[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 779-786]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         FAREWELL TO THE SENATE

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to begin by thanking my colleagues--
all of them--for their unbelievably generous comments to me personally, 
in

[[Page 780]]

the committee, on the floor, and in the halls and at meetings over the 
course of the last weeks. I will always be grateful for our 
friendships.
  I thank my wife Teresa, who is here with us, and my entire family for 
their unbelievable support through this journey.
  Five times Massachusetts has voted to send me to the U.S. Senate. 
Yesterday, nearly three decades after the people of Massachusetts first 
voted me into this office, the people with whom I work in the Senate 
voted me out of it. As always, I accept the Senate's sound judgment.
  Eight years ago, I admit that I had a slightly different plan to 
leave the Senate, but 61 million Americans voted that they wanted me to 
stay here with you. So staying here I learned about humility, and I 
learned that sometimes the greatest lesson in life comes not from 
victory but from dusting oneself off after defeat and starting over 
when you get knocked down.
  I was reminded throughout this journey of something that is often 
said but not always fully appreciated: All of us Senators are only as 
good as our staff--a staff that gives up their late nights and 
weekends, postpones vacations, doesn't get home in time to tuck 
children into bed, and all of those lost moments because they are here 
helping us serve. They are not elected. They didn't get into public 
service to get rich. That is for sure. And their names are rarely in 
the newspapers. But from the staff in the mailrooms to the people who 
answer the front phones to the policy experts and the managers, the 
legislative correspondents who write the letters, the caseworkers who 
make government accountable, and the people everywhere in between, they 
make the Senate work for people.
  I have been blessed to have a spectacular staff. And while I know 
every one of my colleagues would say the same thing about their staff, 
it is true about mine.
  If I start naming names, I am going to miss somebody, so I am not 
going to. But I think every one of my staff will understand why I want 
to acknowledge five who are not with us any longer. They are up in 
heaven looking down on all of us, and Ted Kennedy has probably drafted 
all of them; Jayona Beal, Jeanette Boone, Bill Bradley, Louise 
Etheridge, and Gene Heller--the latter two of whom were senior citizen 
volunteers in my Boston office who opened our mail for over a decade. 
They were not paid. They just did this out of love of country. We miss 
them all, and we thank them for their selfless contribution.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at this point a 
list of names of the people who have helped me serve this Nation.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       George Abar, Nardos Abebe, Adam Abrams, Alex Abrams, Corey 
     Ahearn, Robert Ahearn, Alexandra Ajemian, Paige Alexander, 
     Beverly Allen, Katrina Anderson, John Anthony, Margaret 
     Anthony, Sharde Armstrong, Felix Arroyo, Geoffrey Arvanitis, 
     Samuel Asher, Kerri Axelrod, Christopher Badger, Zachary 
     Bamberg, Diane Baranik, Janice Barbato, Timothy Barnicle, 
     Camilla Bartels, Janice Bashford, Shannon Batten, Lauren 
     Bazel, Jayona Beal, Jeffrey Bean, Camille Bedin, Jesse 
     Belcastro, Richard Bell, Ifetayo Belle, Daniel Benaim, Kelley 
     Benander, Hannah Bennett, Michael Beresik, Jennifer Bergman, 
     Jonathan Berman, Shideh Biela, Guljed Birce, Geoffrey Boehm, 
     Alison Bonebrake, Jeanette Boone.
       Ryan Bounsy, Kelly Bovio, Tomeika Bowden, Charles Bowman, 
     April Boyd, Jim Boyle, Barbara Bracken, William Bradley, 
     Brigid O'Rourke-Brady, Jeremy Brandon, James Brenner, Felicia 
     Brinson, Amanda Brown, Geoffrey Brown, Amy Brundage, Daniel 
     Brundage, Richard Bryers, Scott Bunton, Sarah Buss, Joseph 
     Bykowski, Brian Cafferty, Ann Cahill, Joseph Callahan, Sean 
     Callahan, Janice Camacho, Joseph Canty, Nicole Caravella, 
     John Carey, Larry Carpman, Cynthia Carroll, Meghan Carroll, 
     Mary Carter, Jeffrey Cassin, Janeen-Marie Castetter, John 
     Cavanaugh, Larry Chartienitz, Adam Chase, Theodore Chiodo, 
     James Chisholm, Abraham Cho, Eliza Chon, Nicholas 
     Christiansen, Michelle Ciccolo.
       Patrick Coan, Colleen Coburn, Bonnie Coder, Elizabeth 
     Coleman, Briana Collier, Marissa Condon, Erika Conway, Monica 
     Conyngham, Jasiel Correia, Amy Corrigan, Alexandra Costello, 
     Amanda Coulombe, Patricia Council, Arthur Coviello, Lisa 
     Coyle, Stephen Crane, Bonnie Cronin, Veronica Crowe, Francis 
     Crowley, Joan Crownover, Elizabeth Cummings, Kevin Curtis, 
     Amy Dacey, Jeremy D'Aloisio, Lauren Daniel, Andrew Davis, 
     Christopher Dawe, Andrea Defelice, Evan Dellolio, April 
     Dempsey, Monique Deragon, John Desimas, David Di Martino, 
     Richard DiMartino, Benedict Dobbs, Toni Dockett, Quentin 
