagan was all of those things.
  As a President, he unified a country and helped bring an end to the 
cold war, the premier struggle of his time in public life.
  My fondest memory of President Reagan took place while I was mayor of 
San Francisco at a March 1983 dinner the President and First Lady 
hosted for Queen Elizabeth II in San Francisco. The Queen was thrilled 
to visit California for the first time and especially pleased to be 
welcomed by a President from California.
  During that trip the Queen quipped at one point that she knew England 
had exported many traditions to the United States, but she hadn't 
realized the weather was one of them.
  San Francisco's London-like weather aside, as Mayor I was enormously 
proud of the wonderful welcome we had provided for the Queen of 
England.
  Growing up in small-town central Illinois in the years leading up to 
the Great Depression, President Reagan was instilled with the values 
that would guide him as a person and as a leader. There he learned the 
importance of hard work and optimism as the key ingredients for 
success.
  It was this optimism combined with his ever-present sense of humor 
that

[[Page 11734]]

characterized him best, enabling him to both ``fill the screen'' and 
make a stellar entrance wherever he went.
  After 4 years at Eureka College, where he was known as a gritty, 
though undersized tackle on the football team, he began searching for a 
job in broadcasting. In 1932, at the height of the Depression, he 
headed into the job market confident that a job would be his soon.
  After several years as a broadcaster covering University of Iowa 
football games and later recreating Chicago Cubs' games based on 
telegraph reports, a young Ronald Reagan traveled to California to 
cover the Cubs' spring training.
  It was his first trip west of Kansas City and it nurtured his 
fascination with Hollywood. While he was there, he used his 
considerable charm to convince a movie agent to arrange a screen test 
for him at Warner Brothers Studios.
  Before long, he returned to the Midwest, packed his bags and started 
the quintessential American journey westward in search of opportunity. 
Of course, he found it as a movie star.
  He won many fans through his on-screen charisma. The optimism he 
inspired was exemplified by his role as Notre Dame football player 
George Gipp in the film ``Knute Rockne--All-American.'' Years after 
Gipp's death, Coach Rockne gave a pep talk to his team urging them to 
``win one for the Gipper'' one of the more memorable lines in American 
sports history.
  But President Reagan's greatest impact on the world was as a 
politician. As a labor leader with the Screen Actors Guild, his roots 
as an activist were shaped significantly by a deep concern about 
communism.
  Yet despite his strongly anti-communist views, he condemned the 
unfair smearing of many liberals by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the 
House Un-American Activities Committee. He refused to reveal names 
publicly, but exposed some people to the FBI privately.
  As Governor of California he had a strong record of environmental 
protection: adding 145,000 acres to the State's park system, protecting 
Lake Tahoe from rampant development, blocking the construction of dams 
on the Dos Rios and Eel rivers, and stopping the paving of a federal 
highway through the Sierra Nevada Mountains that would have cut through 
the John Muir Trail.
  He also signed legislation to protect rivers on California's north 
coast and approved strict car emissions standards that forced the 
Nation's automakers to manufacture cleaner-burning cars. But he lobbied 
against the Coastal Protection Act approved by voters in 1972 and 
resisted air pollution controls imposed by the federal government.
  Despite his personal opposition to abortion, Governor Reagan loosened 
an 1872 statute to allow abortion in cases of rape, incest, when a 
mother's health was at stake, or when there was a high risk that a baby 
would be born with birth defects. Many States followed Governor 
Reagan's lead on this important issue.
  However, his move to close down mental health facilities in 
California resulted in widespread homelessness in urban areas. Though 
he sought to steer the mentally ill into community-based mental health 
facilities the end result was a spike in homelessness, a problem that 
we continue to deal with to this day.
  While in Sacramento, he generally approached fiscal policy as a 
moderate, first presiding over a $1-billion tax increase to balance the 
State budget and another subsequent increase. He eventually lowered 
taxes, but in his two terms as Governor, State spending doubled overall 
and the State's workforce grew by 34,000.
  As President, he was a unifier and an optimist. His infectious, 
upbeat attitude rallied people to his goals. He was extremely 
successful in passing legislation by joining that optimism with a 
willingness to compromise with a Democratic Congress.
  In his dealings, he was tough, but ready to negotiate. There is no 
better example of this than his relationship with former Soviet leader 
Mikhail Gorbachev. He often used harsh rhetoric in challenging the 
actions of our cold war adversary, but it was always backed by his core 
beliefs.
