[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 147 (Thursday, December 4, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6331-S6341]


                         Farewell to the Senate

  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I come today with a spirit of 
reflection and optimism about our future. I am also compelled towards 
an honest assessment of where we are as a body--of the promise of what 
we can achieve when we don't shy away from compromise and what we can't 
achieve when we refuse to compromise.
  I also have very much on my mind that the job of public service is 
very hard work, and it is an extremely noble and honorable calling. 
Here in the U.S. Senate we have the unique ability and responsibility 
to do very big things: ignite innovation in our schools and industries, 
grow and protect a healthy country, foster global change borne from 
policies that lead the globe. At the same time, we have the opportunity 
to touch individual lives with case management. One on one, with 
casework, we often reach people in their darkest hour.
  I love the Senate. I love the Senate. I love the intensity of the 
work, the gravity of the issues, and I love fighting for West 
Virginians here. I learned to love this fight, as many of you know, as 
a 27-year-old VISTA worker in the tiny coal community of Emmons, WV. It 
was a place that set my moral compass and gave me direction, where 
everything in my real life actually began. It is where I learned how 
little I knew about the problems people faced there and in other places 
in the country, how little I knew, and what a humbling experience that 
was for me.
  My time there was transformative. It explains every policy I have 
pursued and every vote I have cast. It was where my beliefs were bolted 
down and where my passions met my principles. Emmons was where I came 
to understand that out of our everyday struggles we can enlarge 
ourselves. We can grow greater. Truly making a difference couldn't be 
an afterthought. It never could. Rather, it requires a singular focus 
and relentless effort. It would be hard, but the work mattered. That is 
the deal here.
  Important undertakings can't be halfhearted. You have to commit your 
whole self--almost like pushing a heavy rock uphill. With both of your 
hands you push, because if you let up for a split second with either 
hand, you and the rock go tumbling backwards into the abyss. There is 
always so much at stake.
  Even today in West Virginia too many are struggling. They are 
fighting to survive. I called them hardworking

[[Page S6332]]

