Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. As I understand it, the bill contained both funds and programs for outreach that would have supported the States in their initiatives to find the children who, because their parents were moving or for one reason or another, were eligible but had not entered into these State programs. So I think the answer to that question would be yes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Of course.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I see my colleague and friend from Virginia, Senator Webb, who is prepared to speak, and we will recognize him in just a moment. I would note there would have been, by our estimates, 3.3 million children who would have been covered had the bill passed in 2007. That would have been one very good way to reduce the number of children in this country who are not protected by health insurance.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this week we have the chance in the Senate to provide health insurance to 4.1 million children in this country who now don't have it, to cover 11 million children total. All we have to do is the right thing and pass H.R. 2, the Children's Health Insurance Program. I know the distinguished Presiding Officer from Nebraska and the distinguished Senator from Virginia, who has just spoken so eloquently, have shared the experience I have had in my home State of Rhode Island, and that is to travel around and hear personal stories from people whose lives and whose health have collided with our broken, dysfunctional health care system. Too often, families in this country can't afford to pay for the care they need. As our economic troubles worsen, that problem only grows more acute. Too often, they can't even get in to see a doctor. Too often, when they do receive care, it falls short in quality, in efficiency, in effectiveness, and in timeliness. The crisis in our health care system affects all of us, but it is greatest and it is most tragic when it affects our children. That is why Congress created the Children's Health Insurance Program which for years has given millions of uninsured, hard-working American families access to health care for their kids. The program has not only expanded health care coverage for children, it has encouraged States to be flexible, innovative, and responsive in meeting their families' health care needs. We come from 50 different States with 50 different sets of history, demographics, and economics, and as a result, the States come up with different programs. That is something to celebrate, not to bemoan. The program has safeguarded the vulnerable, it has united families, and it has invested in the future of our Nation. It is a special program of all the things that we do here. The Children's Health Insurance Program means that children are more likely to receive medical care for common conditions such as asthma or ear infections. It means that children end up with higher school attendance rates, and that children have higher academic achievement. It means that children have more contacts with medical professionals. It means that children receive more preventive care. It means that children go to the emergency room when it is an emergency, and when it is not, they have someplace else to go that allows them and their families to stay out of those expensive urgent care settings. So as we have done for the past 2 years, this week we are working to pass legislation to ensure that every eligible uninsured child in America can get regular checkups when they are well and can get medicine when they are sick. Not long ago, former President Bush denied children needed health care coverage by vetoing this legislation. But the American voters have spoken and we are in a new era in this country--a new era for peace of mind, for security, and for dignity for American children and for their families. With a new Congress and a new President committed to health care for all American families, I could not be more hopeful as we discuss this bill today. I am especially proud to serve with my senior Senator, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, and to support him in this fight. I have been in the Senate for 2 years now. Before I even got here, Jack Reed was one of the most prominent, most ardent, and most determined fighters for our Nation's children. Frankly, it is in significant part due to his relentless work that we have come this far. I am proud also to represent a State that has one of the lowest rates of uninsured adults and children in the Nation. It was not easy. Rhode Island worked hard over the past 15 years to achieve this success. It began with the RIte Care Program in 1993. In 2001, the creation of the Children's Health Insurance Program allowed Rhode Island to further reduce uninsurance rates in the State. I am proud to be on the team of former Governor Bruce Sundlun who turned 89 a few days ago. When he was Governor, he created the original RIte Care Program. His vision and determination to do this, in a time of grave economic straits for Rhode Island, has yielded immense rewards. Now, as health care costs skyrocket and the number of people in this country who lack health insurance approaches the staggering number of 50 million--50 million Americans, and so many of them children--we in Congress have an obligation to strengthen initiatives like RIte Care through which States have made health care more accessible. Today, 4.1 million uninsured children are waiting for us to pass this bill; 4.1 million children who might not see a doctor this winter when they get the flu because their parents can't afford to pay out of pocket for the visit; 4.1 million children who might delay needed vaccinations or other preventive care because their parents have to buy food instead; 4.1 million children who might not get an inhaler or insulin or--heaven forbid--chemotherapy because in this economic downturn, the money just isn't there. Who could say no to uninsured, vulnerable children? Should we not at least be able to agree on that? Why would anyone say no? We plan to raise taxes on cigarettes, a tax that the American Cancer Society says could prevent nearly 1 million deaths and keep nearly 2 million children from starting to smoke; a tax with health savings that could ultimately decrease government costs for government health care programs; a tax that the Congressional Budget Office confirms will fully offset this bill so as not to add to our deficit. I don't think that would be a good reason to deny vulnerable children the safety and security of health insurance. During the course of this discussion, some Members have tried to make this debate about illegal immigration. It is not. We should not permit the very difficult issue of illegal immigration to affect this bill to deny millions of children the health care they badly need. That would be a grave mistake. That would be a wrong. Let me be very clear: Only children who are legally in the United States are eligible to receive coverage under Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program. They must document their immigration status. Medicaid agencies use information provided by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services to confirm the status of legal immigrants applying for benefits. Further, this bill does not even require States to cover legal immigrant children. It simply provides and supports that option. Legal immigrants pay taxes, they serve in our Armed Forces, and just like the rest of us, they play by the rules. They are our future citizens, and insuring their children makes sense. This was the law until 1996 when sweeping restrictions affecting legal immigrants were made. Since 1996, we have become wiser, and many of those restrictions have been reversed on a bipartisan basis by Congress. The provision in this legislation covering legal immigrants is fully consistent with that trend back to 1996 levels. This Nation is