[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16721-16724]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         FAREWELL TO THE SENATE

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, my fourth and final term as a U.S. 
Senator will soon come to an end. As I reflect on that reality, I am, 
of course, filled with many emotions, but the one I feel most is 
gratitude--gratitude first to God, creator of life and law, without 
whose loving kindness nothing would be possible; gratitude to America, 
the extraordinary land of opportunity which has given someone like me 
so many opportunities; gratitude to the people of Connecticut, who have 
entrusted me with the privilege of public service for 40 years, the 
last 24 in the Senate; gratitude to my Senate colleagues, whom I have 
come to know as friends and with whom it has been such an honor to 
serve; gratitude to all the people without whose help, hard work, and 
support I never would have made it to the Senate or stayed here, the 
gifted and hard-working staff in Connecticut and Washington who 
supported, informed, and enriched my service here, and the volunteers 
in my campaigns who gave so much and asked for nothing in return except 
that I do what I believed was right; gratitude to all those who labor 
out of view in the corridors of this Capitol Building, from the 
maintenance crews to the Capitol Police and everybody else anywhere in 
this building--thank you for keeping our Capitol running and keeping us 
safe; and gratitude most of all, of course, to my family for the love, 
support, and inspiration they have given me every day of my life--my 
parents, grandparents, and siblings, my children and grandchildren, and 
Hadassah, my wife of almost 30 years now, the love of

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my life, who has been my constant companion, supporter, and partner 
through this amazing adventure.
  So I want to begin this farewell speech by simply saying thank you 
all. I have a lot to be grateful for. But, Mr. President, being a 
Senator, and since this is my farewell speech, I do have a few more 
things I would like to say.
  I am leaving the Senate at a moment in our history when America faces 
daunting challenges both domestic and foreign and when too often our 
problems seem greater than our government's ability to solve them. But 
I can tell you I remain deeply optimistic about America's future and 
constantly inspired by the special destiny I am convinced is ours as 
Americans.
  My optimism is based not in theory or hope but in American history 
and in personal experience. I think particularly about my time in 
public life and especially the changes I have witnessed since I took 
the oath of office as a Senator on January 3, 1989. The fact is that 
over the past quarter century, America and the world have become freer 
and more prosperous. The Iron Curtain was peacefully torn down, and the 
Soviet empire defeated. The eternal values of freedom and opportunity, 
on which America was founded and for which we still stand, have made 
global gains that were once unimaginable. We have seen the spread of 
democracy from Central Europe to Southeast Asia and from Latin America 
to the Middle East. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out 
of poverty in places such as China, India, and just about every other 
corner of the globe, and technological advances have transformed almost 
every aspect of our daily lives.
  When I started in the Senate, a BlackBerry was a fruit and tweeting 
was something only birds did. No more. None of these extraordinary 
developments happened by accident. In fact, to a significant degree, I 
would say they were made possible by the principled leadership of the 
United States, by the global economy and international system America 
created with our diplomacy and protected with our military and by the 
unique culture of freedom, innovation, and entrepreneurship that 
flourishes in our country and that remains the model and inspiration 
for the rest of the modernizing world.
  We have every reason to be proud of the progress of humanity that has 
happened on America's watch and here at home to be grateful for the 
countless ways in which our own country has been benefited in the 
process. We live in a world whose shape and trajectory the United 
States, more than any other nation, is responsible for. It is certainly 
not a perfect world. I know that. But it is a better world than the one 
we inherited. In my opinion, it is actually in so many ways a better 
world than has ever existed before.
  Here at home, over the past quarter century, we have moved closer to 
the more perfect union our Founders sought--becoming a more free and 
open society, in ways I would guess those same Founders never could 
have imagined.
  Barriers of discrimination and bigotry that just a few decades ago 
seemed immoveable have been broken, and the doors of opportunity have 
been opened wider for all Americans--regardless of race, religion, 
gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or disability.
  During my time in Washington, we have had our first female Secretary 
of State nominated and confirmed and our first African-American 
President elected and reelected. It will forever remain one of my 
deepest honors that--thanks to Vice President Gore--I was given the 
opportunity to be the first Jewish American nominated by a major 
political party for national office--and, incidentally, thanks to the 
American people, grateful to have received one-half million more votes 
than my opponent on the other side. But that is a longer story.