when I really should say hard-surviving, but they are hardworking and 
trying to survive. They are wary of the future. They are scared of 
their possibilities. Sometimes they are afraid of themselves, which is 
partly a tradition which says that change is bad, that strangers are 
bad. I was bad for quite a long time. But that is the way people are. 
They don't really want to change. So change comes slowly. We just 
simply fight twice as hard, and nothing stops us.
  There is vast dignity and vast honor in helping people. You cannot 
let go of it. I believe genuinely in the ability of government to do 
good, to serve, and to right injustices. This is why the Senate must be 
a place in which we embrace commitment to be deliberative, passionate, 
and unrelenting. But it must be a place in which we are driven only by 
the duty and trust bestowed upon us by the people who put us here. This 
is where everything else should be put aside--boxed out, as it were.
  Yes, politics led us here. But this is where we shed the campaign--or 
should--and embrace our opportunities to lead, to listen, to dig in, to 
bridge differences, to govern, and to truly make a difference. At our 
core we must be drawn to the hard, all-consuming policy work that lives 
in briefings, hearing rooms, and roundtables back in our States. Yet 
our North Star must always be the real needs of the people we serve.
  So policy to me starts with listening. It is seeing the faces of our 
constituents--not just thinking of a policy in terms of a policy, but a 
policy in terms of the people whom it would affect. You see your 
constituents, you hear them out, and you understand their needs and 
their problems. You get to know them very well, especially in a small 
State such as West Virginia. Listening to constituents and colleagues 
here alike is absolutely necessary. Good policy is born out of 
compromise. Compromise is not easy, but it can happen. If we truly 
listen to each other, it very well could.
  We separate our campaign selves from our public service selves. The 
cruelty of perpetual campaigns destroys our ability to fulfill our oath 
of office. It is hard to build a working relationship in this 
institution without an honest and open approach with our colleagues--
Republican or Democratic. But we must build that relationship because 
together we can do so much, and without it, we can do--as we have 
seen--nothing.
  Listening and compromise were key to the work of the National 
Commission on Children in the 1990s. I was the chair of that 
Commission, which included a bipartisan group of government officials 
and appointed experts in various fields from all backgrounds. There 
were many of us--32--and we went all over the country for 2 years.
  I can tell you that reaching consensus was tough, but we listened, we 
debated, and we came to trust. Even the most liberal and conservative 
among us knew that each of us had the best interests of our party. That 
was not in dispute.
  While meeting in Williamsburg, VA, which was where we had been 
meeting at the time, I had to leave suddenly for an important Senate 
vote on Iraq. I handed over the gavel to our most conservative 
Republican Member, someone in whom I had trust. That shocked people, 
but it helped on the consensus.
  In the end we were proud to vote 32 to 0 in support of the 
legislation that we put forward and our policy statement as a whole, 
and it included both policies. It included the creation of a new 
Republican child tax credit for the first time and a major expansion of 
the earned-income tax credit, which has lifted millions of American 
families out of poverty.
  It worked because we listened to one another, respected one another, 
and we wanted to come to an agreement. It was clear, it was obvious, 
and there it was--32 to 0. Unbelievable, but it happened.
  Is that possible these days? My answer is yes, and I believe that we 
can see that spirit again as we address the future of the bipartisan 
Children's Health Insurance Program--CHIP, the way it is known. It 
currently provides health care to 8.3 million children and pregnant 
women nationwide, and 40,000 of those are in West Virginia. CHIP is so 
important to me because it offers health care which is tailored to 