     Donohue, Paul Donovan II, Christine Dooley, Michael Doonan, 
     Sarah Dugas, John Dukakis, Tracie Durden.
       Amy Elsbree, Kathryn English, Audrey Epstein, Jonathan 
     Epstein, Sally Ericsson, Meredith Fahey, Mark Falzone, Leslie 
     Feinberg, Patricia Ferrone, Ronald Finlayson, John Finn, 
     Simon Fischer, Roger Fisk, Maura Fitzpatrick, Christopher 
     Flanagan, Gordon Fletcher, Michael Flynn, Kate Foley, 
     Patricia Foley, Eileen Force, Marcia Ford, Dia Forman, Judith 
     Foster, Lynn Foster, Taylor Francois, Kathleen Frangione, 
     Matthew Frank, Joseph Fritz, Ross Frommer, Douglas Frost, 
     Gordon Fung, Jennie Ganz, Lisa Garcia, Joanna Garelick, 
     Denise Garris, Renee Gasper, Stephanie Gerard, John Gerlach, 
     Erica Giers, Scott Giese, Maria Giesta, Lisa Glufling, 
     Jennifer Glynn.
       Ian Goldin, Samantha Goldman, Caitlin Gollop, James Gomes, 
     John Gomperts, Augusto Grace, Justin Grad, Patricia Gray, 
     Tennie Gray, Christopher Greeley, Meagan Greene, Daniel 
     Gross, Carole Grunberg, Sasha Gsovski, Adrienne Guide, Larry 
     Gurwin, Dillon Guthrie, Therron Hagen, Kevin Haggerty, Susie 
     Hagins, Melissa Haluptzok, Eric Hamburg, Alexandra Harper, 
     Whitney Harrelson, Shelly Harrington, Jonathan Harris, Morgan 
     Harris, Jamar Harrison, Sebastian Hazzard, James Healy, James 
     Hedberg, Jennifer Heilig, Kevin Herbert, Elohim Hernandez-
     Camacho, AJ Hetzner, Devon Hewitt, Carmen Hicks, Heather 
     Higginbottom, Kaaren Hinck, Maura Hogan, Meaghan Hohl, Ryan 
     Honeyman, Mirah Horowitz.
       Kristian Horvei, Vanessa Householder, Richard Houser, James 
     Houton, Marcus Howard, Matthew Howard, Thomas Hubbard, Celes 
     Hughes, Jeremy Hunt, James Hunter, Nisharna Jackson, Jeffrey 
     Jacobs, David Jansen, Stanley Jean-Charles, Vanessa Jean-
     Simon, Aaron Jenkins, Lorrie Jenkins, Jon Jennings, Tiffany 
     Jilek, Patrick Johnson-Cheatham, William Johnson, Diane 
     Jones, James Jones, James Jordan, Kathleen Joyce, Jeremy 
     Kane, Mary Kane, Helen Kanovsky, Jonathan Kaplan, Moses 
     Karugu, David Kass, Deborah Katz, Deborah Kearney, Antionetta 
     Kelley, Kimberley Kendall, Lee Kennedy, Shailagh Kennedy, 
     Suzannah Kerr, Amy Kerrigan, Kathleen Kerrigan, Conor Kilroy, 
     Haeyun Kim, Renee Kinder.
       James King, Evan Kirsch, Cornell Knox, Amy Kobeta, Jackie 
     Kohn, Karen Kornbluh, Alexandra Kougentakis, Peter Kovar, 
     David Kowal, Paula Kowalczuk, Joan Kraus, Connor Kuratek, 
     Zachary Kurland, Thomas La Fauci, Bonnie La Rue, Rachelle 
     Lacque Love, Alexander Landin, Annette Larkin, Barry Lasala, 
     Roger Lau, Dawn Lavallee, Meghan Leahy, Janet Lebel, Michael 
     Leighs, David Leiter, Robin Lerner, Matthew Levin, Richard 
     Levitt, Carissa Lewis, Jeffrey Lewis, Shaunda Lewis, Susan 
     Lewis, Leslie Lillard, Simon Limage, Colleen Lineweaver, Ann 
     Linnehan, Sylvia Liotta, Katharine Lister, Jonathan Litchman, 
     Nancy Lo, Jennifer Lockhart, Frank Lowenstein, Danielle 
     Luber.
       James Ludes, Sandra Lumpkin, Lisa Lynch, Nathan Mackinnon, 
     Brandon Macneill, Ian Macpherson, John Madigan, Marion 
     Magraw, Kristina Malek, Rachel Mann, Katherine Manning, Mary 
     Marcuss, Alexandra Marks, Sarah Marks, Mary Marsh, Matthew 
     Martin, Roy Martin, Alyssa Mastromonaco, Jennifer Masuret, D. 
     Gray Maxwell, Megan McCafferty, Richard McCall, William 
     McCann, Sybil McCarthy, Ryan McCormick, Elizabeth McEvoy, 
     Kelly McGovern, Kara McGuire, Kevin McGuire, David McKean, 
     Patrick McKiernan, Christopher McMahon, Gregory McMorrow, 
     Barbara McQueen, Bradford Meacham, Lisa Mead, Michael Meehan, 
     Jason Meininger, Dora Menefee, Stephen Meunier, Johanna 
     Michaels, Dimitri Michaud, Heather Mizeur.
       Evelyn Monteiro, William Moody, Linda Moore, Keshia Morall, 
     Erik Morrill, Cara Morris, Vincent Morris, Tim Morrow, Greg 
     Moscow, Nassar Mufdi Ruiz, Khalifah Muhammad, Sarah Mulkem, 
     Marie Murphy, Harry Nathanson, Brendan Neal, Andrew Nelson, 
     Charlene Neu, Karena Neubauer, Joseph Newman, Kerry Newman, 
     David Nibert, Marvin Nicholson, Eric Niloff, Paul Nissenbaum, 
     Edward Noonan, Jessica Nordstrom, Ashley O'Neill, Tyler 
     Obenauf, Andrew O'Brien, Thomas O'Connor, Brendan O'Donnell, 
     Christopher Olson, Eric Olson, Leigh O'Neill, Brittney 
     Opacak, Barbara Opacki, Mary O'Reilly, Kathryn Ousley, Mary 
     Pappey, Michael Paroby, Jon Patsavos, Megan Perkins, Alexis 
     Perlmutter.
       John Phillips, Anna-Liviya Piccione, Mary Lou Pickel, Evan 
     Pinsonnault, Cathryn Piscitelli, Carlos Polanco, Gareth 
     Porter, Jeanne Poulter, Ayanna Pressley, Daniel Prince, 
     Colleen Puma, Michael Queenan, David Quinn, Nancy Ramsey, 
     Haley Rauch, Tovah Ravitz-Meehan, Lisa Reid, Andrea Retzky, 
     Kathryn Rhudy, Brian Rice, John Richards, Elizabeth 
     Richardson, Charles Riley, Alex Rinder, Elizabeth Rios, 
     Jennifer Ritter, Lauren Robertson, Andrew Robichaud, Dana 
     Robinson, Gerri-Lynn Robinson, Rima Robinson, Theressa 
     Robinson,

