Honoring Senatorial Service

HONORING SENATORIAL SERVICE -- (Senate - December 06, 2006)

JAMES JEFFORDS

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, most of us remember the tectonic shift that occurred in the Senate in 2001, in the month of May, when our colleague, JIM JEFFORDS, changed parties. He moved from being a Republican to becoming an Independent Senator and lined up with the Democratic Caucus. Never before had control of the Senate changed on the decision of one Senator.

It wasn't the first time JIM JEFFORDS had followed his conscience and made history. I can recall his alliance with my predecessor, Senator Paul Simon. At a time many years ago, in 1994, when Rwanda was facing a genocide, Paul Simon and JIM JEFFORDS were the two voices in the United States who stood up and called for the Clinton administration to do something to stop this genocide. Unfortunately, it did not occur and hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. But that call to action by JIM JEFFORDS was just one of the achievements of his public career he can point to with pride.

During that genocide, he was the ranking Republican of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa. The chairman of that committee, Paul Simon, joined with him in that effort. Five weeks after the slaughter in Rwanda began, Senators Simon and JEFFORDS phoned GEN Romeo Dallaire, head of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Kigali, and asked what he needed. The desperate general said he needed 5,000 American troops to stop the killing. Those two Senators, JEFFORDS and Simon, got on the phone, begging the White House to send the troops. They wrote in their common message:

Obviously, there are risks involved, but we cannot sit by idly while this tragedy continues to unfold.

Senators JEFFORDS and Simon received no reply, and the killings continued. Hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children were killed or maimed.

Later, Paul Simon would say:

If every Member of the House and Senate had received 100 letters from people back home saying that we have to do something about Rwanda, when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response would have been different.

So many times I have stood on the floor of the Senate pleading for our Nation to intervene to stop the genocide in Darfur. Each time, I have thought about Paul Simon and JIM JEFFORDS. Had the President listened to them, hundreds of thousands of people in Rwanda could have survived that genocide. It doesn't take a great deal of moral courage to follow your conscience when the world is on your side, but it is when you stand alone, knowing you may lose, and you follow your conscience anyway, that you demonstrate real moral courage.

Time and again in his public career, JIM JEFFORDS, the retiring Senator from Vermont, has shown that courage. He has been an unwavering champion of children and families with special needs, the environment, affordable health care for all Americans, and budget policies that are both compassionate and responsible. He believes in moderation, tolerance, and that the Federal Government be committed to protecting basic individual freedoms.

Three years ago this week, Paul Simon died unexpectedly following heart surgery. At the end of this week, JIM JEFFORDS will be casting his last vote in the Senate. We wish him well in the next chapter of his life. Those of us who have had the privilege of working with JIM JEFFORDS, the new Senators who will join us soon, and those who will follow in years to come would do well to remember the moral courage of Senator JAMES JEFFORDS of Vermont.

PAUL SARBANES

Another retiring colleague is one of my favorites. I have been asked time and again: Who are your favorite Senators on the Democratic side? And I usually came up with two I always look to for wisdom and guidance: PAUL SARBANES and CARL LEVIN. I am glad that CARL LEVIN will continue his Senate career and has announced that he will run for reelection. But PAUL SARBANES is leaving the Senate after many years of fine service.

PAUL SARBANES is the quintessential American success story. His parents were immigrants from the same little town in Greece. They met in America, and what else would Greek immigrants do? They opened a restaurant--in Salisbury, MD. They picked a classic American name for their restaurant. They called it The Mayflower, and PAUL SARBANES started as a young boy working in his family's restaurant and living ``above the store,'' as they used to say.

He graduated from public high school, but a pretty good student and not a bad basketball player, he won a scholarship to Princeton University, studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and earned a law degree from Harvard in 1960. He was set to make a fortune as an attorney in private practice but, instead, he listened to President Kennedy's call to public service and took a job as assistant to Walter Heller, who was President Kennedy's Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

PAUL SARBANES won his first election 40 years ago to the Maryland House of Delegates and was elected to the United States Senate 30 years ago. He is the longest serving U.S. Senator in the history of the State of Maryland. It is said that the Senate is the most exclusive club in the world. PAUL SARBANES is a member of one of the most exclusive clubs within it. Of the 1,885 Americans who have had the rare privilege and honor to serve in the Senate, PAUL SARBANES is one of only 27 who have been here long enough to cast 10,000 votes in the Senate.

He is a modest, soft-spoken, hard-working man and one of the brightest people I have ever served with in the House or the Senate.

A Congressional Quarterly profile says of PAUL SARBANES:

He possesses the intellectual skills to leave his opponents sputtering.

He was a voice of reason in the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings of 1974 and later in the Senate's Iran-Contra and Whitewater investigations.

It was Senator Sarbanes's leadership in the wake of the scandals at Enron and WorldCom that led to the reforms in Sarbanes-Oxley, the most far-reaching reform of accountability standards since the Great Depression.

An interesting thing happened a week ago. On November 30, a group with an impressive and quasi-official-sounding name, the Committee on Capital Market Regulation, released a report arguing that excessive and overzealous regulation was hobbling U.S. capital markets. The report included 32 recommendations, among them to redesign the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, to make it friendlier to business and increase protections against private lawsuits against businesses--in other words, pull some of the teeth out of the Sarbanes-Oxley reforms.