  While there is still much work to do and many problems to be solved, 
I believe we can and should approach our future with a confidence that 
is based on the real and substantial progress we have made together. 
What is required now to solve the real urgent problems we still have is 
leadership--leadership of the kind that is never easy or common but 
which we as Americans know we can summon in times of need because we 
have summoned it before.
  Today, I regret to say, as I leave the Senate, the greatest obstacle 
I see standing between us and the brighter American future we all want 
is right here in Washington. It is the partisan polarization of our 
politics which prevents us from making the principled compromises on 
which progress in a democracy depends and which right now prevents us 
from restoring our fiscal solvency as a nation.
  We need bipartisan leadership to break the gridlock in Washington 
that will unleash all the potential that is in the American people. So 
I would respectfully make this appeal to my colleagues--especially the 
12 new Senators who will take the oath of office for the first time 
next month. I know how hard each of you has worked to get elected to 
the Senate, and I know you worked so hard because you wanted to come 
here to make a difference for the better. There is no magic or mystery 
about the way to do so in the Senate. It requires reaching across the 
aisle and finding partners from the opposite party. It means ultimately 
putting the interests of country and constituents ahead of the dictates 
of party and ideology.
  When I look back at my own career, the legislative achievements I am 
proudest to have been part of--such as passing the Clean Air Act of 
1990, stopping the genocide in the Balkans, creating the 9/11 
Commission and the Department of Homeland Security, reforming the 
intelligence community, reorganizing FEMA, and repealing don't ask, 
don't tell--all were achieved only because a critical mass of Democrats 
and Republicans found common ground. That is what is desperately needed 
in Washington now to solve our Nation's biggest problems and address 
our biggest challenges before they become crises or catastrophes.
  Our future also depends on our Nation continuing to exercise another 
kind of leadership; that is, leadership beyond our borders. This too 
has never been easy or popular. Americans have rarely been eager to 
entangle ourselves abroad, especially at times when we have faced 
economic difficulties at home, as we do now. There has been the 
temptation to turn inward, to tell ourselves that the problems of the 
world are not our responsibility or that we cannot afford to do 
anything about them. In fact, the prosperity, security, and freedom of 
the American people depend more than ever before on what is happening 
in the rest of the world--and so, too, does the rest of the world 
depend especially on us.
  I know we can't solve all the planet's problems by ourselves, nor 
should we try. But the fact is that none of the biggest problems facing 
the world can or will be solved in the absence of American leadership. 
Here, too, I appeal to my Senate colleagues--and, again, especially 
those who will take the oath of office for the first time early in 
January--do not listen to the political consultants or others who tell 
you that you shouldn't spend time on foreign affairs or national 
security. They are wrong. The American people need us, the Senate, to 
stay engaged economically, diplomatically, and militarily in an ever 
smaller world. Do not underestimate the impact you can have by getting 
involved in matters of foreign policy and national security, whether by 
using your voice to stand in solidarity with those who are struggling 
for the American ideal of freedom in their own countries across the 
globe or working to strengthen the foreign policy and national security 
institutions of our own country or by rallying our citizens to embrace 
the role that we as a country must play on the world stage, as both our 
interests and our values demand.
  None of the challenges we face in a still dangerous world is beyond 
our ability to meet. Just as we ended the ethnic cleansing in the 
Balkans, we can stop the slaughter in Syria. Just as we nurtured the 
democratic transitions after communism fell in Central and Eastern 
Europe, we can support the forces of freedom in the Middle East today. 
Just as we were able to prevail

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in the long struggle against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, we 
can prevail in the global conflict with Islamist extremism and 
terrorism we were forced into by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 
2001.
  But all that too will require leadership in the Senate. It will 
require leaders who will stand against the siren song of isolationism, 
who will defend our defense and foreign assistance budgets, who will 
support, when necessary, the use of America's military power against 
our enemies in the world, and who will have the patience and 
determination when the public grows weary to see our battles through 
until they are won.