[[Page 781]]

     Edward Rogers, Nancy Rogers, Shauvi Rogers, Cheryl Rolfes, 
     Frank Rose, Lisa Rosenberg, Renita Rosenberg, Ronald 
     Rosenblith, Lindsay Ross, Kenneth Rossman, Gregg Rothschild.
       George Rudenauer, Caitlin Russi, Jennifer Ryan, Allison 
     Sandera, Kristen Sarri, Aaron Saunders, Brett Schenker, 
     Eugene Schlesinger, Jack Schnirman, Charles Scheuler, Eric 
     Schwager, Heather Sears, Wendy Sears, Daniel Sepulveda, Jodi 
     Seth, James Shaer, Robert Shapiro, Patrick Shearns, Charles 
     Shepard, John Sherman, Margaret Sherry, Rebecca Shore-
     Suslowitz, Zachary Shore, Michelle Shwimer, Clare Sierawski, 
     George Sifakis, Alison Silberman, Hadid Simmons, Kyle Simon, 
     Kristen Simpson, Beatrice Smith, Hilleary Smith, Kathleen 
     Smith, Nancy Smith, Richard Smith, Whitney Smith, Alexander 
     Soto, Christine Spencer, Kathryn Stack, Rachele Stasny, Mark 
     Sternman, Nancy Stetson, Jesse Stevens.
       Gregory Stewart, David Stone, Mary Strain, Casey Suchors-
     Field, Kristine Sudano, Keerthi Sugumaran, Brendan Sullivan, 
     Kevin Sullivan, Kyle Sullivan, Nancy Sullivan, Paul Sullivan, 
     Matthew Summers, Katherine Swan, Shelli Sweeney, Mary Szpak, 
     Brandon Tabassi, Tristan Takos, Mary Tarr, Carmina Taylor, 
     Theresa Theobald, Megan Thompson, Lauren Tighe, Stephani 
     Tindall, Timothy Todreas, Jose Toirac, Atman Trivedi, 
     Lawrence Trundle, Christina Tsafoulias, Yakov Tsizis, Eva 
     Tsui, Brendan Tully, Alper Tunca, Sharon Updike, Kelsey Utne, 
     Ellen Vallon, Brady Van Engelen, Paul Veidenheimer, Carmen 
     Velazquez, Kevin Verge, Karen Vigliano, Varun Vira, Michael 
     Vito, Jennifer Vuona.
       David Wade, Bridgette Walker, Krysten Wallace, Meghan 
     Walsh, Lumay Wang, Cathleen Ward, Setti Warren, Joan Wasser, 
     Maria Wassum, Sharon Waxman, Stephanie Wayne, Michael Wayno, 
     Thomas Weber, John Whiteside, Michael Whouley, Scott Wiener, 
     Jodi Williams, Karen Willis, Elsie Wilson, Jonathan Winer, 
     Hope Winship, Julie Wirkkala, James Wise, Christina 
     Wiskowski, Roger Wolfson, David Wood, Sarah Woodhouse, Nancy 
     Woodruff, Randi Woods, Diann Woods, William Woodward, 
     Elizabeth Wright, Sheila Wulsin, Anthony Wyche, Christopher 
     Wyman, Sarah Yedinsky, Shawna Yen, David Yohn, Brian Young, 
     Sally Yozell, Krista Zalatores, Juan Zavala, Heather Zichal, 
     Anna Ziskend, Frances Zwenig.