slowly emerging from a dark time when our ideals and our virtues were too often hidden in the shadows, when we let our fear overcome our principles and our better judgment, when we lost sight of our priorities and left millions of people in the cold and millions of children uninsured. That time can end now. This bill is a chance to show these millions of Americans that we have heard them and that we stand ready to help. We know how tough it is for working families in this economy. If there is one worry, one burden we can take off those parents' shoulders so they can be sure their children have the health insurance every American deserves, we should stand ready to help. This country should once again own its duty to protect those who cannot protect themselves and to restore dignity and hope where it has diminished. I close by applauding Chairman Baucus and the Finance Committee for bringing this vitally important and long overdue legislation to the floor. I urge all of my colleagues--it would be wonderful if we could do this together--to allow these 11 million children to be covered by health insurance, to have access to the health care they need, to grow up healthy and strong and ready to seize the boundless opportunities that are at the heart of the American dream. I think we will find in the months and in the years ahead that there will be things we cannot do to help families. I know everybody in this Chamber wants to do everything they can, and we want to work as hard as we can, but the economic situation is dire, and we are not going to be able to do everything we would like. But this is something we can do. This is something we can do for American families and for their children, and I hope very much we will do it. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I rise as we celebrate a new President, a new administration, a new mode of governing, and a new future for America. Even in the gloom of our present predicaments, Americans' hearts are strong and confident because we see a brighter future ahead. President Obama looks to that future. Given the depth and severity of those present predicaments, we need all his energy to look forward to lead us to that brighter day, forward to what Winston Churchill in Britain's dark days called ``broad and sunlit uplands.'' But as we steer toward this broad and sunlit future, what about the past? As the President looks forward and charts a new course, must someone not also look back to take an accounting of where we are, what was done, and what must now be repaired? Our new President has said, ``America needs to look forward.'' I agree. Our new Attorney General- designate has said: We should not criminalize policy differences. I agree, and I hope we can all agree that summoning young sacrificial lambs to prosecute, as we did after Abu Ghraib, would be reprehensible. But consider the pervasive, deliberate, and systematic damage the Bush administration did to America, to her finest traditions and institutions, to her reputation, and integrity. I evaluate that damage in history's light. Although I am no historian, here is what I believe: The story of humankind on this Earth has been a long and halting march from the darkness of barbarism and the principle that to the victor go the spoils, to the light of organized civilization and freedom. During that long and halting march, this light of progress has burned, sometimes brightly and sometimes softly, in different places at different times around the world. The light shone in Athens, when that first Senate made democracy a living experiment, and again in the softer but broader glow of the Roman Empire and Senate. That light burned brightly, incandescently, in Jerusalem, when Jesus of Nazareth cast his lot with the weak and the powerless. The light burned in Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, and Cordoba, when the Arab world kept science, mathematics, art, and logic alive, as Europe descended into Dark Ages of plague and violence. The light flashed from the fields of Runnymede when English nobles forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, and it glowed steadily from that island kingdom as England developed Parliament and the common law and was the first to stand against slavery. It rekindled in Europe at the time of the Reformation, with a bright light flashing in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his edicts to the Wittenberg Cathedral doors, and faced with excommunication stated: ``Here I stand. I can do no other.'' Over the years, across the globe, that light, and the darkness of tyranny and cruelty, have ebbed and flowed. But for the duration of our Republic, even though our Republic is admittedly imperfect, that light has shown more brightly and more steadily in this Republic than in any place on Earth as we adopted the Constitution, the greatest achievement yet in human freedom; as boys and men bled out of shattered bodies into sodden fields at Antietam and Chickamauga, Shiloh, and Gettysburg to expiate the sin of slavery; as we rebuilt shattered enemies, now friends, overseas and came home after winning world wars; and as we threw off bit by bit ancient shackles of race and gender to make this a more perfect Union for all of us. What has made this bright and steady glow possible is not that we are better people, I believe, but that our system of government is government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Why else does our President take his oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America? Our unique form of self-government is a blessing, and we hold it in trust, not just for us but for our children and grandchildren down through history; not just for us but as an example out through the world. That is why our Statue of Liberty raises a lamp to other nations still engloomed in tyranny. That is why we stand as a beacon in this world, beckoning to all who seek a kinder, freer, brighter future. We hold this unique gift in trust for the future and for the world. Each generation assumes responsibility for this Republic and its Government, and each generation takes on a special obligation when they do. Our new President closed his inaugural address by setting forth the challenge by which future generations will test us: Whether ``with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.'' There are no guarantees that we will. This is a continuing experiment we are embarked upon and a lot is at stake. Indeed, the most precious thing of man's creation on the face of this Earth is at stake. That is what I believe. So from that perspective, what about the past? No one can deny that in the last 8 years America's bright light has dimmed and flickered, darkening our country and darkening the world. The price of that is incalculable. There are nearly 7 billion human souls in this world. Every morning, the Sun rises anew over their villages and hamlets and barrios, and every day they can choose where to invest their hopes, their confidence, and their dreams. I submit that when America's light shines brightly, when honesty, freedom, justice, and compassion glow from our institutions, it attracts those hopes, those dreams, and the force of those 7 billion hopes and dreams, the confidence of those 7 billion souls and our lively experiment is, I believe, the strongest power in our national arsenal, stronger than atom bombs. We risk it at our peril. Of course, when our own faith is diminished at home, this vital light only dims further, again, at incalculable cost. So when an administration rigs the intelligence process and produces false evidence to send our country to war; when an administration descends to interrogation techniques of the Inquisition of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, descends to techniques that we have prosecuted as crimes in military tribunals and Federal trials; when institutions as noble as the Department of Justice and as vital as the Environmental