  I first set foot in this Chamber almost exactly 50 years ago, in the 
summer of 1963, inspired like so many of my generation by President 
John F. Kennedy and his call to service. I spent that summer right here 
in the Senate as an intern for my home State Senator, Abe Ribicoff. He 
was and remains another personal hero of mine. Although I never would 
have admitted so publicly back then, because it was so presumptuous, I 
came away from that experience with the dream that I might someday, 
somehow return to serve in this place.
  I have been blessed to live that dream, and that is what America is 
all about. We have always been a nation of dreamers whose destiny is 
determined only by the bounds of our own imagination and by our 
willingness to work hard to realize what we have imagined. Indeed, long 
before the United States came into being as a government of 
institutions and laws, it was a dream--a dream, an implausible, 
incredible dream, animated by faith of a country defined not by its 
borders nor by its rulers nor by the ethnicity of its Founders but by a 
set of eternal and universal principles--that life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness are God's endowment to each of us.
  That was the dream that gave us our existence and our purpose as a 
nation, and it is the dream that for more than 200 years, through every 
passing generation, has been reinventing, renewing, enthralling, and 
surprising us--the very dreamers who are living that dream.
  I leave this Chamber as full of faith in the dream called America as 
when I stood here nearly one quarter century ago to take the oath of 
office for the first time--and as when I first came here nearly one-
half century ago as a 21-year-old, the grandchild of four immigrants to 
America, the son of wonderful parents who never had the opportunity 
even to go to college but made sure my sisters and I did and gave us 
the confidence to pursue our dreams, which was their American dream for 
us.
  America remains a land of dreams and a nation of dreamers. I know my 
own story repeats itself today in millions of American families and 
their children. As long as that is so, I know our best days as a 
country are still ahead of us.
  So I will end my remarks where our country began a long time ago--
with a dream and a prayer that God will continue to bless the United 
States of America.
  I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I will have a lot more to say about my 
friend from Connecticut in the next few days. In the meantime, I wish 
to thank him for a very important, a very visionary, and very wonderful 
statement. We thank him for it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleague and 
friend from Connecticut on behalf of all the people of our State for 
his lifetime of public service.
  Our lives have been intertwined personally and professionally for 
almost 40 years.
  I had the privilege of coming to know Senator Lieberman's family, his 
parents who gave him the values and ideals he has expressed so 
eloquently and powerfully repeatedly throughout America as he did today 
on the floor of the Senate. That dream, which they inspired, is indeed 
a uniquely American dream, but it is rooted also in the Stamford and 
Connecticut community that we share, those ideals of faith, education 
and intellect and those qualities of independence and courage and 
perseverance in the face of adversity which he has embodied and taught 
to so many young people and others around our State and around the 
country and, of course, the ideals and goals of civility and, maybe 
most important for this body, the ideal of public service, which he has 
exemplified through all of these years, an unremitting, unstinting, and 
unwavering commitment to making the world a better place, person by 
person, individual by individual, helping make America equal to that 
great ideal and dream he has articulated so eloquently.
  I have been privileged, also, to know Joe's wife Hadassah, who has 
added so extraordinarily to his life and made possible so many of his 
achievements. This tribute is to her and his family as well as to him.
  For the past 2 years I have had the privilege of working with Senator 
Lieberman, it has been a real honor, and I look forward to continuing 
my work with him, although it will no longer be in this Chamber, just 
as I worked with him before reaching here. In a sense, I followed his 
professional path as a State senator, as attorney general, and now 
here.
  Many of our colleagues will come to the floor in these remaining days 
of this session to commemorate the tremendous legacy he leaves. It is a 
legacy of action, not just of words as we have heard today, but action 
and achievement. He has been a steadfast supporter of family planning 
and a woman's right to choose, raising awareness and garnering 
commitment of congressional colleagues for that cause. He has been a 
champion of equality and justice, exemplified, for example, in his 
advocacy of the repeal of don't ask, don't tell. He has been a leader 
on environmental conservation as attorney general of our State, as well 
as in this body, especially in the fight to protect Long Island Sound, 
a treasure of Connecticut and the entire Nation.