The very next day we learned that the report had been financed by a foundation with ties to what the Washington Post described as ``a pair of well-heeled business donors and an executive battling civil charges'' in a lawsuit filed in New York by the attorney general.

Some pension watchdogs and consumer advocates they turned out to be. They were sounding an alarm bell with a real personal interest in mind. So we should take care; before we make any wholesale change in the Sarbanes-Oxley rules, we need to understand that we need to protect the integrity and security of America's financial markets. PAUL SARBANES had the courage to lead that battle. Change can take place, but let's make sure it is reasonable; study the issue and ask the hard questions.

For over 30 years PAUL SARBANES has served Maryland and the Nation. He has earned a reputation for excellence and integrity, winning the Paul Douglas Award for ethics just 2 years ago. He has given America some of the most important legislation, but he has spoken out consistently on the floor of the Senate so many times with the kind of leadership which we ask for in the Senate. I will be sorry to see him retire.

But the Sarbanes name lives on in Congress. On November 7 his son John Peter Styros Sarbanes was elected to represent Maryland's Third Congressional District, replacing Senator-elect BEN CARDIN. In typical Sarbanes fashion, his son won with 65 percent of the vote and will continue the Sarbanes family tradition of serving Maryland and America.

MARK DAYTON

Mr. President, MARK DAYTON served representing the State of Minnesota. Business was his background, not politics. But Senator Dayton developed a passion for politics at an early age. While his parents supported Richard Nixon in 1960 and 1968, Senator Dayton found another hero in Bobby Kennedy. As a college student at Yale, he protested the Vietnam war. He began using a share of his family's fortune to support progressives.

In return, he made it on an enemies list. He was investigated by the FBI, targeted by the IRS, and had that dubious distinction of being on Richard Nixon's enemies list, a distinction that he now wears as a badge of honor.

He has devoted his entire adult life to public service, broadly defined. Born into privilege, he fought for those less fortunate from the start, especially for poor children. After college he taught science in New York City and counseled runaway children in Boston. Returning to his Minnesota roots, he served as an aide to Walter Mondale, then as Minnesota's State economic development commissioner, and later State auditor. MARK DAYTON was elected to the Senate 6 years ago on his second try. His first 2 years in the Senate he had that great colleague, Paul Wellstone. For the last 4 years, MARK DAYTON, like many of us, has tried to carry Paul Wellstone's standard, to fight for the people that Paul Wellstone used to call ``the little fellers,'' who don't have expensive lobbyists to watch out for them in the Senate.

MARK DAYTON has been a consistent voice for fairness. He has used his own Senate salary to pay for seniors to travel to Canada to purchase less expensive prescription drugs. He has been a strong advocate for ethanol, renewable energy, strengthening America's energy security, reducing global warming, and boosting the income of family farmers.

Senator Dayton was one of only 23 Senators who voted against the Iraqi war resolution in 2002. He has used his seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee to ask hard questions of those who planned and are overseeing the war. He has demanded accountability from them while he has continued to show consistent support for the men and women in uniform.

I look forward to seeing how Senator MARK DAYTON will serve America next, and I wish him the very best.

MIKE DE WINE

I also express my best wishes to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle leaving the Senate at the end of this session. I already made mention of Senator MIKE DEWINE of Ohio. So many times over the 10 years that I served in the Senate I walked across the aisle searching for an ally and found MIKE DEWINE. Whether it was a fight to put more efforts into the global AIDS effort to reduce the deaths around the world or an effort to reach out and provide assistance to Haiti, a country which my friend MIKE DEWINE has adopted, time and time again he rose to that challenge. Debt reduction in Africa--so many other issues. His speech today on the floor was just another indication of the kind of compassion that he brought to service in the Senate.

Elections come and go but the record that has been written by my friend Senator MIKE DEWINE will endure.

RICK SANTORUM

Senator RICK SANTORUM and I spent most of our time on the floor of the Senate in hot debate, disagreeing on almost everything. But we found some areas of agreement, and one of them was the global AIDS effort. I am glad that he joined as my partner in that effort. The money that we secured that will be spent around the world will save lives and provide hope.

LINCOLN CHAFEE

Senator Lincoln Chafee, a quiet voice of moderation from the State of Rhode Island, followed in the footsteps of his great father, John Chafee, with whom I was honored to serve. Senator Lincoln Chafee time and again would stand independently and express his views and his conscience. He was the only Republican of the 23 Senators who voted against the Iraqi war resolution.

GEORGE ALLEN

Senator GEORGE ALLEN of Virginia and I have worked on a few measures together, including some help for veterans who returned from the war in Iraq with traumatic brain injury.

CONRAD BURNS

Senator Conrad Burns and I have served on the Appropriations Committee and are friends from the Senate gym where we get together every morning and find a few things to laugh about.

WILLIAM FRIST

Senator BILL FRIST is our leader in the U.S. Senate. We have had some battles, of course, as you would. But we have also shown respect to one another, and I respect the job that he has done and wish him the very best. I might say of Senator BILL FRIST that his commitment to public service doesn't end with the Senate. He has taken his amazing skills as a heart surgeon to some of the poorest places on Earth, spending spare time which he could have had with his family or relaxing somewhere, instead in some of the most outlying sections of the world helping the less fortunate. That speaks volumes about the heart of BILL FRIST.

I wish all of my colleagues who are retiring well as they begin the next chapters of their careers.

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