children; to wit, it has both mental and dental health care tailored to 
children. It is, in fact, better coverage than the Affordable Care Act 
provides children.
  From those early days at Vista, I have seen the devastating toll that 
lack of medical care can extract from a child's well-being and their 
health, their self-esteem--particularly their self-esteem--and even 
their will to succeed.
  Many of you also know the names and faces of children who have gone 
without access to proper health care, and those are the ones we fight 
for. That is why CHIP has always been a bipartisan effort, driven by 
the needs of real kids and their families. Senators Grassley and Hatch 
were instrumental in its creation over a period of a couple years and 
long arguments, and they continue to be strong advocates.
  The bipartisanship program has opened doors for millions who 
desperately needed to get into a doctor's office and had never been 
able to do so and now are able to do so.
  But a warning--every door that CHIP opened will be closed unless we 
can agree to carry CHIP funding past mid-2015, and I don't know what 
the prospects for that are. All I know is that if they aren't done 
properly, those doors close; those kids had access to doctors, but they 
don't anymore. That is unconscionable to me. We have to look at the 
faces of those children in our own States and think about that. It is 
those individual faces that I remember.
  Remembering for whom we work is paramount. When any corporate CEO 
comes to my office, I show them a prized birthday gift to my four 
children--our four children--my wife is here--a picture of a 
hardworking coal miner whose face is honest but hurting and very proud. 
That picture means so much to me because it embodies the spirit of 
those whom I am here to serve, and silently reminds us of why we must 
work towards a common ground--why this is not about Democrats and 
Republicans, but it is about the people whom we are here to serve, 
bringing different viewpoints to what that means.
  Senator Mike Enzi and I are not on the same side of every vote--to 
put it mildly--but we are very, very good friends--a friendship that 
was made years ago when I was serving on the President's HOPE mission 
and he was the mayor of Gillette, WY, going slightly crazy trying to 
build houses for all the people moving in there through coal. He also 
had sideburns. I say that oftentimes--off the record.
  On a gray day in January 2006, West Virginia was frozen in disbelief 
when we learned that 12 trapped miners were killed in Sago Mine--a mine 
in the north central part of the State.
  In the days that followed, as we struggled to make sense of what had 
happened, Senator Enzi and Senator Isakson joined Senator Kennedy, 
Senator Manchin, and myself in West Virginia. The first two did not 
real merely visit--they came to understand. They came to learn. They 
came to share in the grief and to offer their support to the community, 
and you could tell that in their faces.
  Together, out of tragedy--and because they were members of the 
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee--we forged a 
compromise on mine safety legislation that brought about, frankly, the 
strongest safety improvements in a generation. It was huge for us. Only 
16 States mine coal, but we are one of them.
  To this day, Senator Isakson carries a picture of one of the Sago 
miners. It is not in the wallet that he is carrying today, but it is in 
the other wallet back in Atlanta. I don't care where it is, that 
picture is in his wallet every single day. We knew that, as public 
officials, compromising and really leading, men govern--which is why we 
were there.
  Answering the needs of our country is our responsibility, and we do 
the best when we work shoulder to shoulder. It was working shoulder to 
shoulder when we set our country on a path to future innovation.
  A few years ago, America's domination in our innovation--our 
inventions and creative problem-solving--was eroding, and we all knew 
it. We needed to act. We needed to reinvigorate our leadership in those 
areas and to keep our jobs and our future more secure.
  We answered that call with a bipartisan compromise that delivered the