  He was a leader in bringing to the floor of this Chamber one of the 
first bills on climate change. His legacy will live on in these 
efforts: the clean air and water he has helped to protect, the urgency 
with which he has fought to protect our natural treasures in 
Connecticut and around the country. His spirit of environmental 
stewardship will inspire generations to come. That ideal of stewardship 
is also articulated by his remarks here, the stewardship of democracy, 
of our Republic.
  One of Senator Lieberman's signature accomplishments has been the 
creation of the Department of Homeland Security in which he aimed to 
consolidate disparate agencies to facilitate interagency communication. 
In the wake of 9/11, he made that a mission and achieved it as chairman 
of the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs as well as 
a leader on the Armed Services Committee. And on that committee, Armed 
Services, he has championed a strong and vital national defense. That 
remains essential now as it has been throughout his career.
  I am grateful to Senator Lieberman's support for a bill I recently 
introduced, the End Trafficking in Government Contracting Act, which 
addresses the serious problem of human trafficking by Federal 
contractors and subcontractors. I think his support for that measure 
demonstrates, again, his commitment not only to equality but helping 
and working with others in this body on a bipartisan basis who share 
his goals, as that measure has been and was and will be, as is the 
cause of ending human trafficking and achieving human rights.
  Most recently, in a very personal way I observed Senator Lieberman's 
deep empathy for people who are victims of natural catastrophes. When 
the recent spate of storms struck Connecticut, Irene and Sandy, I 
toured with him stricken places, seeing in his eyes and hearing in his 
voice his sense of how individuals and their families are affected by 
any kind of natural disaster.

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He is a person of heart and of soul--a big heart and a soul that 
reaches out to people.
  I thank him for his great work, his contribution, his unstinting 
generosity to the people of our State, Connecticut, through all of his 
years of service in many different positions, in many different ways, 
in a myriad of places throughout the State and throughout our Nation.
  I thank my Connecticut colleague for dedicating his life to public 
service. I look forward to being with him, if not in this Chamber, in 
many other places around the country. I continue to admire his great 
contributions to our country as well as to our State. Thank you, 
Senator Lieberman.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I rise today to honor my colleague, 
Senator Joe Lieberman, who will be leaving the Senate at the end of 
this term. Senator Lieberman's long career in public service began in 
the Connecticut State Senate, where he served for 10 years, including 
three terms as the majority leader. Joe then put his Yale law degree to 
good use as the attorney general for the State before winning his bid 
for the U.S. Senate in 1988. He has served in this esteemed body for 24 
years, and I am grateful for his dedication and service to our country.
  Joe is a true patriot. As Senator, he has made ensuring the security 
and safety of our Nation his priority. He spearheaded the creation of 
the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 and has served honorably as 
the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 
Committee. In this position, Senator Lieberman promoted a forward-
thinking security strategy of preparing our military to respond to the 
unique security threats posed in the 21st century. In particular, he 
has worked to address cyber security issues and prepare our military to 
respond to evolving warfare tactics.
  Senator Lieberman has also worked to ensure that our Nation can stand 
strong in the face of natural disasters. In 2006, he worked with 
Senator Collins to make the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, 
more effective and responsive to communities suffering from the effects 
of natural disasters. He insisted that FEMA centralize and upgrade its 
information technology, IT, system to better respond to disasters and 
the needs of the public.
  Joe and I have worked together as members of the Anti-Meth Caucus to 
fight the methamphetamine epidemic. Senator Lieberman recognizes the 
threat drugs like methamphetamine pose to the security of our borders, 
the health of our citizens, and the economic prosperity of our Nation. 
I was proud to work with him on this important issue.
  In 2000, Senator Lieberman ran as the Vice Presidential candidate, 
becoming the first person of the Jewish faith to represent a major 
political party on a national ticket. Despite rising to the top of the 
ticket as a representative of the Democratic Party, Senator Lieberman 
has frequently demonstrated his willingness to work across the aisle to 
achieve his vision.
  I respect Joe's commitment to his personal convictions and his hard 
work on behalf of the people of Connecticut. I thank him for his 
service to our country and wish him all the best.
  I yield the floor, and 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. NELSON of Nebraska. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cardin). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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