  Once, as he prepared for his first summit with the Soviet leader, he 
met with a room full of foreign policy advisors, each offering their 
suggestions about what he should say. After a half-hour of discussion, 
President Reagan turned to his advisors and said, ``Gentlemen, I've 
been thinking about what I'm going to say to this man my whole life. 
And I know exactly what I'm going to say.''
  Gorbachev described Reagan as ``a great President, with whom the 
Soviet leadership was able to launch a very difficult but important 
dialogue.''
  His tough negotiating stance yielded some important accomplishments 
including signing treaties reducing intermediate-range nuclear missiles 
and limiting strategic arms. These acts of diplomacy combined with his 
relentless advocacy for freedom played a major role in bringing about 
an end to the cold war.
  At the same time, Reagan had a tendency to overreach in the area of 
foreign policy. The invasion of Grenada, the intervention in Lebanon 
that left American soldiers uncertain of their role and vulnerable to 
attack, and, above all, the Iran-Contra scandal--were all cases in 
which the Reagan Administration went too far in seeking to reshape the 
world.
  At home, President Reagan sought to limit the size of government and 
tap the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people. And though he 
was famous for cutting taxes, he approved two tax increases during his 
first term in the White House.
  Unfortunately, the tax cuts were coupled with sharp increases in 
defense spending that resulted in massive deficits. The Federal budget 
finally recovered from those years of deficit-spending during the late 
1990s, but the surpluses that were generated disappeared in the blink 
of an eye under the current administration's fiscal policies.
  President Reagan's cuts to public housing, job training, and the 
broader social safety net were another serious blow domestically. And, 
as cities and mayors across the country were reeling from the advent of 
AIDS--no place suffered more than San Francisco--President Reagan 
failed to act. He would not even publicly comment on the AIDS crisis.
  Though people did not always agree with his policies, it cannot be 
denied that President Reagan redefined politics through his tremendous 
skills as a communicator. In particular, his ability to define clear 
goals and persuade others to support those goals earned him the 
admiration of many Americans.
  As we all know, President Reagan suffered from Alzheimer's Disease 
during the last decade of his life.
  As we honor his memory in the days and weeks to come, it is my hope 
that we will consider what we can do here in Congress to battle this 
terrible disease.
  A good first step would be to approve legislation that supports 
embryonic stem cell research. This research offers tremendous hope, not 
only to those who suffer from Alzheimer's, but also the millions of 
people with cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis and 
spinal cord injuries. What a fitting tribute passage of this bill would 
be to President Reagan.
  In closing, there probably is no American who has more fully lived 
the American dream from actor to Governor to President than Ronald 
Reagan. Today, we mourn his loss, but recognize that his was a full 
life.
  Thank you for your service to this country, President Reagan.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, today I pay my respects to a beloved 
leader who, with grace, wit, and charisma, led our country through some 
of the great challenges of the twentieth century. President Ronald 
Wilson Reagan was a dedicated public servant whose confidence and 
optimism reinvigorated the American people and made him one of the most 
honored and respected Presidents in our Nation's history.
  Although he lived most of his life in California, President Reagan 
was a fellow Midwesterner. Born in 1911 in Tampico, IL, Ronald Wilson 
Reagan attended high school in nearby Dixon and worked his way through 
Eureka College. There he earned his B.A., played

[[Page 11735]]

on the football team, and participated in school plays. He eventually 
won a contract in Hollywood and appeared in 53 films over two decades.
  The father of four children became increasingly involved in politics 
and in 1966 was elected the governor of California, and was reelected 
in 1970. His optimistic message, at a time when the country was beset 
by inflation and by the taking of American hostages in Iran, helped him 
to win the presidency in 1980. Four years later, he was reelected in a 
49-state sweep.
  In foreign affairs, it is impossible to separate President Reagan's 
legacy from the astounding change in world affairs that began while he 
was in office: the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and the end of the Cold 
War. President Reagan spoke frankly and frequently about the 
bankruptcy--both moral and economic--of the Soviet regime. His words 
and actions energized dissidents and activists struggling for change 
and for justice in the face of Communist repression and tyranny. His 
optimism helped to give them confidence that they were, indeed, on the 
right side of history.
  President Reagan not only recognized the monstrous nature of 
Communist totalitarianism, but he also understood the horror of a 
geopolitical reality that made the entire world hostage to the threat 
of nuclear annihilation. He had the courage to act, to reach out to the 
Soviet leadership and to craft landmark arms control agreements, 
including one that, for the first time, eliminated a class of nuclear 
weapons.
