[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18479-18481]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE FISCAL CLIFF

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, the hour is nigh. Now 
Washington is awash in the rumor that there might be some progress 
being made. I hope so. If there was anything that was made clear to 
this Senator in the reelection in one of the biggest States in the 
Union, it was that the people want us to come together and to stop this 
bickering, the excessive ideological rigidity, and the excessive 
partisanship. That is a huge turnoff because ideological rigidity and 
excessive partisanship are impediments to getting people to come 
together with commonsense decisions for solutions.
  Obviously, there is an easy way. Hopefully that is what is being 
tweaked at the moment in a final solution, with the President to speak 
in about 30 minutes. I hope so.
  Mr. President, I am going to leave you with this thought. My 
colleagues know that a little over a quarter century ago, I had the 
privilege of seeing our home planet from the perspective of looking 
through the window of a spacecraft. It was the 24th flight of the space 
shuttle. It was early in the space shuttle program. It is indelibly 
etched in my mind's eye, as I looked back at Earth, what I saw. I did 
not see political divisions. I did not see religious divisions. I did 
not see ethnic divisions. What I saw is that we were all in this 
together, all a part of planet Earth. If we could remember that in our 
politics, we would all get along so much better. I hope that stays 
indelibly etched in my mind's eye and that we ultimately prevail in 
this momentous decision of avoiding the fiscal cliff.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.

[[Page 18480]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, there is a lot of buzzing going on 
around the Capitol today. Here we are on New Year's Eve, and so many of 
us had hoped we would have an agreement that would be really a big 
agreement, a long-term agreement that we would have liked to have had 
finished maybe by September, certainly by October, but that was not to 
be. In fact, as we saw in the elections of this year, our country is 
divided and our House here is divided as well. So it has been hard to 
come to terms.
  It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, 
except for all the rest, because when we have opinions, when we have 
free speech, when we have elections that put a Democratic majority in 
the Senate and a Republican majority in the House, we know there is not 
going to be a clear and precise path. But in the end, it is the best 
because we have all expressed our opinions and everyone has been heard.
  We have had countless meetings in the last few weeks trying to see 
where people could give and where they couldn't. I have said from the 
beginning that I am optimistic because I think our democracy will work 
in the end. From what I am hearing from the different leaders, we are 
close to an agreement. We are not there, but it is a starting point and 
certainly a point at which there is already some agreement.
  It may not seem as though it should be so hard, but once we do have 
the framework of an agreement, there are a lot of decisions that have 
to be made. We have to talk among Senate Democrats and Republicans, and 
then we have to go to the House and talk to Republicans and Democrats. 
I think one thing that is clear is there has to be a substantial number 
of votes on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Rotunda. We 
will not pass something with all Democratic votes or all Republican 
votes because it will not pass in the other House. So I think there is 
a lot of refining of what is a pretty good agreement in the making, but 
the refining has not yet been finished. I have abiding hope that we 
will get there.


                            Time to Reflect

  Since this may possibly be my last day as a U.S. Senator--at least my 
last time to vote. Up until January 2, I am a U.S. Senator, but 
actually being able to participate at this late date has given me some 
time to reflect. I so appreciate some of the major communications and 
opportunities I have had with the real people in my home State of Texas 
and beyond. I always think of the many times I have been able to meet 
with our troops in harm's way.
  In the early years of my tenure in the Senate, our troops were in 
harm's way in Bosnia, where there were many conflicts, and I got to 
visit with them and see what their concerns were and what was on their 
minds, and then into Iraq and then into Afghanistan. I have visited all 
of these places and had the chance to talk to our troops. What a person 
comes away with when they have that opportunity is the understanding 
that America is in good hands with our younger generation. They have 
such a great spirit.
  I went to the Brooke Army Medical Center Hospital in San Antonio and 
visited with a young man who had lost both legs in an IED explosion. He 
had been able to get used to that situation for maybe 2 weeks. So it is 
reasonable to say he had had the shock of his life. So I went into his 
room, and there is his wife and his little daughter, who was about the 
same age as my daughter, sitting there with him.
  He says to me: Senator, they won't let me go back, and that is where 
I want to be.
  Then his darling wife pipes up and says: You know what, they took 
half of you and they are not getting the other half.
  Now, if that isn't a story, for both of them to have such a spirit. I 
was so touched by that.
  Just in the last month or so, I was back in San Antonio visiting the 
wonderful Center for the Intrepid they have for the wounded warriors 
and their families. It is a recreation center, and it is a place where 
they can go and cook food and have family meetings. They can play 
games, and they have extensive learning opportunities with computer 
rooms. It is a wonderful center they have put together, the people of 
San Antonio.
  This was all spearheaded by a wounded warrior who had been cooped up 
in a room and wanted to have some ability to get outside the room with 
his family and have some experiences even though he was still going 
through treatment. He started raising money, and he raised it from the 
community and from many other wounded warriors, as well as military 
personnel, but a lot of the citizens of San Antonio and Texas stepped 
forward. So this is a wonderful place.
  I met a wonderful young man who lost his arm and parts of two of his 
legs. He was a West Point graduate. He was sitting there, again with 
his beautiful wife, and I was visiting with him.
  He said: I just want to be able to continue to contribute.
  And I thought, oh my goodness, here is a West Point graduate who has 
so much to give and who wants to continue to give. So I came back and I 
wrote a letter to General Odierno, the Chief of Staff of the Army, and 
I told him about the young man who lost most of three limbs out of four 
and who wants to keep contributing. What about making him a military 
fellow, as we have in our offices, as the Presiding Officer knows? We 
have military fellows who are Active-Duty military, and they help us. 
We can have one a year. They help us by providing the military 
perspective on the things we are doing. Of course, because I have 
served on the Defense Subcommittee and the Military Construction 
Subcommittee of Appropriations and the Veterans' Affairs Committee, I 
love to have those military fellows.
  I was so pleased that within just a month or so, when the choices 
were made for military fellows, this young man was chosen by the Army 
with the support of General Odierno, whose own son also has lost an arm 
in combat.
  So I think that is a wonderful thing and that on reflection is one of 
the highlights of my moments to remember.
  I also remember some of the great things my staff has done. I have to 
say, my staff has been the can-do staff of all time. They never take no 
for an answer. So when we have challenges, individuals who need help--
it may be a veterans' benefit; it may be a Social Security problem--
they have always had the reputation as the staff who tries to do 
everything possible to come through.
  I am very pleased the Senator who is going to take my place on 
January 3 is going to have my staff director for case work, Joyce 
Sibley--who has had such a great reputation--continue in that position. 
She knows the issues. She knows the people. She will be great. I 
applaud Senator-elect Ted Cruz for making that decision and for keeping 
most of the staff who have done this wonderful work.
  But let me give a couple examples. First of all, we got a frantic 
call from a friend of mine about a doctor who was trapped on top of 
Mount Everest. He was a Dallas doctor, and he was trapped up there in a 
blizzard and not expected to live. They had a terrible loss of some of 
the people in their climbing group, and a friend called and said: Is 
there anything you can do?
  My wonderful staff, one of whom is retired military and knows so many 
of the things that could be done, Dave Davis, and Carolyn Kobey, who 
handles this casework in my Dallas office. Carolyn actually got in 
touch with the Nepalese Armed Forces and as a result of Carolyn's 
efforts, they were able to get a helicopter up. Once you get past a 
certain level--13,000 feet--you have to have oxygen in a helicopter or, 
obviously, if you are climbing.
  So it was something that was a real ask of the Nepalese Air Force and 
we were able to get them to take that risk and to go up and they were 
able to rescue Dr. Beck Weathers. He is alive and wrote a great book 
about that experience from his vantage point. But we were very pleased 
to be able to take part in something such as that.