Protection Agency are systematically and deliberately twisted from their missions by odious means of institutional sabotage; when the integrity of our markets and the fiscal security of our budget are open wide to the frenzied greed of corporations, speculators, and contractors; when the integrity of public officials, the warnings of science, the honesty of government procedures, and the careful historic balance of our separated powers of government are all seen as obstacles to be overcome and not attributes to be celebrated; when taxpayers are cheated and the forces of government ride to the rescue of the cheaters and punish the whistleblowers; when a government turns the guns of official secrecy against its own people to mislead, confuse, and propagandize them; when government ceases to even try to understand the complex topography of the difficult problems it is our very purpose and duty to solve and instead cares only for those points where it intersects with party ideology so that the purpose of government becomes no longer to solve problems but only to work them for political advantage; in short, when you have pervasive infiltration into all the halls of government-- judicial, legislative and executive--of the most ignoble forms of influence; when you see systematic dismantling of historic processes and traditions of government that are the safeguards of our democracy; and when you have a bodyguard of lies, jargon, and propaganda emitted to fool and beguile the American people, well, something very serious in the history of our Republic has gone wrong, something that dims the light of progress for all humanity. As we look forward, as we begin the task of rebuilding this Nation, we have an abiding duty to determine how great the damage is. I say this in no spirit of vindictiveness or revenge. I say it because the thing that was sullied is so precious. I say it because the past bears upon the future. If people have been planted in government in violation of our civil service laws to serve their party and their ideology instead of serving the public, the past will bear upon the future. If procedures and institutions of government have been corrupted and are not put right, that past will assuredly bear on the future. In an ongoing enterprise such as government, the door cannot be so conveniently closed on the closets of the past. The past always bears on the future. Moreover, a democracy is not just a static institution. It is a living education, an ongoing education in freedom of a people. As Harry Truman said, addressing a joint session of Congress back in 1947: One of the chief virtues of democracy is that its defects are always visible, and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected. Entirely apart from tentacles of the past that may reach into the future are the lessons we as a people have to learn from this past carnival of folly, greed, lies, and sabotage, so that it can, under democratic processes, be pointed out and corrected. If we blind ourselves to this history, if we pull an invisibility cloak over it, we will deny ourselves its lessons. Those lessons came at too painful a cost to ignore. Those lessons merit discovery, disclosure, and discussion. Indeed, disclosure and discussion is the difference between a valuable lesson for the bright upward forces of our democracy and a blueprint for darker forces to return and do it all over again. A little bright, healthy sunshine and fresh air so that an educated population knows what was done and how can show where the tunnels were bored, when the truth was subordinated, what institutions were subverted, how our democracy was compromised; so this grim history is not condemned to repeat itself; so a knowing public, in the clarity of day, can say: Never, never, never again; so we can keep that light, that light that is at once America's greatest gift and greatest strength brightly shining. To do this, I submit, we must look back. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, may I, first, thank you for your courtesy in volunteering to take over the duties of Presiding Officer for a moment so I could be relieved of those duties and come to my desk and have the chance to say something about a very dear friend whom we will miss enormously. I know we have something very important happening in a few minutes, so I will speak very briefly, but I don't want to let this opportunity pass. We had an energetic group of freshmen Senators come in 2 years ago, and we found Ken was feeling kind of lonely because his class had been sort of a bit smaller than ours. So we sort of adopted him into our group. He has been kind of a big brother to all of us. I have had the privilege of knowing him as an attorney general, and I will not belabor the point, but what people have said about him as a peacemaker, about him as a friend, and about him as somebody who cares deeply about the duty of public service, I can attest to firsthand from many years of experience. So I will only say we will miss you very deeply. We are enormously confident in you. The Department of the Interior is lucky to have you, President-elect Obama is fortunate to have you join his Cabinet, and we wish you Godspeed, my friend. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise to speak on President-elect Obama's nomination of Eric Holder to be the Attorney General of the United States. It is nothing new in Washington for it to be said of a nominee that he or she is the best person for a job. That happens all the time. We have all heard it. It will surprise no one in this room or elsewhere in Washington to know it is not always the case. But in this case, for this appointment at this time, I believe it is true. I believe Eric Holder is the best person to be Attorney General of the United States. It is hard to overstate the significance of the work of the Department of Justice to the American people. It is hard to overstate how vital it is that the American people have confidence in that Department, from the Attorney General down to the most junior line attorney. It is hard to overstate the importance of our trust that this great Department makes decisions on the merits, proceeds on the facts and the evidence and the law, and carefully protects itself from political interference. The Bush administration has compromised the American peoples' faith in their Department of Justice by compromising the integrity of the Department at its highest levels. We need that back. What we need now is an Attorney General who first, understands the inner workings of the Department so he can set the ship right; second, will be fiercely independent and will make decisions based on the facts and the evidence and the law, not on politics or pressure from the White House; and third, has the temperament and experience to be strong and fair through all of the pressures that mount up on that office. Eric Holder is the best possible person for this difficult job at this difficult time. We all know Mr. Holder's long and distinguished experience at the Justice Department and within the justice system. He has been a line attorney in the Public Integrity Section, prosecuting corrupt public officials of both parties; he has been a judge nominated by President Ronald Reagan; he has been the Deputy Attorney General, the No. 2 position in the Department; he has been the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia; and he has been a highly regarded attorney in private practice. One would be hard pressed to find a more experienced candidate. It is no surprise, then, that so many organizations and individuals who work with the criminal justice system every day have endorsed Mr. Holder's nomination, including the National Fraternal Order of Police, the National District Attorneys Association, the National Association of Police Organizations, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, the National Center for Victims of Crime, the National Organization for