[[Page S6333]]

America COMPETES Reauthorization Act. I will never forget that. This 
legislation made historic investments in basic research, science, 
technology, engineering, and math education.
  Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who preceded John Thune on the commerce 
committee, Senator Alexander, and I sought unanimous consent to get the 
bill passed--because we thought we worked out the details pretty well--
and do it prior to the recess. Therefore, we had to do it by unanimous 
consent. But there were five objections holding the bill still.
  Instead of retreating to party corners and pointing fingers, we 
compromised right on that center aisle--right there next to Senator 
Collins. We wound it up and down, we added a little money and we took a 
little bit of money off. Mostly we took several billion dollars off. We 
removed a couple of programs that weren't absolutely necessary to 
satisfy Kay Bailey or Lamar Alexander. And we had ourselves a $44 
billion bill over 5 years on which we agreed. We didn't have to have a 
vote. Senator Hutchison and Senator Alexander tenaciously worked to 
clear the holds. It was absolutely beautiful. It was just beautiful--a 
$44 billion program to reinvigorate our Nation, cerebrally and 
productively. Together we passed a bill to revive our country's 
flagging global performance ranking and catapult us to success. 
Reaching moments like those requires persistence. It demands 
collaboration. It demands trust and compromise, and it is so worth it.

  I am driven by the process of creating policy. I love doing that. It 
is grinding, it is intense, it can be frustrating and sometimes 
heartbreaking--often heartbreaking. But when we accomplish something 
that is meaningful to the people who have entrusted us to represent 
them, there is no greater reward.
  We have to know who and what we must fight for in our work and in our 
own personal views. We have to know and understand those who will 
benefit and those who will lose. And we have to be ready for it to take 
a long time--much longer than we thought--sometimes 5 years, sometimes 
10 years. That makes no difference. You keep at it. You don't let go of 
it, because if you keep at it, somewhere along some combination of 
Senators is going to say, yeah, that is OK. And then we get ourselves a 
bill.
  Also we keep in our souls the faces of the people we try to help, the 
people in my case who were all too often left behind. The Senate must 
face serious social and policy issues from health care to cyber 
security, caring for veterans coming home, building up our 
infrastructure, making our economy work for everyone. These are our 
core responsibilities. I am proud that we have made some measure of 
progress. While we seem right now to be at an impasse, I know the 
Senate will rise to the position of addressing our issues and at some 
point in some way it will happen. As a governing body, we must not 
allow recent failures to take root, to mean too much to us. We must not 
be focused on episodic ``gotcha'' issues rather than working to address 
broader, more systemic problem solving. No one else is going to step in 
to do this if we don't.
  The truth was on full display a few weeks ago when the Senate failed 
to move forward on National Security Administration reforms necessary 
to uphold the mission of protecting our Nation. These are issues on 
which I have very strong views. I have taken very seriously my 14 years 
on the Intelligence Committee, as a member and as chairman, because the 
global threats we face increase daily as the world becomes more 
connected. We depend on the highly trained professionals at NSA to zero 
in on those threats. There are only 22 of them that make sort of final 
decisions. They are highly trained. They have taken the oath of office 
to protect our Nation.
  Now I don't think we have any excuse to outsource our intelligence 
work to telecommunications firms. I work on the Commerce Committee. I 
have seen what the telecommunications companies do when they can get 
away with it--you know, everything from cramming to--just all kinds of 
not very nice things. It is the job of government to address this 
issue. The private sector and the free market alone cannot solve those 
kinds of problems and should not. That is a government responsibility 
being carried out with great success.
  A lot of people say, oh, what if? But the fact is nobody has ever 
been able to show me somebody whose privacy has been influenced or 
broken into by the NSA. Good, hard-working people can be destroyed by 
circumstances beyond their control. It is our job to not let that 
happen. It is our job to help to give everyone a fair shot. It is much 
easier to say than to do, but that is our charge.
  Too many children come into a world where circumstances preclude the 
opportunities they should have. We cannot discount the many challenges 
our society still faces. It is unconscionable in a country like ours 
that people go without health care or go hungry or have no place to 
call home.
  When shareholders and the free market cannot or will not solve our 
problems, it is government's responsibility to step in every time. 
People can decry government all they want, but we are here for a 
reason. When private companies decide there isn't enough profit to 
provide Internet to rural areas, then we step in and we expand 
broadband, allowing the E-Rate to go farther and farther out. It now 
covers 97 percent of all schools in the country.
  Maybe the private sector decides they cannot make enough by insuring 
the sickest of our children. We must act. That is our core mission. It 
is who we are as an institution. It is who we must always be.
  We have worked to give children a fair shot through the E-Rate 
Program which introduces the most rural classrooms and the smallest 
libraries to the world through the Internet, access to a foreign 
language class or research, but it gives every child a key to unlock 
their potential. It doesn't mean they will, but it means they can.
  We know health care is fundamental to a fair shot as well. We cannot 
learn or keep a job if we are sick. But providing that care has not 
always been as profitable as some companies would like. So we make sure 
millions of Americans could have the dignity of access to health care 
under the Affordable Care Act.
  My friend Sam is one of the faces I will never forget. When he was 
battling childhood leukemia and hit his lifetime insurance cap--it is a 
technical term for a savage consequence--his parents' insurance 
companies walked away from this courageous little fighter. His parents, 
both schoolteachers, were left with heart-wrenching decisions such as 
getting divorced--which they considered--so Sam could qualify for 
Medicaid. Well, in the end it didn't matter; Sam lost his battle with 
cancer. But today under the Affordable Care Act we have made sure that 
no insurance companies can abandon someone like Sam when they need help 
the most. Health care reform will never take away the crushing agony of 
parents with sick kids. Heartbreaking situations like Sam's drove us to 
say no more, and we changed the law. Parents deserve to focus every bit 
of their energy fighting for their kids in every way, not fighting 
profit-obsessed insurance companies. So we did the right thing. We did 
the right thing.

  Government also did the right thing when I fought for what I thought 
my life depended on, because it did, to pass the Coal Act of 1992, long 
forgotten. We had to step in and stop some coal companies from walking 
away from benefits which they had promised by contract to retired coal 
miners and their widows--folks who were mostly in their seventies and 
eighties. Passing the Coal Act was enormously important to our country. 
It not only prevented in absolute terms a national coal strike in 1993, 
but it delivered on the promise of lifetime health benefits earned by 
200,000 retired coal miners and their widows. They would not have been 
taken care of if those companies had their way.
  Nor can we rely on the private sector alone to take care of our 
veterans. It is government's duty to provide the health care they 
earned. We do this through community-based clinics and improved 
services for PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and family support. It is 
expensive. Senator Rob Portman and I wanted to pass a bill which would 
cause the Department of Defense to give all people entering the 
military mental health screening--not when they came back from Iraq or 
Afghanistan or somewhere else, but before they

