[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 22659-22660]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      HONORING SENATORIAL SERVICE

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I see others who wish to speak, 
and I will make a couple of brief comments.
  In the comments of the Senator from Virginia, his final couple of 
comments recalled for me a statement made in the closing of the 
Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, when on the back of the 
chair of the presiding officer was a sunburst. Someone opined in that 
Constitutional Convention: Dr. Franklin, is that a rising sun or is it 
a setting sun? And Franklin ventured to say that with the birth of the 
new Nation, with the creation of the new Constitution, that he thought 
it was a rising sun.
  Indeed, it is that hope, that optimism of which the Senator from 
Virginia has just spoken--uplifting words--that are the feelings that 
generate this Senator from Florida to get up and go to work every day, 
and to look at this Nation's challenges, not as a Democratic problem or 
a Republican problem, but as an American problem, that need to be 
solved in an American way instead of a partisan way.

[[Page 22660]]

  We have had far too much partisanship over the last several years 
across this land, and, indeed, in this Chamber itself. And of the 
Senators who are leaving this Chamber, I think they represent the very 
best of America, and on occasion have risen in a bipartisan way. It has 
been this Senator's great privilege to work with these Senators: Allen 
of Virginia, Burns of Montana, Chafee of Rhode Island, Dayton of 
Minnesota, DeWine of Ohio, Frist of Tennessee, Jeffords of Vermont, 
Santorum of Pennsylvania, Sarbanes of Maryland, Talent of Missouri.
  As the Good Book in Ecclesiastes says: There is a time to be born and 
a time to die. There is a time to get up, and a time to go to bed. 
There is a time for a beginning, and there is a time of ending.
  For these Senators who are leaving, it is clearly not an ending. It 
is an ending of this chapter in their lives, but this Senator from 
Florida wanted to come and express his appreciation for their public 
service, to admonish those where admonishment is needed when this 
Chamber, indeed, this Government, has gotten too partisan, but to 
express this Senator's appreciation for the quiet moments of friendship 
and reflection and respect in working together, which is the glue that 
makes this Government run.
  Whether you call it bipartisanship, whether you call it friendship, 
whether you call it mutual respect, whatever you call it, the way you 
govern a nation as large and as complicated and as diverse as our 
Nation is--as the Good Book says: Come, let us reason together--that is 
what this Senator tries to be about. And that is what this Senator will 
try to continue to do in the new dawn of a new Congress. So I wanted to 
come and express my appreciation for those Senators, who will not be 
here, for the great public service they have rendered.
  Mr. President, I am truly grateful for their personal friendship and 
for their public service.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana is recognized.

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