Victim Assistance, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Mr. Holder's experience is unquestionable, but it is not only experience that makes him the right person for this uniquely challenging post. I know Eric Holder. When I was a U.S. attorney, he was my colleague, as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and then my boss when he became Deputy Attorney General. I have great personal confidence in him. In our work at the Department, the U.S. attorneys saw firsthand in Eric, over and over, the qualities of temperament, intelligence, judgment, and independence that are essential for an Attorney General and especially for an Attorney General who takes office during a time when the Department is in distress. As I know Eric Holder, so also do I know the damage and destruction that was wrought by the Bush administration on our Department of Justice. In the Judiciary Committee, under the distinguished leadership of Chairman Patrick Leahy, we worked hard to find out what has been done there and to bring it to light. My colleagues, Senator Schumer of New York and Senator Feinstein of California, deserve particular credit in that struggle. Because I had worked in the Department, I was familiar with many of the institutions, the traditions and the practices of the Department that have been cast aside or ignored. The result? The result was a damaged institution, its reputation compromised, its integrity challenged, and its morale sadly diminished. Now, more than anything else, someone needs to put that right. Eric Holder has the knowledge, the experience, and the character to do that. I have listened with a great deal of interest to some of the things that have been said in this Chamber about Eric Holder and his character. Indeed, there has been a not-so-subtle effort to question whether Mr. Holder is sufficiently independent of political influence to serve this Nation as our Attorney General. I cannot speak to the motivations behind this effort, but I can say this: Eric Holder is a man who spent 12 years as a line prosecutor prosecuting corrupt politicians of both parties. He is a man who was sufficiently politically independent for President Ronald Reagan to nominate him as a judge. This is a man who, as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, indicted and convicted Dan Rostenkowski, the Democratic chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, one of the most powerful men in Washington. This is a man who recommended to Attorney General Janet Reno that she appoint an Independent Counsel to investigate President Clinton's Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt. This is a man who advised Attorney General Reno to expand the scope of the investigation by Kenneth Starr into the Monica Lewinsky affair investigation. It is not just me with this confidence in Eric Holder and in his independence, his character, his judgment, and his temperament. Let me read what former Attorney General William Barr, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, and former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Louis Freeh have said about him. In a letter to Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Specter, Mr. Comey wrote this: From my professional and personal association with Mr. Holder, I believe him to be a man of strong character, and first-class ability. I think he has the institutional knowledge, humility, and integrity to be a fine Attorney General. My colleagues will remember that James Comey was the Deputy Attorney General for Attorney General Ashcroft. He was the Acting Attorney General at the time of that sickening raid by the White House Chief of Staff and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales at the hospital bedside of stricken Attorney General Ashcroft. He is the man who stood up against the warrantless wiretapping program and stopped it until it was brought right. He is the center, by all accounts, of what would have been essentially the resignation of the attorneys at the top of the Department of Justice if the White House had not blinked and backed down. This is a man who knows something about independence and integrity, and he vouches for Eric Holder. Louis Freeh, who was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, wrote this: I am certain that Eric has the highest legal competence, total integrity, leadership, and, most importantly, the political independence to discharge faithfully the immense trust this Nation reposes in its Attorney General . . . In all of Eric's interactions with me as FBI Director, as well as in his close coordination with my Deputy and other Assistant Directors who also had extensive and sometimes daily contact with him, Eric always displayed total integrity, courageous leadership, complete fairness, and, once again and most importantly, political independence. Former Attorney General Bill Barr, former Deputy Attorney General George Terwilliger, and others wrote that: Mr. Holder's 30-year professional career has consistently been characterized by unfailing integrity and a commitment to political independence . . . Eric Holder is the right man at the right time to protect our citizens in the critical years ahead. There is a powerful record behind Eric Holder of political independence. The measure of independence is not whether you decide against the President or your party on every question, every time; the measure is whether you decide against the President or your party when the facts and the law direct it. In my view, Eric Holder has met that standard. And in the view of Republican Attorney General and Deputy Attorney Generals and people who have served with distinction and know him well, they agree he has fully met that standard. I take the Senate's role in the confirmation process very seriously. I believe the Judiciary Committee must and, under the leadership of Chairman Leahy, will closely examine Mr. Holder's record and his qualifications. It is our duty. At the end of that process, I believe the majority of colleagues will agree with me and with so many others that Eric Holder is the right person at the right time to restore our Department of Justice to its rightful standing as the defender of what is good and what is honorable and what is true in our Nation. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, today Senator Daschle has come before the HELP Committee for his confirmation hearing as our Secretary designate of Health and Human Services. I know that all of our colleagues and friends in the Senate found it moving and wonderful to see the distinguished chairman of that committee, Senator Kennedy, back in his chair leading that hearing. We are all delighted to see him back at work in the Senate, and we are delighted to see Senator Daschle back with us in this exciting new capacity. We know every American deserves health care that he or she can afford. Senator Daschle knows that to do that we need basic systemic reform that will improve the way health care is delivered in this country. Senator Daschle has already brought forward ideas, such as the creation of a Federal health board, that have contributed enormously to the health care reform debate, and I hope very much he will pursue those ideas further at HHS. His nomination and President-elect Obama's creation of a new White House Office of Health Care Reform emphasize their serious commitment to solving this bedeviling problem. Senator Daschle will bring distinguished, thoughtful leadership to the crisis in our Nation's health care system. Health care reform is the signal challenge facing our families, our economy, and our Government. I wish to take a few minutes today to speak about this great challenge and the urgent need for action. We all know the system is broken. The evidence lies all around us--in my State of Rhode Island and across the country. When a lost job is frightening not just because it means lost income but because it means lost health