[[Page S6334]]

went in, and then on an annual basis do that again to build a database, 
to make sure we knew that we could take care of them better when they 
came home.
  We rightly asked the government to take on some of society's most 
fundamental needs. What I found in Emmons was a community of genuinely 
strong and incredibly hard-working people who were essentially on their 
own trying to survive. The free market had not made sure that 
communities such as Emmons had good roads or any schools or any 
schoolbuses or any clean drinking water or safe jobs. But from my point 
of view they deserved all of those. They deserved to have their shot. 
Working together on the needs of places such as Emmons speaks to our 
core human connection and to an aspiration for the greater good.
  That is what drove me into public service. It was not something I 
could help. I just had to do it, to help people with everything that I 
have. Every individual in every community such as Emmons deserves to 
have public officials who will fight the big fight and the personal 
ones, the casework.
  Extending a hand on those personal challenges is incredibly 
meaningful work. Our constituents face these fights with Herculean 
courage but not always the resources to solve the problems in front of 
them. People like the 8-year-old who needed a bone marrow transplant, a 
procedure that in 1990 was considered experimental. Our office 
intervened. We helped that boy get that transplant and he still lives 
today. As a Senator, you take on those fights with the same vigor as 
any policy or ideological debate and you are equally proud when you win 
and you are equally hurt when you lose.
  When I came to West Virginia 50 years ago, I was searching for a 
clear purpose for my life's work. I wanted the work to be really hard, 
and what I got was an opportunity to work really hard along with a real 
and utterly spiritual sense of mission. This work demands and deserves 
nothing less than everything that we have to give.
  I will miss the Senate. Some days I don't want to leave, but it is 
time, which brings me to some profoundly important notes of gratitude.
  To my colleagues, I say thank you.
  I have mentioned some. I could mention so many. You are dedicated, 
you are brilliant, and you are public servants. I love you for putting 
up with what you have to, particularly the way elections are these 
days. I respect you for it so much. Thank you for fighting alongside 
me. Thank you for challenging me.
  To my staff, a Senator is really nothing without his staff or her 
staff, and there is not a more committed, talented, and deeply 
passionate staff in the United States Senate. To my staff, you live and 
you breathe your work everyday. You inspire me with your endless 
capacity for redressing injustice and fighting for people who need you 
and come to you in need. You never turned a single West Virginian away. 
I glory in my gratitude to you.
  To my family, who has sacrificed so much, I thank you. I have been 
selfish in my devotion to my work, and I have been vastly inept in 
balancing family and work. Public service is not encouraging of 
balance.
  Sharon, you are everything--an extraordinary mother, a remarkable 
businesswoman, and you are a public servant. You have been a visionary 
in public broadcasting. Our entire Nation is indebted to your efforts 
to educate and inform us. The impact you continue to make on public 
life is truly remarkable. Any achievement I am proud of I share with 
you eternally.
  (Applause, Senators rising)
  Our children--John, Valerie, Charles, and Justin--have all been very 
thoughtful and endlessly supportive in my absences. Our grandchildren 
bring me so much joy, and I really hope to see a lot more of them.
  To West Virginia, thank you for placing your faith in me--I know it 
was hard at first--and giving me the greatest reward: the chance to 
fight for meaningful and lasting opportunity for those who were too 
often forgotten but absolutely deserve the best.
  My fellow West Virginians, I am forever inspired by you, and I am 
forever transformed by you.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.
  (Applause, Senators rising.)
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. There will be many remarks at the end of the year from 
Senators regarding Jay Rockefeller, but at this time I suggest the 
absence of a quorum.

[...]