[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Page 7049]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  IMPORTANCE OF SENATE BIPARTISANSHIP

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, over this past weekend, while reading the 
News Journal, Delaware's only statewide newspaper, I came across a 
column written by my good friend and our former colleague, Ted Kaufman. 
He was writing about an issue that is troubling to me and to many of 
our colleagues--the narrowing scope of bipartisanship in the U.S. 
Senate today.
  As you know, Mr. President, our longtime colleague Senator Richard 
Lugar faced a difficult primary contest last week in Indiana. While he 
put up a good fight, he ultimately lost the primary to someone who 
openly espouses an aversion to bipartisanship. In recent days a number 
of our colleagues, including Senators Durbin and Kerry, have stood in 
this Chamber to lament the parting of Senator Lugar. Like them, I, too, 
am disappointed that Senator Lugar will not be part of the Senate in 
the future.
  Though I haven't always agreed with him on every issue, Senator Lugar 
has been and remains a deeply respected colleague and statesman. He 
understands that national unity and patriotism should always trump 
partisan bickering, and he believes that working with colleagues on 
both sides of the aisle is critically important for the welfare of our 
country.
  In his article last weekend, Ted Kaufman wrote, ``If candidates like 
Mike Castle and Richard Lugar are defeated because they are willing to 
consider bipartisan solutions, the gridlock can only get worse.'' I 
couldn't have said it better myself. Dick Lugar is the type of Senator 
we need more of, not less of. With his departure, the Senate will lose 
someone who was willing to put progress ahead of party and willing to 
favor compromise over conflict.
  Senator Lugar, as mayor of Indianapolis and as Senator from Indiana, 
you have served your State and your country with distinction. I have no 
doubt that as this Congress and your time in the Senate come to a close 
later this year, you will choose to finish strong. I expect that as you 
do, my colleagues and I will have the opportunity to work with you, in 
a bipartisan way, on a number of critically important issues for our 
country. There will be much work to do, together.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the text of Senator Kaufman's article as a testament to the importance 
of bipartisan cooperation in the Senate.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 [From the News Journal, May 12, 2012]

          Lugar Proved `Bipartisanship' Serves Principles Well

                            (By Ted Kaufman)

       I have spent the last 40 years of my life working in and 
     teaching about the U.S. Senate. Right after then-Senator 
     Biden and I came to Washington, he told me something I have 
     always kept in mind when dealing with its members. ``There is 
     a reason the citizens of each state picked each individual 
     senator,'' Senator Biden said, ``and it is worth looking for 
     what that is.''
       The Senate has always been a partisan place. The arguments 
     are fierce. Strongly held beliefs collide. No matter how much 
     I disagreed with the positions taken by senators on the other 
     side of the aisle, I could respect and even admire nearly all 
     of them.
       One of the senators I disagreed with on many issues but 
     came to greatly admire was Richard Lugar. Last week, in the 
     Indiana Republican primary, he lost his bid for a sixth term. 
     He will be sorely missed in the next Senate.
       For many years, I watched as he and Senator Biden passed 
     the gavel back and forth on the Foreign Relations Committee, 
     where they traded positions as chair or ranking member. As 
     partisan a conservative Republican as he was on most domestic 
     issues, Senator Lugar deeply believed in the approach to 
     foreign policy articulated in the early 1940s by Michigan's 
     Republican Sen. Arthur Vandenberg: ``To me, bipartisan 
     foreign policy' means a mutual effort, under our 
     indispensable, two-party system, to unite our official voice 
     at the water's edge so that America speaks with one voice to 
     those who would divide and conquer us and the free world.''
       Throughout his Senate career, Senator Lugar was a driving 
     force in maintaining this approach to foreign policy. He did 
     not grandstand. In his quiet, intelligent way, he became one 
     of our most knowledgeable experts on an issue that wins few 
     votes but is literally a matter of life-and-death for the 
     planet--nuclear proliferation.
       Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the joint effort 
     with former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn that established the 
     Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which provides U.S. 
     funding and expertise to help former Soviet countries 
     safeguard and dismantle their nuclear and chemical arsenals. 
     The program has deactivated thousands of nuclear warheads, 
     chemical weapons, and their delivery systems. It has 
     eliminated all the nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, 
     and Belarus. Senator Lugar, as much as any single person 
     alive, is responsible for greatly reducing the threat of 
     nuclear proliferation into the terrorist world.
       There were many reasons why Senator Lugar lost his bid for 
     re-nomination. But among the criticisms raised against him by 
     his opponent was that he supported the Strategic Arms 
     Reduction Treaty. It is hard to understand how this vote 
     could be characterized as anti-Republican when Lugar was 
     joined in his support of START by the Secretaries of State 
     for the last five Republican Presidents.
       I smile when I see Senator Lugar being portrayed in the 
     media as a ``moderate.'' His voting record on domestic issues 
     has been consistently conservative. The American Conservative 
     Union gives him a 77 percent lifetime rating. But that, it 
     seems, is not conservative enough. His victorious opponent, 
     Richard Mourdock, ran a campaign that was openly dismissive 
     of any kind of bipartisanship. Right after Mourdock won the 
     nomination, he explained, ``I have a mindset that says 
     bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the 
     Republican point of view.''
       Wherever I go, the most common thread in talks I have with 
     many different groups of people is their frustration with the 
     lack of compromise and gridlock in Washington. If candidates 
     like Mike Castle and Richard Lugar are defeated because they 
     are willing to consider bipartisan solutions, the gridlock 
     can only get worse.
       I could not agree more with what Senator Lugar said in his 
     typically thoughtful concession speech: ``Bipartisanship is 
     not the opposite of principle. One can be very conservative 
     or very liberal and still have a bipartisan mindset. Such a 
     mindset acknowledges that the other party is also patriotic 
     and may have some good ideas. It acknowledges that national 
     unity is important, and that aggressive partisanship deepens 
     cynicism, sharpens political vendettas, and depletes the 
     national reserve of goodwill that is critical to our survival 
     in hard times.''

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