  Mr. KERRY. As I thank an entire staff of 561 incredible men and women 
in Massachusetts and Washington with whom I have been privileged to 
work through these 28 years, I also think about the interns, 1,393, who 
have come in and out of our offices from Washington to Worcester. I am 
especially proud of those who started as interns and ended up as my 
chief of staff, a legislative director, and senior policy staffers, or 
the Kerry interns who went on to work not just for me but who have for 
the last 4 years been top speech writers, trip directors, and senior 
communications staff at the White House for the President of the United 
States. I am proud of our internship program, and I am grateful to the 
people who built it and who sustain it.
  I also thank the incredible group of unsung heroes who literally make 
the Senate work, people who work not for individual Senators but work 
for all of us, in every room and nook and cranny of this great series 
of buildings. The men and women who operate the Senate subways--Daryl 
and many others--the trains and elevators, they take us to the votes 
and meetings. They are really the glue, and we couldn't function 
without them; they are an extraordinary group of people; the Capitol 
Police who protect us--police, whom a lot of people around here started 
to notice a little bit more after that awful day in 1998 when two were 
shot and killed on a busy Wednesday afternoon; the Parliamentarians and 
the clerks and staff here on the floor, including Gary, Tim, Trisha, 
Meredith, and all the folks in the cloakroom. And Dave on the other 
side and all the folks in the Republican cloakroom--all of whom help to 
keep us going and are unfailingly patient when we call for the 
umpteenth time to find out whether the vote schedule is going to let us 
go home to a child's dance recital or birthday party or any kind of 
family event.
  I want to thank the many Bertie Bowmans who came here more than 40 
years ago, dug in, and made the Senate their cause and their concern; 
people such as Meg Murphy of the Foreign Relations Committee, who makes 
everybody's life easier.
  I thank the reporters who catch us in the hallways--trap us, ambush 
us in the hallways, and who, despite all the changes and challenges in 
their own business, still dutifully document the first drafts of 
American history. I thank all the incredible people who travel through 
these Halls working incredibly hard to get it right, people of 
character who cover this place as a public service, not a sport. I 
thank them.
  I thank David Rogers for all that he has stood for so long in this 
institution. It is hard to imagine my job without seeing him in that 
long green coat waiting by the elevator after a late-night vote.
  Sometimes in politics it is now almost a sport in America to dismiss 
the contributions of people who work in government, people who make the 
Senate work, but people whom the public never sees. I have admired the 
way our former colleague, Ted Kaufman, used to come down to the floor 
once a week and tell the story of one individual Federal worker. The 
stories are legion. Instead of tearing these people down, we ought to 
be lifting them up. And I thank them all for the part they play in our 
democracy.
  I will share with you, now that I have come to this moment in the 
journey, I can say without reservation that nothing prepares you for 
it. Many times now in 29 years I have been at my desk on the Senate 
floor--starting way over there, No. 99--listening as colleagues bid the 
Senate farewell. Sometimes a farewell speech signals a complete 
departure from public life, sometimes a new journey altogether, 
sometimes forced departure, sometimes a leap for freedom.
  I am grateful that at this moment, thanks to my colleagues, 
serendipity, and the trust of our President, while I am closing a 
chapter, it is not the final one. But I assure you, amid the excitement 
and the possibility, I do feel a wistfulness about leaving the Senate; 
and that is because, despite the obvious frustrations of recent days 
and years--a frustration that we all share--this place remains one of 
the most extraordinary institutions of any kind on the face of the 
Earth.
  On occasion we have all heard a Senator leave here and take their 
leave condemning the Senate for being broken, for having become an 
impossible setting in which to try to do the people's business. Well, I 
want to be very clear about my feelings. I do not believe the Senate is 
broken--certainly not as an institution. There is nothing wrong with 
the Senate that can't be fixed by what is right about the Senate--the 
predominant and weighty notion that 100 American citizens, chosen by 
their neighbors to serve from States as different as Massachusetts and 
Montana, can always choose to put parochial or personal interests aside 
and find the national interest.
  I believe it is the honor of a lifetime--an extraordinary privilege--
to have represented the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the Senate for 
more than 28 years. What a remarkable gift it has been to carry the 
banner of ``Senator from Massachusetts,'' just as each of you feel that 
way about your States--a banner, in our case, that was passed from the 
sons of the American Revolution, such as Daniel Webster, to the sons of 
immigrants such as Paul Tsongas, and to know that a State where the 
abolitionists crusaded at Faneuil Hall and the suffragettes marched at 
Quincy Market could send to Washington sons, such as Ted Kennedy and Ed 
Brooke, who fought to expand civil rights; now, a woman, Elizabeth 
Warren, who proved that in Massachusetts the glass ceiling has finally 
been forever shattered. And what a remarkable gift Massachusetts has 
given me to come here and learn so much about the rest of our country.
  I have had the privilege of learning what truly makes our Nation 
tick. What a gift, to have been the nominee of my party, to have come 
within a whisper of winning the Presidency against a wartime incumbent; 
but more important, to have experienced the magic of our Nation in such 
a personal way, to experience the gift of traveling along the banks of 
the mighty Mississippi through Iowa and South Dakota and along the 
rivers where Louis and Clark marked and measured the dream of our first 
Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, who

[[Page 782]]