care, our health care system is broken. When sudden illness strikes and insurance will not cover the costs, our health care system is broken. When families wait to see a doctor until it is too late because they have no health insurance to pay for the visit, our health care system is broken. We see the evidence of the broken system and the staggering costs of health care in this country. The United States spends 16 percent of our GDP on health care. That is about twice what our major industrialized competitor nations spend. The annual cost of the system exceeds $2 trillion, and it is expected soon to double. Family health emergencies have been the most common cause of personal bankruptcy, and businesses, large and small, struggle under the weight of ever-increasing health insurance costs. There is more health care than steel in Ford's cars and more health care than coffee beans in Starbucks coffee. Yet for all that money, what do we get? We still leave 46 million Americans uninsured; 46 million wrenching stories of health care foregone, of personal misfortune, even lives lost. That doesn't even include the experiences of our Nation's underinsured or small business owners struggling to provide health insurance or the many Americans who receive poor quality health care. President-elect Obama is committed to reforming this broken system, and he has taken swift action to engage the American people in a national conversation about what is wrong and what we can do to fix it. Last month, he and Secretary-designate Daschle asked people to hold meetings in their communities to discuss health care reform and to share their ideas. In the end, there is no better way to understand the deep failures of our health care system and the very real pain, frustration, anxiety, and anger it causes than to talk to the people who have experienced it firsthand. Over the past few years--at community dinners that I have around our State, in my office, as I travel around--many Rhode Islanders have reached out to me to share their stories and to urge that we work urgently to repair this broken system. I wish to take a moment to share a few of those stories. A mother in Narragansett, RI, shared a story about her 20-year-old son who suffers from severe bipolar disorder and relies on therapy and expensive medications to remain a valued and productive member of his community. He is too old to be covered under her family health insurance plan, and his preexisting condition makes buying insurance on the individual market impossible--prohibitively expensive. So what did they do? This mother and her family came up with a surprising solution. They enrolled her son at the Community College of Rhode Island so he could participate in the student health insurance plan. He takes the absolute minimum course load in order to continue to work, but he remains a student because it is less expensive to pay for college tuition than it is to pay for individual health insurance. Any parent with a child in college knows what a burden this Rhode Island family is bearing to ensure that their son gets the basic treatment he needs to stay healthy. I also heard from the proud owner of a small bookkeeping and tax preparation business in Warwick, RI. She has worked tirelessly to raise five sons, go back to college, and finally she has become her own boss. Yet despite all her effort and all her success, she wrote me to plead for reform. She wrote this: I spend over 50 percent of my income just to have health insurance for my husband and myself. The premiums are over $1,000 per month, even with very high deductibles. My employees need health insurance also, but I am unable to provide them with any benefits because of the poor economic conditions. Her employees are like family to her, as with so many small businesses, and it breaks her heart that they are uninsured. Yet she says she simply will not be able to keep her doors open if she tried to contribute toward their benefits. In the midst of this economic downturn, and particularly in Rhode Island where the unemployment rate is one of the highest in the Nation, this story shows all too clearly how closely linked are the tasks of reforming our health care system and strengthening our economy. Our health care system manages to fail even those who believe themselves to be covered. A woman who lives in Woonsocket and who has health insurance and was always careful to pay her bills on time, assumed she would be covered in the event of an emergency. Why not? She was current. She paid her premiums. She had insurance. But not too long ago, she suddenly had to have her appendix removed. Despite having health insurance, she left that hospital with a $10,000 bill. She is currently working for a temp service and she has no idea how she can pay off this debt. She had recently bought her own home, a longtime dream and an accomplishment in which she took great pride. Now, because of the fine print of that health insurance policy, she risks losing the home she worked so long to afford. As this Rhode Islander learned in the hardest way possible, health insurance often ends up ensuring very little. It is on behalf of these Rhode Islanders and so many others that I urge my colleagues to come together to support health care reform that will lower costs and improve the quality of care for all Americans. We must improve the way we deliver health care by promoting quality, implementing health information technology, and investing in preventing disease. We must, and will, protect existing coverage when it is good, we must improve it when it is not, and we must guarantee health care for the 46 million Americans, 9 million of whom are children who have no health insurance at all. We see ourselves now in darkening and tumultuous economic times. Yet looking beyond the immediate economic perils we face, there is a $35 trillion unfunded liability for Medicare that is bearing down on us. It is bearing down on us because our population is aging, because people get sicker as they age, and that makes them more expensive. Unless we figure out a way in this Chamber to stop time, unless we figure out a way in this Chamber to reverse the aging process, unless we figure out a way in this Chamber to make elders have healthier lives and bodies than younger people, this is inevitable. It is coming at us, and we have to prepare. In order to prepare, we have to reform the health care delivery system. We are committed, as Democrats, to making sure every American has health insurance coverage, but it is not enough just to bring everyone into the boat. If you had a boat in the ocean and people swimming around it and to save them you needed to bring them into the boat, you would do that. But if the boat itself was sinking, if the boat itself was on fire, just bringing everybody into the boat is not an adequate discharge of your duties. It is also important that you repair the boat, that you get it steaming forward, that you make sure it is safe for the people whom you bring into it. That means reforming our health information technology infrastructure so every American can count on an electronic health record, so when you go to see your doctor, you don't have to fill out that clipboard one time after another, when at the same time you can sign on to Amazon and not only do they know who you are, they know what you have bought and they have suggestions for you based on your buying habits. There is no excuse for our health care system being back in the 1950s as the rest of the economy moves forward into the 21st century. It requires improving the quality of health care and it requires investing in prevention. We dramatically underinvest in prevention and quality. There are market failures that cause those things to happen. They are repairable. In addition to the cost savings, it is estimated that 100,000 Americans die every year--100,000 Americans die every year--because of avoidable medical errors. It is simply not