Keystone XL Pipeline Act--Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to recognize Jeanne Atkins, my Oregon State director, who is retiring from team Merkley this month. Jeanne is a long-serving member of my team, and she is an outstanding public servant, an individual who has dedicated her life to making the world a better place.
Jeanne Atkins and I first began working together a decade ago after I took up the post of Democratic leader in the Oregon State House. It was a challenging but exciting time as my leadership team worked to build our policy agenda and get our caucus operations up to speed. A key component of that effort, of course, was to hire a superb caucus director. Thus, it came to pass that four members of my leadership team were seated in the Old Wives' Tale restaurant brainstorming over candidates for the position. That group consisted, in addition to myself, of Diane Rosenbaum, who is now majority leader of the Oregon Senate; Dave Hunt, who became majority leader of the house and then speaker of the Oregon House; and Brad Avakian, who is now Oregon's labor commissioner. As we were brainstorming, Diane spoke up and said: I know someone who would be tremendous, but I am sure she would never take the position. Dave Hunt encouraged Diane to put the name forward anyway, and when Diane said the person is Jeanne Atkins, Brad Avakian responded: Jeanne? I know her, and she would be great.
We immediately called Jeanne, and by that evening I was sitting in her living room attempting to persuade her that she would be just the right person for the position and that, moreover, she would enjoy the challenge. Fortunately for us, Jeanne did take the position, and thus began a decade of close collaboration.
The leadership, conviction, and hard work Jeanne Atkins brought to our team allowed us to make a big impact as the minority party during the legislature and an even bigger impact when we won the majority 2 years later. At that point I became speaker of the Oregon House and Jeanne became my chief of staff.
Few legislative sessions in Oregon history have seen the passage of as many major bills as that 2007 session, and no individual was more important to the success of that session than Jeanne Atkins.
We passed domestic partnerships and a broad-based civil rights bill that outlawed discrimination against LGBT Oregonians in employment, in housing, and in public accommodations.
We passed legislation setting ambitious renewable energy standards and making Oregon a national leader in the transition to green energy. We cracked down on predatory payday lenders that were bankrupting our working families. We passed the Access to Birth Control Act requiring insurance plans in Oregon to cover contraceptives just as they do other medication, a law that is now helping to shield Oregon women from the misguided Hobby Lobby decision.
Through this all, we worked across the aisle, encouraging bipartisan cooperation, and were able to put together a session that a major newspaper, The Oregonian, deemed the most productive in a generation.
After I was elected to the U.S. Senate and took that office in January of 2009, Jeanne stayed on in the Oregon House as chief of staff to the new speaker, Dave Hunt, who had helped to hire her 6 years earlier. In that role, Jeanne played a pivotal role in expanding health care to Oregon children. As Dave relates, after Oregonians rejected a ballot measure in 2008 that would have raised the cigarette tax to expand health care to low-income children, the Oregon Legislature was seeking an alternative strategy to fund that expansion. Jeanne was the key staff member who brought a contentious dialogue among legislators to a compromise funding strategy that was successfully passed into law. That achievement brought health care to an additional 90,000 children per year. Well done, Jeanne. That was an extraordinary accomplishment.
After the completion of that Oregon legislative session, I was hoping I would have the opportunity to bring Jeanne back onto team Merkley. The stars aligned and she became my Oregon State director in August of 2009.
Oregon's House loss was the U.S. Senate's gain. In her more than 5 years as State director, Jeanne has overseen hundreds of townhalls, thousands of meetings, and has made sure the millions of Americans who call Oregon home have a voice in the U.S. Senate. I wrote the day I hired her as Oregon State director that ``Jeanne is greatly respected by Oregonians of all political stripes for her hard work and her dedication to this State.'' Today, that statement is even more true than 5 years ago.
Jeanne is known across the State as an honest broker who works hard to bring the voices of all Oregonians into our office. She is a tough advocate for our State and has never hesitated to stand up for what she thinks is right and what she thinks is best for Oregon.
Of course, over the last 5 years, we have also had the chance to get into a few adventures--and a few misadventures--traveling around the State. On one memorable townhall swing, we were on our way between rural townhalls when I suggested an impromptu revision of our route. I thought it would be interesting to take a shortcut via a minor semipaved road. That road turned out to have been abandoned so long ago that after a few miles it was no longer even visible. So there we were traveling off-road in a van that was not designed for off-road navigation, wondering if we were choosing the right path through the field or between the trees. To make matters worse, we quickly lost cell phone communication and couldn't alert the advance team that we were going to be late to the townhall. In fact, we were wondering whether we might be out there in the woods for a night or two as we worked to walk our way out should we break an axle or blow a tire.
Through this all, though I could tell Jeanne's blood pressure and distress were elevating, she displayed the same unflappable demeanor that made her so effective in contentious policy dialogues with overwrought legislators. In that moment and in so many others, Jeanne was grace under pressure personified.
Jeanne is not someone who got into politics to be important or powerful. She got into policy and politics because she believed in public service and she believed that each person has the power to make a difference. It is one of the attributes I most value about having her on my team. It is an attribute that has allowed her to make a huge impact in many of the different positions she has held.
Today, as Jeanne looks forward to the next chapter of her life in retirement, it seems only appropriate to reflect back and look at the huge difference Jeanne has made not just in our office but over the course of her career. She has been a longtime advocate for women's rights. This comes from her childhood growing up in Bremerton, WA, in the 1960s. Her own experiences also shaped Jeanne's steadfast determination for equality.
She told me a story about her first job out of college as a bank teller in Seattle, WA. During that first job, the women in the bank, regardless of their position, were required to take turns making lunch for the entire bank every Friday. Jeanne worked hard to shine at this task, just as she worked hard to shine at all her other tasks, but she knew it was wrong that all the women in the office were treated differently than the men, and she carried her passion for that throughout her career.
Jeanne went to work for the Women's Equity Action League here in Washington, DC, and when she and her husband John went back to Oregon she worked for the Oregon Women's Rights Coalition, the United Way of the Columbia/Willamette, Planned Parenthood of the Columbia Willamette, and then as manager of the Women's and Reproductive Health Section of the Department of Human Services.
Her long and storied career has been powerfully connected to equality and an unshakable commitment to women's health.
Along the way, Jeanne also engaged in electoral politics. She ran for the Oregon house twice in the early 1990s, narrowly losing against a well-established incumbent in her second race. As Brad Avakian relates, in the process, she restored door-to-door canvassing and relationship building in Washington County as a political art form.
Jeanne Atkins is an Oregon gem. I wish her the best in retirement and know that she has many more adventures ahead and many more contributions to make.
Thank you, Jeanne, for working hard to make Oregon, our Nation, and our world a better place. We will miss you.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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