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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last week, on the floor, I thanked five of my colleagues in the Senate who will be leaving at the end of this Congress. Today, I would like to thank three more.

If you read any profile on Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, there is a good chance you will see the word ``rumpled'' in the description of his presentation before the Senate. A rumpled suit has become his trademark. In fact, George Will once wrote that Sherrod ``radiates rumpledness, even in a well-pressed suit.''

Such characterizations have never seemed to bother Sherrod because, you see, he didn't come here to be a clothes horse or pose for GQ. He wouldn't know what to do with a custom-made, clean-pressed suit every day at work.

Sherrod Brown has spent 50 years in public office--50--including the last 18 years in the Senate. He is the kind of person who comes to the Senate ready to fight for people who don't have lawyers and lobbyists to speak for them.

Sherrod grew up in Mansfield, OH, a town hit hard and early by the decline in American manufacturing. His family was comfortably middle class, but many of his friends and seatmates in school weren't so lucky. When a factory in the town closed, his friends' families struggled and worried. Sherrod has spent his life trying to make those families, and others like them, in a position to get a fair shake.

It is a noble kind of service to feel the burdens of others and to work to ease their load, even when you don't need help yourself. Sherrod's solidarity with others who needed help was evident when, for years, he even refused to take congressional health benefits until we passed the Affordable Care Act, which made them available to almost every American. He didn't think it was right to accept that benefit as long as tens of millions of Americans were unable to obtain quality, affordable healthcare.

Sherrod has spent his life working for an economy and government that cares about the working class and invests in towns, factories, healthcare, and the potential of working families. He has fought for fair trade deals and opposed trade agreements that he thought shortchanged American workers, even when his opposition put him at odds with the President of his own party.

He insisted that the historic bipartisan infrastructure bill include a ``Buy America'' requirement, and he helped save the pensions of 1.5 million union members and retirees, with the so-called Butch Lewis Act, which I was proud to join him on.

Today, two huge new Intel computer chip factories are being built in Ohio in New Albany because Sherrod Brown helped pass the Chips and Science Act.

As a long-time member and, since 2021, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, he has worked to prevent the kinds of Wall Street recklessness and greed that crashed the global economy in 2008. He has fought for affordable housing and consumer protection, and against predatory lending and exorbitant junk fees. He has worked to hold executives of failed banks accountable and to make sure that AI and technology advances help consumers and aren't misused to rig the system in favor of the wealthy.

He worked so hard and was so gratified by the child tax credit. I think it was one of his proudest achievements, and he said as much.

In 2002, in the House, he voted against the Iraq war. I did, too, in the Senate. There weren't many of us at the time, and it wasn't a popular stand, but it was the right thing to do, and Sherrod knew it.

I am going to miss his gravelly, Tom Waits voice in this Chamber. I am going to miss the many stories he brought back about his wonderful wife Connie. She is a great writer and has been recognized beyond the United States in many places around the world for her insight and her writing. I wish the best to both of them. Their work here may be finished for the time being, but they have left a positive mark on America.

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