Remembering Senator Edward Kennedy

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I was deeply saddened by the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy in August, my colleague on the Health, Education, and Labor Committee, a statesman in every sense of the word, and a Senator not just for the people of Massachusetts but for every corner of the Nation. I am grateful for the time I shared with him as a colleague and as a friend.

Senator Kennedy may be best known in this body for his consistent leadership on the big national issues. Whether you agreed with him or not Senator Kennedy was ``all in'' on the issues he cared about, like health care and education, and a formidable force to be reckoned with.

While Senator Kennedy was firm in his convictions, he was open to the ideas of other Senators, regardless of party affiliation. As most Senators who worked with him know, Senator Kennedy had an unequaled reputation for compromise and negotiation. As legislation was being written and developed, he recognized the importance of other Senators' perspectives on an issue, including mine, and was therefore willing to alter legislative proposals for the sake of cooperation and finding middle ground with Senators from any political party. The two years I spent on the HELP Committee with him as my chairman were truly a blessing.

There was so much to admire about Senator Kennedy's career. But the thing I really admired about Senator Kennedy was his ability to look beyond the beltway to take up causes that might seem obscure to many in this body--causes that offended Senator Kennedy's sense of justice. Let me offer a few examples from my State of Alaska.

Federal law requires agencies to reinstate civil servants who go on active duty in the National Guard and Reserves when their service is complete. The law goes by the acronym USERRA. When Bob Traut of Palmer, AK, completed his active duty service with the Alaska National Guard, he was not reinstated to his position in the Indian Health Service. His position had been eliminated and he was not offered another. He filed a USERRA complaint with the Department of Labor, which was passed around among investigators and ultimately lost. Several years after he started this process he was offered a Federal position at a U.S. Coast Guard base hundreds of miles from his home. He couldn't drive to his new workplace--he had to fly there because Kodiak is an island not connected by road to the rest of Alaska. Even then his back pay claims were lost in a morass of bureaucracy, in spite of repeated inquiries from my office. Bob Traut's fortunes changed when Senator Kennedy decided to hold an oversight hearing about USERRA focused on Bob Traut's case.

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the 1971 law which resolved the aboriginal land claims of Alaska's first peoples, is truly one of the landmark pieces of federal Indian legislation. The administration offered Alaska's Native people 10 million acres of land. Senator Kennedy came to the floor on several occasions to argue that the number of acres should be no less than 40 million. The ultimate settlement was 44 million acres. A settlement which might not have been possible without Senator Kennedy's leadership.

As the chairman of the Subcommittee on Indian Education, Kennedy joined a few other Senate colleagues on a trip to several Alaska Native villages in April 1969. Kennedy recalls being stunned by the poverty and despair in the villages, many of which still lack basic sanitation and are plagued by high rates of sexual assault, domestic violence, and suicide. It affected Senator Kennedy so deeply that he found it difficult to ``numb the pain.''

The course of Senator Kennedy's life brought him many blessings and accomplishments. He was a father of three beautiful children and two stepchildren, a Harvard graduate, a nine-term Senator with the third longest time serving in the U.S. Senate in American history, a veteran of the Army, a talented football player who almost went pro but opted instead for a life of public service ..... the list goes on.

My condolences and blessings go out to his family, especially his wife and children. Despite Ted's passing, his spirit lives on. There is little doubt in my mind that this spirit will inspire generations of our colleagues in the years ahead to take up his causes and ensure that the vulnerable in America, the often forgotten Americans who live in remote places like rural Alaska, are never forgotten.

Ted, thank you for your service.

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