foresaw an America that would advance into the West; to experience a 
journey that took me to Alabama, where I stood silently in the very 
pulpit from which Dr. King preached his dream of an America united, and 
dipped my fingers into the fountain in Birmingham where water flows 
over the names of those murdered trying to vote or just registering to 
vote, to see the water trickle over the words of Dr. King's prayer that 
``justice might roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty 
stream.'' I drove across the Hoover Dam, and I wondered, as I did, at 
what America can accomplish when we want to, when we put our minds to 
it. Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn I was reminded it was 
built at the height of the Great Depression, when so many feared our 
best days were behind us. What I have seen and heard and learned in 
traveling across our country as a Senator from Massachusetts has 
prepared me more for my travels to other countries as Secretary of 
State than any travel to any foreign Capitol.
  I already know I will miss the best reward of carrying the title 
``Senator,'' and that is when you open a letter from someone who has 
traveled every route and exhausted every option and who ultimately 
turned to you as the last resort in public life and they finally got 
the help they needed. I know my colleagues who have experienced this 
will say there is nothing better than getting that ``I have tried 
everything, but nobody would listen to me, but you got it done'' letter 
or sometimes when you are walking a street in a community at home and 
somebody comes up to you and thanks you for a personal response they 
never expected to receive. That is when public service has more meaning 
than the war of words our constituents dodge on the cable news.
  Standing at this desk that once belonged--at this desk that once 
belonged to President Kennedy and to Ted Kennedy, I can't help but be 
reminded that even our Nation's greatest leaders and all the rest of us 
are merely temporary workers. I am reminded this Chamber is a living 
museum, a lasting memorial to the miracle of the American experiment.
  No one has captured this phenomenon more eloquently or 
comprehensively than Robert Caro did in his masterpiece about the 
Senate called ``Master of the Senate.'' I am sure many in this room--I 
know most people have read it. In that book, before we learned of the 
levers Lyndon Johnson pulled to push our Nation toward civil rights, 
Caro described the special powers the Founders gave the Senate and only 
the Senate, powers, Caro writes, ``designed to make the Congress 
independent of the President and to restrain and act as a check on his 
authority, power to approve his appointments, even the appointments he 
made within his own administration, even the appointments to his own 
Cabinet.''
  This body has now exercised that power on my behalf and I will always 
be grateful.
  Another master of the Senate, Massachusetts' Daniel Webster, 
delivered 183 years ago this week what has often been praised as the 
greatest speech in Senate history. He stood at the desk that now 
belongs to the senior Senator from New Hampshire and argued forcefully 
in favor of the very idea that makes us the United States, that we are 
all in this together, that we each have a stake in the successes and 
failures of our countrymen, that what happens in Ohio matters to those 
in South Carolina or in Massachusetts or to Montanans. ``Union and 
liberty,'' Webster shouted, ``now and forever, one and inseparable.''
  As Caro retells it, those words spoken among the desks in the Senate 
left those in the gallery in tears and cast a model for how those of us 
in this Chamber must consider the constituents of our colleague's as 
well as our own. But the truth is that none of us ran for this office 
because of a great debate held centuries ago. None of us moved here 
because of the moving words of a Senator long since departed. We honor 
this history because we are here because of the legacy that we can and 
want to leave. It is up to us, to my colleagues here today and to those 
who come after us, it is up to us to keep the Senate great.
  I fully believe we will meet that obligation if, as the President 
told the Nation and the world last week, we seize this moment together. 
Yes, Congress and public life face their difficulties these days but 
not because the structure our Founding Fathers gave us is inherently 
flawed. For sure there are moments of much great frustration, for the 
American people and for everybody in this place. But I don't believe 
they are the fault of the institution itself. It is not the rules that 
confound us per se. It is the choices people make about those rules.
  The rules we work by now are essentially the same ones that existed 
when I joined the Senate and found things to move much more easily than 
they do today. They are essentially the same rules under which Daniel 
Webster and Lyndon Johnson operated, and they did great things. They 
are almost the same rules Mike Mansfield and Everett Dirksen and Ted 
Kennedy and Orrin Hatch used to pass great pieces of legislation. They 
are the same rules under which the Senate Democrats and President 
George Herbert Walker Bush passed an agreement, including tax 
increases, to at least begin to tackle the deficit. I remind everyone, 
as I take my leave from the Senate, when President George H.W. Bush 
returned from agreeing to a deficit reduction agreement at Andrews Air 
Force Base, he wrote in his personal diary that he might well have 
sealed his fate as a one-term President. He did what he thought was 
right for the country, and he laid the groundwork for our ability to 
three times balance the budget at the end of the 1990s. That is 
courage, and the Senate and the Congress and the country need more of 
it.
  Frankly, the problems we live through today come from individual 
choices of Senators themselves, not the rules. When an individual 
Senator or a colluding caucus determines that the comity essential to 
an institution such as the Senate is a barrier to individual ambition 
or party ambition, the country loses. Those are the moments in which 
the Senate fulfills, not its responsibility to the people but its 
reputation as a sanctuary of gridlock.
  I ask colleagues to remember the words of Ben Franklin, as that long 
Philadelphia summer yielded our remarkable Constitution. Late at night, 
after their work was complete, Dr. Franklin was walking down the steps 
of Constitution Hall, of Independence Hall, and a woman called out to 
him and she said: Well, Doctor, what have we got, a Republic or a 
monarchy? Franklin answered: ``A Republic, if you can keep it.''
  Sustaining a functioning Republic is work and it is, more than ever, 
I believe, our challenge today. I am hardly the first and I will, I 
hope, probably not be the last to call on Congress to remember why we 
are here, to prioritize our shared interests above the short term, to 
bridge the breadth of the partisan divide and to reach across the aisle 
and take the long view. Many have stood here delivering farewell 
speeches and lamented what became of the Washington where President 
Reagan and Speaker O'Neill could cultivate an affiliation stronger than 
party or a Congress that saw true friendships between Senators such as 
Kennedy and Hatch, Inouye and Stevens, Obama and Coburn; the odd 
couples, as they have been dubbed.
  I cannot tell you why, but I do think it is possible this moment may 
see a turn in the spirit of the Senate. There are new whispers of 
desire for progress, rumors of new coalitions, and a sense of 
possibility--whether it is on energy or immigration.
  I am deeply impressed by a new generation of Senators who seem to 
have come here determined not to give in to the cynicism but to get the 
people's business done. I am confident that when today's freshmen take 
their turns in leaving the Senate, they will be able to tell of new 
Senators added to that estimable list of odd couples, and with any luck 
by then it will not be odd.
  So I leave here convinced we can keep our Republic strong. When 
President Kennedy observed that ``our problems are manmade; therefore 
they can

[[Page 783]]