tolerable to allow that to continue, particularly when it is a win-win situation, where improved quality of care means lower costs. Finally, the third leg of the reform, in addition to helping infrastructure technology and quality and prevention reform, is that we have to reform how we pay for health care to align the price signal that we send by those payments with what we want from health care. Until we do that, we will be constantly struggling uphill against our own financial message. This is all doable. This is all so doable, but it will take time. These are complex matters. We will have to make adjustments. The adjustments will take time. It is a dynamic environment which will have to make course corrections along the way. That means we need to start now. We do not have the luxury of time on our side. If we do not get started on a thorough-going health care delivery system reform now, then the alternative will be times that are even darker and more tumultuous than we find ourselves in right now. I see the very distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee on the floor, a man who is an eloquent voice on the dark and tumultuous times and the risks we face from the current fiscal situation, so I will gladly yield at this point, and I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Finally, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I wish to ask, through the Chair, a question of the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee with respect to the $10 trillion debt the country is now carrying. At the time the current administration that is leaving office came into office 8 years ago, my understanding is the situation in America was rather different. It is my understanding that at that time we were actually looking at surpluses in our country, and the $10 trillion deficit is largely the responsibility of the policies that have been followed over the past 8 years.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. So through the good times, we could have been laying money aside so that when this situation came, we would be in a strong economic condition. Instead, by squandering all those years, we have put the incoming administration in a very challenging position.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the very distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee for being willing to engage in this colloquy with me.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following staff members from Senator Shaheen's office be granted floor privileges for today's session of the Senate: Maura Keefe, Judy Reardon, and Michael Yudin.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Madam President. I come to the floor today to offer my support for S. 147, the Lawful Interrogation and Detention Act, which my very distinguished colleagues, Senator Feinstein of California and Senator Wyden of Oregon, have just spoken about. This bill would do three very important things. The first is force the closing of the interrogation and detention activities at the Guantanamo Base. I have supported previous legislation that would do this. I enthusiastically support this legislation to do it. The Bush administration has created a pretty significant mess with the activities down at Guantanamo. Unfortunately, some things you can snarl up so tightly that it becomes very difficult to unsnarl them, and I am afraid that is exactly the situation with Guantanamo. It will be difficult to unsnarl. It is a real challenge for the incoming administration. But it is vital that we do so because it has become a symbol to the rest of the world of America's departure from our core principles. So I am enthusiastically in support of that provision. Another provision would restrict our interrogation activities to those techniques that are permitted under the Army Field Manual. In effect, it would end our embrace of enhanced interrogation techniques-- indeed, torture. In support of this notion, I would cite GEN David Petraeus, the Commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq in 2007, who at the time wrote a letter to all U.S. military forces in Iraq. In that letter, he said this: Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone ``talk;'' however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual . . . shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees. We have heard arguments that, well, you can't really rely on military interrogators. They don't really know what they are doing. They are amateurish. They need the limitations of the Army Field Manual. By contrast, the interrogators of the CIA and of our intelligence community are experts and much more sophisticated and adept and don't need to have the Army Field Manual restricting them, as if it is some sort of a learner's permit for interrogation. If you look at the facts, the reverse is actually true. It is the military that has officers with literally decades of experience interrogating enemy prisoners, interrogating enemy prisoners in situations where their fellow soldiers' lives are on the line, where men and women will die or live because of the information they are able to elicit. Notwithstanding those high stakes, they live by the terms of the Army Field Manual. By contrast, we know that the CIA really did not know much about interrogations, that when they got into the business, they had to learn about it. The place they chose to learn was from the SERE Program, a program designed to train American soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines who are likely to be captured by enemies that engage in torture how to be prepared for that, how to withstand it. So for training purposes, to prepare them for these ordeals, they used the interrogation techniques of despot, tyrant nations--North Korea, Communist China, Soviet Russia. For some reason, that was where our intelligence community thought it needed to go for expertise in how you interrogate prisoners, never minding the fact that the purpose of those despot regimes was not to interrogate prisoners and get actionable intelligence information; it was to torture those prisoners so they would say things and produce propaganda for those tyrant regimes. So the notion that the military is a bunch of amateurs in intelligence who need the constraint of the Army Field Manual to prevent them from making amateur errors and the CIA is a bunch of clever, crafty experts who can operate at a graduate level for all of this is absolutely backward. The damage that has been done to our country by this decision is, in my opinion, incalculable. When I think of the choice that was made to go this road, I am reminded of a phrase of Winston Churchill's. He describes a bad and dangerous decision that leads to worsening consequences in this way. He describes it as going down ``the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on, there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet.'' That is where we stand now, in this dark, descending stairway, with flagstones crumbling beneath our feet and the world looking on in horror at our departure from our core principles. I believe this legislation will help turn us back away from that dark and descending stairway, back into the light of our own best principles and the good will of our fellow nations. America has not only suffered grievous and lasting harm from this administration's embrace of torture but also from this administration's embrace of torture's handmaiden. Torture's handmaiden, of course, is secret detention. The bill Senator Feinstein and Senator Wyden are proposing would require the International Committee for the Red Cross to have access to any prisoners held by the intelligence agencies. The ICRC has been visiting detainees in connection with armed conflict since 1915, nearly a century. In 2007, the ICRC visited over half a million detainees in 77 different countries to ensure respect for their life, dignity, and fundamental right to judicial