[[Page 18481]]

  I will tell you, maybe the all time great experience was in my 
Houston office, led by Jason Fuller. We got a call in the Dallas 
office, and so the Houston and Dallas offices together did this. We got 
a call in the Dallas office from a woman in Mississippi. She said: I 
didn't know who else to call, but I knew Senator Hutchison's name. My 
son is having an asthma attack in Houston, and I don't know how to get 
him the help he needs. He is in his apartment by himself.
  My staff said: Please give us the information. We will call our 
Houston office, and we will see if we can get help, which they did. 
They called the Houston office. The Houston office called 
9-1-1. They went out to the young man's apartment. He was, in fact, in 
a dire circumstance and would have died had he not gotten help right 
away. But they took him in. They gave him the help he needed, and that 
young man is alive today.
  So these instances are some of the great memories I will have of 
having a wonderful staff who will go the extra mile and try to help the 
individuals in our State as well as on the big issues where we also try 
to make sure we do everything we can to get something that is very 
important to us, whether it is to America or to Texas or to Texans or 
to Americans.
  These are some of the memories I will take with me as I leave this 
great body. As I said in my actual formal farewell speech, it is easy 
to be critical. I saw on television this morning that the esteem of 
Congress has fallen to 5 percent favorable. I am not surprised at that. 
As my colleague John McCain once said: Now we are down to blood 
relatives and paid staff. It is easy to criticize, and there are a lot 
of reasons to criticize. I will admit things have not been as 
productive and most certainly the acrimony does show sometimes.
  But I am going to say, as I leave, after almost 20 years in this 
body, the people here are all dedicated. There is not one who is not a 
dedicated patriotic American. We disagree, sometimes violently 
disagree, on the way we should get to our goals. But our agreement is 
on the goal of keeping America the beacon of freedom to the world, to 
keeping our military strong, to doing right by all our people, whether 
it is a small businessperson who is creating jobs who is trying to go 
up the ladder of success or whether it is someone who is in trouble 
because they have had a huge setback in their lives. Everyone here 
wants America to continue to be the magnet for the world. We want to be 
the science and technology innovators who will continue to fuel our 
economy. It is just how we get there that causes the disagreement.
  We have patriotic people who have been elected. I hope for the next 2 
years we will put aside the partisan politics, put aside the thoughts 
of future elections, and try to solve the big issues of our time, 
because there is a lot of intelligence in this body. There is a lot of 
ability to come together. I keep the abiding faith that our messy 
democracy will, in fact, prevail because I cannot think of going to 
anything else. As long as we can function and show the world we can 
govern, as we disagree, that will be the example that will forever make 
our country the best and, hopefully, be a model for others to not think 
you have to take to the streets, not think you need guns to have the 
government you want but to show that peaceful transition can be done 
and also that we can have a lot of discussion, a lot of disagreements, 
but we can do it civilly.
  I leave this body knowing if we just remember the honor we have of 
growing up in the greatest Nation on Earth, we will recognize that it 
is our responsibility to give the same to our children and 
grandchildren. It is the least we can do.
  Thank you. 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. BROWN of Ohio. Madam 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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