  On the domestic front, it was under the leadership of President 
Reagan that the solvency of the Social Security program was extended 
through reforms to the existing program. Although modest in their 
overall scope, those reforms were seen by many as politically risky, 
and President Reagan provided critical leadership that helped assure 
both a reluctant Congress and an uncertain public. Today, we should 
build on the Reagan reforms, and strengthen the existing program, as he 
did.
  Another significant domestic policy challenge that President Reagan 
tackled was the simplification of our tax code. In the face of special 
interest pressures, and under the leadership of his Secretary of 
Treasury, Donald Regan, as well as a bipartisan group of members of the 
House and Senate, President Reagan was able to push through the last 
significant reforms to our increasingly complex tax code in 1986.
  At the time, I was the Chairman of the Taxation Committee in the 
Wisconsin State Senate and we were holding a variety of hearings around 
the State, addressing parallel reforms. These hearings and reforms were 
driven by President Reagan's proposal. Though far from perfect, that 
reform effort is another model for action we need to undertake again. 
And policymakers in Congress and the executive branch would do well to 
follow President Reagan's example in this matter.
  Of course, no review of President Reagan's legacy would be complete 
without acknowledging his Alzheimer's disease which, sadly, defined the 
last 10 years of his life as well as the lives of his family. As the 
author of Wisconsin's Alzheimer's program, I have become all too aware 
of the heartbreaking tragedy that this dread disease brings to a 
family.
  President Reagan's brave, public acknowledgment of the disease, and 
the wonderful efforts of his wife Nancy, have done a great deal to 
educate the country about this horrible affliction. They have also 
helped to spur government investment in the research needed to find a 
cure, and to raise awareness of the need for long-term care services 
for those suffering from Alzheimer's.
  President Ronald Wilson Reagan helped to transform America and the 
world. He and his achievements will forever be honored and remembered.
  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, the Capitol today is overflowing with 
visitors, flags stand at half-staff, and the Nation has collectively 
stopped this week--all to honor a remarkable man who accomplished 
remarkable things during a remarkable time.
  President Ronald Reagan gave his life to public service and has left 
a legacy of leadership that will always be remembered.
  We remember President Reagan's strong vision for political and 
economic freedom which was instrumental in the fall of communism and 
the spread of democracy in Eastern Europe. The world held its breath as 
America stared communism in the face, but in the end we peacefully won 
over the respect and cooperation of our enemy. Less than a year after 
Reagan left office, Mr. Gorbachev stepped down, the Berlin Wall fell 
and the cold war ended.
  I will never forget President Reagan's historic speech on June 12, 
1987, in front of the Brandenburg Gate near the Berlin Wall when he 
called on Mikhail Gorbachev to ``Open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear 
down this wall.''
  Today, the United States is working with Russia to replace tyranny 
and fear in Iraq with peace and stability.
  Of President Reagan, Gorbachev said, ``A true leader, a man of his 
word and an optimist, he traveled the journey of his life with dignity 
and faced courageously the cruel disease that darkened his final years. 
He has earned a place in history and in people's hearts.''
  We also remember Dutch, the Great Communicator, the Gipper as a man 
of great optimism and humor. My kids' history books recall the dates 
and facts of this time, but they do not convey this Hollywood actor 
turned President's good-natured spirit or genuine optimism for a better 
tomorrow. Nor can they express his unyielding dedication and love for 
our country. However, I believe the outpouring of respect and affection 
shown by the American public this week says we will forever remember 
his character and personality.
  Finally, we remember a man who never stopped believing, never stopped 
advocating America's ability to succeed and prosper. He stuck to his 
convictions and his visions for America, whether popular or not.
  Ronald Reagan's initiatives didn't please all Americans and Democrats 
and Republicans did not always agree on President Reagan's foreign 
policy or domestic agenda, but he never encouraged or played the biting 
partisan games that exist today. Even with those people whom he had 
genuine ideological differences, President Reagan always showed a level 
of respect and acknowledged that we are all Americans and we are in 
this together.
  Years ago, President Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill used 
to joke that, ``between 9 and 5 we are enemies, but at 5 o'clock let's 
go have a cocktail together.'' To truly honor and remember President 
Reagan--this man of great accomplishment, optimism, and oratory--
perhaps we could find ways to work better together for a better 
tomorrow.
  I extend my deepest sympathies to the Reagan family in their time of 
sorrow, and I hope it is of some comfort that Americans and many others 
throughout the world mourn by their side.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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