be solved by man,'' he was talking about a much more literal kind of 
nuclear option than the euphemism we use today to discuss Senate rules. 
But his vision is just as important for us to recognize in our time, 
whether we are talking about the ability of Senators to debate and vote 
or about the issues on which they do so. It is still true today, as he 
said 50 years ago, that ``reason and spirit have often solved the 
seemingly unsolvable, and we believe,'' he said, ``they can do it 
again.''
  I believe that too.
  So what effort do we need to put into our reason and spirit in order 
to do it? I believe there are three most significant challenges that 
have conspired to bring about a dangerous but reversible erosion in the 
quality of our democracy: the decline of comity, the deluge of money, 
and the disregard for facts.
  First, I have witnessed what we all have, a loss of simple comity, 
the respect that we owe one another, and the sense of common cause that 
brings all of us here. The Senate as a body can change its rules to 
make itself more efficient, sure. But only Senators, one by one in 
their own hearts, can change the approach to legislating which Henry 
Clay correctly defined as the art of consensus.
  I came to the Senate in 1985 as a Member of a hopeful and hard-
charging class of freshmen. Paul Simon, Tom Harkin, Al Gore, Phil 
Gramm, Jay Rockefeller, and I all have at least three things in common. 
We were all sworn in as Senators at the same time. We each explored 
running or ran for the White House, and none of us made it there.
  (Laughter.)
  The last remaining Member of that class, Senator Mitch McConnell, has 
now again been elevated by his peers as the Republican leader.
  I see a lot of a very similar aspiration that we felt when I came 
here in 1985 in today's freshmen and sophomores. Many came to the 
Senate running on the premise that it is broken beyond repair. I 
encourage each and every one of them to reject that premise in order to 
restore the promise of the Senate. The Senate cannot break unless we 
let it. After all, the value of this institution, similar to any 
instrument of power, is how you use it. But we can't ignore the fact 
that today, treaties that only a few years ago would have passed 100 to 
nothing, don't pass at all. People who want to vote for something they 
believe in actually don't do so for fear of retribution. That is a 
reflection on all of us. As I prepare to represent our Nation in 
capitals around the world, I am more than conscious that my credibility 
as a diplomat and ours as a country is determined, to a great degree, 
by what happens right here in our own Capital City.
  The antidote to the current narrative of American decline--and you 
will hear it in China, in Iran, in other parts of the world--the 
antidote to that, and it is pushed by rival countries, is to 
demonstrate that we can get our economic house in order because we can 
be no stronger abroad than we are here at home. It is that simple. The 
unwillingness of some to yield to the national interest is damaging to 
America's prospects in the world. We are quick to talk about the global 
economy and about global competition, but it is our own procrastination 
and outright avoidance of obvious choices that threatens our own 
future. Other nations are both quick and glad to fill the vacuum that 
is brought about by our inaction.
  If the Senate favors inaction over courage and gimmicks over common 
ground, the risk is not that we will fail to move forward, it is that 
we will fall behind, we will stay behind, and we will surrender our 
promise to those who are more than willing to turn our squandered 
opportunity into their advantage.
  The world keeps turning. The Senate cannot afford to forever stand 
still. Just as failing to deal with our deficit and our debt puts our 
long-term interests at risk, so does taking America to the brink of 
default. Our self-inflicted wounds reduce our leverage and our 
influence in the world. By failing to act, Congress is making it harder 
to actually advance America's interests and making it harder for 
American business to compete and for American workers to succeed. If 
America is to continue to lead the free world, this must end.
  We have all bemoaned the lack of comity in the Senate. Those of you 
who remain here will have the power to restore it. The choice to work 
respectfully with one another is about as simple as it gets. I have one 
suggestion, perhaps. While I am honored by the presence of so many 
colleagues who are here now--Republicans and Democrats--I have to say 
we all look forward to more days when the U.S. Senate desks are full 
with Senators debating, deliberating, learning, listening, and leading. 
We would all be stronger if this Chamber is once again crowded because 
it is the world's greatest deliberative body, the home of debate and 
deliberation, and not only when it becomes a departure lounge.
  There is another challenge we must address, and it is the corrupting 
force of the vast sums of money necessary to run for office. The 
unending chase for money, I believe, threatens to steal our democracy 
itself. I used the wording--and I want to be clear about it--I mean by 
it not the corruption of individuals but corruption of a system itself 
that all of us are forced to participate in against our will.
  The alliance of money and the interest it represents, the access it 
affords to those who have it at the expense of those who don't, the 
agenda it changes or sets by virtue of its power, is steadily silencing 
the voice of the vast majority of Americans who have a much harder time 
competing or who cannot compete at all.
  The insidious intention of that money is to set the agenda, change 
the agenda, block the agenda, define the agenda of Washington. How else 
could we possibly have a U.S. Tax Code of some 76,000 pages? Ask 
yourself: How many Americans have their own page, their own tax break, 
their own special deal?
  We should not resign ourselves to a distorted system that corrodes 
our democracy. This is what is contributing to the justifiable anger of 
the American people. They know it, they know we know it, and yet 
nothing happens. The truth requires that we call the corrosion of money 
and politics what it is: It is a form of corruption and it muzzles more 
Americans than it empowers. It is an imbalance that the world has 
taught us can only sow the seeds of unrest.
  Like the question of comity in the Senate, the influence of money in 
our politics also influences our credibility around the world. So too 
does the unacceptable and extraordinary difficulty we continue to have 
in 2013 operating the machinery of our own democracy here at home. How 
extraordinary and how diminishing it is that more than 40 years after 
the Voting Rights Act so many of our fellow citizens still have great 
difficulty when they show up on election day to cast their vote and 
have their voices heard. That too matters to all of us.
  For a country that can and should extol the virtues of democracy 
around the world, our job is made more difficult through long lines and 
overt voter suppression and efforts to suppress people's ability to 
exercise the right that we extol. So many still struggle to exercise 
that right here at home.
  The last of the three obstacles we have the ability, if not the will, 
to overcome is the unbelievable disregard for facts, for science in the 
conduct of our affairs. It, like the first two, degrades our 
credibility abroad as well as at home.
  My friends, the persistent shouting match of the perpetual campaign--
one that takes place in parallel universes, thanks to our polarized, 
self-selected media, to some degree--makes it harder and harder to 
build consensus among people. The people don't know what to believe. So 
in many ways it encourages an oversimplification of problems that too 
often retreat to slogans and not ideas for real solutions.
  America, I regret to say, is increasingly defaulting rather than 
choosing, and so we fail to keep pace with other nations in the renewal 
of our infrastructure, in the improvement of our

[[Page 784]]

schools, in the choice of our energy sources, in the care and nurturing 
of our children, in the fulfillment of our God-given responsibility to 
protect life here on Earth. That too must change or our experiment is 
at risk.
  To remain a great Nation we must do the business of our country, and 
that begins by putting our economic house in order. It begins by 
working from the same set of facts. Although I believe we cannot solve 
any of these problems unless we solve all of them, I note these three 
challenges because I believe the Senate is going to be locked into 
stalemate or our politics are going to be irreversibly poisoned unless 
we break out of it. I say this hopefully as someone who respects and 
loves this institution and loves this country and wants to see us move 
forward.
  Some things we know are moving forward. In the same time that comity 
has decreased and the influence of money has increased, I have seen the 
Senate change for the better. This Chamber used to be filled with the 
voices of men, and men only. Decisions affecting more than half the 
population were made by people representing the other half. When I 
walked into the Senate Chamber to take my first oath 28 years ago, I 
was joined by my two teenaged daughters. It struck me that I had twice 
as many daughters as there were women in the U.S. Senate. Today, with 
the service of 20 women--including Massachusetts' new junior Senator--
this is a stronger and smarter place, more representative of our belief 
that out of many, we are one; more capable of fulfilling the vision 
carried from Washington to Webster to our current President; that we 
are a stronger Nation when our leadership reflects our population.
  We have made huge strides on turning the page on gay rights. In 1993, 
I testified before Strom Thurmond's Armed Services Committee, pushing 
to lift the ban on gays serving in the military, and I ran into a world 
of misperceptions. I thought I was on a ``Saturday Night Live'' skit. 
Today, at last, that policy is gone forever, and we are a country that 
honors the commitment of all willing to fight and die for our country. 
We have gone from a Senate that passed DOMA--over my objections--to one 
that just welcomed its first openly gay Senator.
  These are good changes for our Senate and our country, but we have 
more work to do. This place needs more women, more people of color, 
more diversity of background and experience, but it is still a 
remarkable place.
  I am reminded of the letters of Harry Truman that he used to write 
home to wife Bess as he sat in the back row of the Chamber. Late one 
night after the great debate of the New Deal Era, he wrote:

       I hear my colleagues, and I pinch myself and ask, How did I 
     get here?