guarantees. All of those notions are enshrined in our own Constitution. They are our national bedrock. Thirty-eight retired military leaders, distinguished generals and admirals, have concluded that the ICRC access to prisoners held by our Government is a ``critical measure to ensure continuing respect for the norm that [ICRC] access must be provided to all captives in wartime.'' This letter comes from battlefield warriors and intelligence officers who participated in every major American conflict from World War II until today. One of them, less than 3 years ago, was a member of our Joint Chiefs of Staff. They understand that this is important, and they understand why. If we go down the corridors of history and survey the evil practices of tyrant regimes, we find one of their most notorious methods of coercion and subjugation is holding prisoners secretly and incommunicado. From the oubliettes of the Bourbon Kings of France to Calcutta's Black Hole, from the Gestapo's secret prisons to the Soviet gulags, from medieval dungeons to the bamboo cages of the Cambodian killing fields, secret and anonymous imprisonment has always been the hallmark of the despot. And now the Bush administration has stamped America with this shameful mark. Our military leaders who are in the best position to judge are pushing back and saying ``enough.'' Why do they do that? I think they do that because they are not beguiled by the force of arms. They live with the likelihood of armed conflict, of injuries, of fatalities. They understand that we engage in that to defend principles, and to give away those principles without a shot fired accomplishes the very harm that we have a military, that we have intelligence services to protect us from. What is it, we ask ourselves, that makes our country great? Whence cometh our strength? For centuries, America has been called a ``shining city on a hill.'' We are a lamp in the darkness to other nations. One of our greatest Senators, our friend Ted Kennedy, on the occasion of I believe his 15,000th vote in this institution said America is not a land, it is a promise. Torture, anonymous detention, and secret cells break that promise, extinguish that lamp, and darken that city on a hill. Our strength as Americans comes from the fact that we stand for something. Our strength comes from the aspirations of millions of people around the globe who want to be like us, who want their country to be like ours, who want to believe in what we believe in. Our strength comes when we embody the hopes and dreams of mankind. Our strength comes, as President Clinton said, not from the example of our power but from the power of our example. I believe Senator Feinstein's legislation will restore across this darkening world the power of America's example, turn us back from that dark and descending stairway, and restore us to the place where America belongs as an ideal and an example for other nations. I appreciate Senator Feinstein's hard work in putting this legislation together. I appreciate the support of Senator Wyden. Many months ago, I offered the first amendment in the Intelligence Committee that would apply the Army Field Manual to interrogation techniques used by our intelligence agencies, and Senator Feinstein was kind enough to cosponsor that amendment. We worked together in conference to get that amendment passed into legislation that was subsequently vetoed. I submitted the International Committee of the Red Cross access provision last year. I cannot find words strong enough to explain the strength of my view about the things we sacrifice for whatever small, short-term, tactical intelligence advantage we may achieve from torture and secret cells, assuming there even are any. Most intelligence professionals believe that what you get from torture is people who will say anything to get away from the pain. But let's assume there is some value to it for the sake of argument. I cannot find words strong enough to explain how overwhelmed that small tactical value is by the loss of our reputation and our standing and the confidence and trust of our friends and allies when we engage in behaviors that have been associated with despots and tyrants and the worst of history's regimes. Let's put this behind us. Let's support this bill. As we go through this time of transition in American Government, let's also go through a time of transition in America's reputation in the world. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for such time as I may consume in morning business.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order in honor of the late Senator Claiborne de Borda Pell of Rhode Island under S. Res. 8.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 11:30 a.m., Wednesday, January 7; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and there then be a period for the transaction of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each, and that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. until 2:15 p.m. to accommodate the weekly Democratic caucus lunch.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Mr. President. And I say to Senator Reed, thank you. I rise in honor of a great friend and mentor. I look around me at a room that just this morning was filled with Senators. It was a crowded Senate floor, with packed galleries, as a group of bright and promising new Senators began their careers, with all that joy and hope. Now, as my senior Senator, Jack Reed, and I speak, the room is quiet, the galleries are mostly empty, and colleagues are gathering in remembrance because yesterday Rhode Island saw the sunset on a Rhode Island era with the funeral of our friend, Senator Claiborne Pell. I am deeply honored by Senator Reed's kind words, and he has a unique position as the successor to Senator Pell. It must be an interesting feeling to have served in the Senate for 36 years, to have loved this institution, to have accomplished extraordinary work in this institution, and then to walk away and leave your seat to a new, young Senator to replace you. Senator Pell had great confidence in Senator Reed from the very beginning. He was, indeed, able to assure that there was no primary to succeed a seat that was open for the first time in 36 years, and it was because of his confidence in Jack Reed that he put in that effort. I know firsthand how extraordinarily proud he was of the Senator Jack Reed has shown himself to be. We in Rhode Island are a little, tiny State, but over the years we have had some towering and remarkable Senators. Claiborne Pell, obviously, was one. John Chafee was one. John O. Pastore was one. Theodore Francis Green was one. Even the gentleman once known as the general manager of the United States, Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, was a towering presence. Certainly, Senator Reed has shown himself to have joined that pantheon. I probably have another 10, 20 years of work before I get there, but I will keep trying. But certainly Senator Reed is in that category, and I am deeply honored by his kind words. Many in this body knew Claiborne Pell and served with him. I wish to say on behalf of Rhode Islanders who watched the service yesterday how grateful we are to Majority Leader Reid, Majority Whip Durbin, Claiborne Pell's dear friends, Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden, and Senators Pat Leahy, Dick Lugar, Orrin Hatch, Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman, John Kerry, and Joe Lieberman, all of whom honored Senator Pell by attending the funeral. Of course, I give special thanks to President Bill Clinton, who came to Rhode Island, a place where he is beloved, and spoke for his departed friend. Senator Pell was there for me in my own career at key junctures in so many important ways, and I should give him credit and in front of all my colleagues express my deep gratitude for what he did. He recommended me to President Clinton for appointment as U.S. attorney. After