  Several months later, he wrote Bess once more:

       Again it is late at night and I am sitting here listening 
     to the debate, I look across the aisle at my colleagues and I 
     listen and listen, and I hear my colleagues, and I ask 
     myself, How did they get here?

  Well, I have no doubt that colleagues have asked that question about 
me or any one of us, and it has been back and forth. But 29 years later 
I have learned something about myself. I learned that the Senate runs 
on relationships. I know that some of my more recent colleagues--sent 
here in tumultuous election cycles--hear that and think it is code for 
checking their beliefs at the door and going Washington. It is not. And 
I would add: Don't kid yourself; no one got here on a platform of 
pledging to join an exclusive club and forget where they came from.
  When I say that relationships matter, I don't mean back-slapping, 
glad-handing, hail-fellow-well-met, go-along-to-get-along 
relationships; I mean real relationships. And to today's hard-charging 
colleagues who came to Washington to shake things up, I would remind 
them, so did I, so did Tom Harkin, and the others I mentioned. If I 
told you that a 40-year-old newly minted Senator John Kerry was going 
to tell you that relationships mattered most, I would have looked at 
you as if you had three heads. I cut my teeth in grassroots activism. I 
didn't come up through the political ranks. I burst onto the scene as 
an activist, and when you are an activist, all that singularly matters 
to you--to the exclusion of almost everything else--are the issues. 
Where are you on an issue? Right or wrong, that is the ballgame.
  Wrong. It is not the ballgame. That is not what makes a good Senator. 
That is not what makes the Senate work. My late colleague of 25 years 
Ted Kennedy taught me that. I saw him late at night on the Senate floor 
sitting with his colleagues talking and listening. He wanted to know 
about your State; he wanted to know about your family; he wanted to 
know why you came here. He had a unique ability to know not just what 
he needed from you on a vote or a piece of legislation but to know what 
you needed on a personal level as a friend, as a colleague, as a 
partner.
  My old friend--now Vice President Joe Biden--had a saying in his 
family: If you have to ask, it is too late. With Teddy, you never had 
to ask. He always knew, and he was there. He was there on a foggy 
morning on Nantucket when my father passed away, and Teddy materialized 
almost out of nowhere. There he was at my porch door. He didn't call 
ahead; he didn't ask. He came to mark the passage. He was there. It was 
an instinct for people and an impulse to help.
  He taught so many of us during that period of time. Somewhere along 
the line, he passed it on not only to me but to every colleague here 
who was privileged to work with him.
  I will never forget in 2007 on the day I announced I would not be 
running again for President. Another rough day, another passage. I got 
a call. Tom Harkin wanted to see me. My staff surmised that he was 
probably coming to ask for money for the Iowa Democratic party. They 
were wrong. It was a visit where Tom just came to share a few words 
that were very simple but which meant the world to me; a colleague 
visiting just to say he was proud that I had been the nominee of the 
party in 2004, and he looked forward to working with me more in this 
institution.
  Let me tell you, those are the conversations that make the 
difference, those are the conversations you never forget, and that is 
the U.S. Senate at its best. It is a place where relationships matter 
the most. And it matters because Teddy, Tom, and so many others here 
understood instinctively that if 100 Senators knew each other--and our 
leader has worked very hard to try to find a way to make this happen--
then you can find the ways to work together.
  To my surprise, I learned it here in a way that I never could have 
predicted, alongside people I never thought I would count as one of my 
proudest friends. Last week John McCain introduced me at my 
confirmation hearing. John and I met here in the Senate, coming from 
very different positions and perspectives. We both loved the Navy; I 
still do to this day. But I have different feelings from John about a 
war.
  For both of us, Vietnam was a demarcation point in our lives, the way 
it was for so many of our generation. Well, late one night on a CODEL--
for people who are listening and don't know about CODELs, it is a trip 
of Senators and Congressmen going somewhere in the world--to Kuwait 
after the first gulf war, John and I found ourselves in a C-130 sitting 
opposite each other. Neither of us could sleep, so we talked. We talked 
late into the night about our lives and our war. Shortly thereafter, 
George Mitchell and Bob Dole flew us together on a select committee to 
investigate the fate of Americans missing from the war in which we had 
fought. It was a tough time, an emotional issue in an era where Rambo 
was a box office smash and a Newsweek magazine cover printed 
provocative photos which asked whether Americans were still alive over 
there.
  Into that cacophonous cauldron, John McCain and I were thrown 
together. Some were suspicious of both of us, but together we found 
common ground. I will never forget standing with John in the very cell 
in the Hanoi Hilton in which he spent a number of years of his life, 
just the two of us

[[Page 785]]

alone in this cell, listening to him talk about that experience.
  I will always be grateful for his partnership in helping to make real 
peace with Vietnam by establishing the most significant process in the 
history of our country--or of any country--for the accounting of the 
missing and dead in any war and afterwards and then working to lift the 
embargo and ultimately normalize relations with an old enemy. John had 
every reason to hate them, but he didn't. We were able to heal deep 
wounds and end a war that divided an awful lot of people for much too 
long. That is a common experience, and only the relationships that are 
forged in the Senate could have made that happen.
  John has this great expression: A fight not joined is a fight not 
enjoyed. He loves to debate, he loves to battle, and so do I. But I 
will tell my colleagues, having fought beside him and having fought 
against him, it is a heck of a lot better and more fun to have John 
fighting alongside of you. We still have differences. There has been a 
lot of newsprint used up covering some of them, but I will tell my 
colleagues this: We both care about the Senate as an institution, and 
we both care about the country's leadership and the world even when we 
see it differently, and we both know that at some point America has to 
come together.
  We shared this common experience, and we have seen a lot together. We 
both were able to travel the country as Presidential nominees for our 
party, and both returned to the Senate to carry on in a different way. 
Few people know what that feels like. But just being by his side in 
Hanoi made it impossible for me not to be overwhelmed by his sense of 
patriotism and his devotion to country. It meant something else: If you 
can stand on the kind of common ground that we found in the Hanoi 
Hilton, then finding common ground on issues here at home isn't hard at 
all. I will always thank John McCain for that lesson.
  One of the magical things about the Senate is this amazing mix of 
people and how they could come together to make something happen. I 
have learned and been impressed by the experiences of every single one 
of my colleagues, and I honestly marvel at the reflection of each 
State's special character in the people they send here. I have learned 
from all--from a fiery, street-smart social worker from Maryland; from 
a down-to-earth, no-nonsense farmer from Montana; from a principled, 
conservative doctor from Oklahoma; from an amazingly tenacious advocate 
for women and the environment who blazed a trail from Brooklyn to 
Rancho Mirage and the Senate, who teams with a former mayor of San 
Francisco who took office after the assassination of Harvey Milk, 
committed to stand against violence and for equality; from a 
cantankerous, maverick patriot and former prisoner of war from Arizona, 
whom I just talked about; to a songwriting, original, compassionate 
conservative from Utah; from a fervent, gravel-voiced people's champion 
from Ohio; from a soft-spoken, loyal, Medal of Honor winner from Hawaii 
who used to sit right here; and from a college professor turned proud 
prairie populist and Senate Pied Piper who was taken from us far too 
soon and far too quickly. From every Member of the Senate, there are 
characteristics, passions, quirks, and beliefs that bring this place 
alive and unite to make it the most extraordinary legislative body on 
Earth. That is what I love about the Senate.
  I love that instead of fighting against each other, Bill Frist, the 
former Republican leader, and I were able to join forces to fight HIV 
and AIDS around the globe and to convince an unlikely conservative 
named Jesse Helms to support and pass a bill unanimously that saved 
millions of lives on our planet. That is what makes this place so 
special.
  Instead of ignoring a freshman Senator, Chairman Claiborne Pell 
allowed me to pass my very first amendment to change our policy on the 
Philippines. So I found myself with Dick Lugar, paired as Senate 
election observers who helped expose the voter fraud of the Marcos 
regime, ending a dictatorship and giving a nation of more than 90 
million people the opportunity to know democracy again. That is what 
the Senate can do, and that is what I love about it.
  Instead of focusing on our different accents and opposite ideologies, 
Jesse Helms and I found that our concern for illegal drugs was greater 
than any political differences between us. So Jesse made it possible 
for an investigation to proceed and for the Senate to expose the 
linkages between the Contras in Nicaragua and the flow of drugs to 
American cities. That is what the Senate can do.
  The Senate can still work if we learn from and listen to each other--
two responsibilities that are, like Webster said about liberty and 
union, one and inseparable.
  So as I offer my final words on the Senate floor, I remember that I 
came of age in a Senate where freshman Senators didn't speak that 
often. Senators no longer hold their tongues through whole sessions of 
Congress, and they shouldn't. Their voices are just as valuable and 
their votes count just as much as the most tenured Member of this body. 
But being heard by others does not exempt them from listening to 
others.
  I came to the National Mall in 1971 with fellow veterans who wanted 
only to talk to our leaders about the war. President Nixon tried to 
kick us off The Mall. We knocked on door after door on Capitol Hill but 
too often couldn't get an audience of representatives. A precious few, 
including Ted Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, came to where we were camped 
out and heard what we had to say. I saw firsthand that our political 
process works only when leaders are willing to listen to each other but 
also to everyone else. That is how I first came to the Senate--not with 
my vote but with my voice--and that is why the end of my tenure here is 
in many ways a bookend.
  Forty-two years ago, I testified before Senator Fulbright's Foreign 
Relations Committee about the realities of war in Vietnam. It wasn't 
until last week that I would sit before that committee again, this time 
testifying in my own confirmation hearing. It completed a circle which 
I never could have imagined drawing but one our Founders surely did. 
That a citizen voicing his opinion about a matter of personal and 
national consequence could one day use that voice as a Senator, as the 
chairman of that same committee before which he had once testified as a 
private citizen, and then as the President's nominee for Secretary of 
State, that is a fitting representation of what we mean when we talk 
about a government ``of the people, for the people, and by the 
people.''
  In the decades between then and now, this is what I have learned 
above all else: The privilege of being here is in being able to listen 
to your constituents. It is the people and their voices much more than 
the marble buildings and the inimitable institutions they house that 
determine whether our democracy works.
  In my first appearance before the Senate, at the Fulbright hearings, 
I began by saying, ``I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one 
member of the group of 1,000, which is a small representation of a very 
much larger group.''
  I feel much the same way today as I leave. We are still symbols, 
representatives of the people who have given us the honor to speak and 
advocate and vote in their name, and that, as the Bible says, is a 
``charge to keep.'' One day, the 99 other Senators who continue on for 
now--and soon to be 100 again in a few days--will also leave in their 
own turn--in your own turn--some by their own choosing and some by the 
people's. Our time here is not meant to last forever. If we use the 
time to posture politically in Washington, we weaken our position 
across the world. If democracy deadlocks here, we raise doubts about 
democracy everywhere. If we do not in our deeds prove our own ideals, 
we undermine our security and the sacred mission as the best hope of 
Earth. But if we do our jobs right, if we treat our colleagues with 
respect and build the relationships required to form consensus and find 
the courage to follow through on our promises of compromise, the work 
we do here will long endure.

[[Page 786]]

  So let us in the Senate or in the House be bigger than our own 
districts, our own States. Let us in spirited purpose be as big as the 
United States of America. Let us stand for our beliefs but, above all, 
let us believe in our common history, our common destiny, in our common 
obligation to love and lead this exceptional Nation. They say politics 
stops at the water's edge. That is obviously not always true. But if we 
care for our country, politics has its limits at home and abroad.
  As I leave here, I do so knowing that forever the Senate will be in 
my soul and that our country is my cause and yours. I thank you all for 
your friendship and the privilege of serving with you.
  (Applause, Senators rising.)

                          ____________________