I served my term as U.S. attorney, I ran for attorney general. I served with the Presiding Officer, Senator Salazar of Colorado, as an attorney general. I had a three-way primary for attorney general. Claiborne Pell endorsed me in the primary. He actually did a television ad with me. In his 36 years in the Senate, he wanted no part ordinarily of primaries. For two people he got involved in a primary and endorsed a candidate. One was me. The other was Congressman Patrick Kennedy. It is almost unimaginable what a difference it made in my fledgling campaign, my first bid for elective office in the Democratic primary to have a man of Senator Pell's towering reputation stake his reputation on me and express that kind of confidence. It is something for which I am indebted to him and to his memory and to his family forever. To me and to so many people in the Ocean State, Claiborne Pell was a mentor and an example, a leader whose vision, grace, and authentic kindness left an indelible imprint. He was born in New York City in 1918, and he first came to the Senate in 1961, after a colorful primary battle, described by Senator Reed, that pitted him as an essential unknown against two established Democratic powerhouses: Dennis J. Roberts and J. Howard McGrath, contending for the seat that was being vacated by Theodore Francis Green. It did not look good. Pell was the ultimate outsider. He was so much the underdog in that race that John F. Kennedy, who was running for President at the time--and who knew Claiborne quite well because he was a dear friend of Mrs. Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, and was in Rhode Island a good deal because of her family associations with Rhode Island; so he knew Claiborne Pell quite well--he called him the least electable man in America. At his funeral yesterday, I saw Pell buttons from that race back in 1961 on mourners' lapels. The Providence Journal described the race that ensued as ``the first modern political campaign the state had seen.'' Senator Pell invested his own money in television ads and polling, and he won the Democratic primary. He was the first unendorsed candidate in the history of Rhode Island to ever win a Democratic primary. He went on to win the general election. He won it by the largest margin ever at the time, 69 percent of the vote. To his great satisfaction, more Rhode Islanders voted for Claiborne Pell in that election than voted for John F. Kennedy--so much for being the ``least electable man in America.'' The fact that John F. Kennedy road on Claiborne Pell's coattails was a point Claiborne Pell, in his quiet way, loved to remind President Kennedy of whenever the opportunity presented itself. Of course, Rhode Island, in that election, got its first look at the one-of-a-kind political temperament that was to define Senator Pell for the rest of his life: courteous, innovative, and always quietly humorous. Senator Pell looked back on that election in an interview with the New York Times, and he said this: I remember my first campaign. My opponent called me a cream puff. That's what he said. Well, I rushed out and got the baker's union to endorse me. Frankly, I think a little bit of humor is sorely lacking now. How many people in today's politics being called a cream puff would go out and get a baker's union endorsement rather than trying to find some other way to hit back? Claiborne Pell believed, as he once told the Providence Journal, something that is so important: [T]hat government--and the federal government in particular--can, should and does make a positive impact on the lives of most Americans. He lived by that observation, and certainly Senator Pell's positive impact on the lives of the people he served will be remembered for generations. Two years after taking office, Senator Pell sponsored legislation that became the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant, now known, thanks to its champion, as the Pell grant. At the time, the Nation's colleges wanted Federal aid for themselves, but Senator Pell wanted the aid to go directly to students. He enlisted in the Coast Guard 4 months before Pearl Harbor, serving in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and after that he used the GI bill scholarship to get an advanced degree from Columbia University. The GI bill showed him the transformative power of a college education, and Claiborne Pell resolved then that all Americans would have the opportunity for a college education that he and millions of veterans had received after World War II. So every year in September a new group of students goes off to college, and we see anew the work of Senator Pell, enlivening millions of young Americans who use Pell grants to pursue their dreams. In 2008, this Pell Grant Program was nearly 5.6 million grants, worth $16.4 billion--all from his idea. I am delighted the distinguished Senator from Colorado is presiding at this moment because I remember in Rhode Island a few years ago I was at an event with a number of Senators, and the distinguished Senator from Colorado, now our Interior Secretary designate, was present. Senator Pell came to the event. He was very disabled, and he came in a wheelchair. I went over to greet him. Senator Salazar--I say to the Presiding Officer, you will remember this--also came over to greet him. He took his hand, and he told him: Senator, my brother and I went to college because of the Pell Grant Program. Now here I am standing in front of you as a Senator, thanks to the vision and foresight you showed years ago--your vision that every American should have the dream of higher education at their disposal. I say to the Presiding Officer, you were then in your first term as a newly elected Senator. It was an unforgettable moment, I say to the Presiding Officer. It happened because Senator Pell understood the difference that higher education could make in the lives of America's young people--from a young Ken Salazar from rural Colorado, to toddlers across this country now who will seize the opportunities of America in years to come because of this man. Senator Pell knew that the arts, too, could transform lives. He authored the landmark legislation that gave rise to the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities. These institutions have secured a place for the culture and the arts in the public life of this Nation. Over the years they have helped bring poetry, drama, dance, painting, sculpture, song, literature, and history to millions of Americans. Of course, we New Englanders are deeply indebted to Senator Pell for his passion for public transportation and in particular for his long fight to develop for the Northeast corridor a transit system to support the cities of today and tomorrow. As we face the challenges of rising energy costs, economic recession, and urban stresses on our congested highways, Americans will rely more heavily than ever on systems such as Amtrak. Senator Pell's foresight again has served us well. Here in the Senate, Senator Pell is remembered for his big ideas. In Rhode Island, we remember him also for his gentle, generous spirit. He had lived all over the world. He had been honored with medals from at least 18 different nations. But Newport, RI, was always home. In both his personal and his political life, he was a consistent model of civility and kindness to his fellow Rhode Islanders--always, without fail--even sometimes at his peril. For example, in his final bid for reelection in 1990, Senator Pell reportedly insisted on warning Congresswoman Claudine Schneider, his Republican opponent, every time he was about to air a new television ad. He told his campaign staff that he would not permit a self- promoting press release to go out, chiding: ``No, no, no, we never boast.'' In a debate I remember watching, he was given two huge political softball opportunities. One, he was asked to criticize his opponent, to critique her capacity to defeat him and serve in the U.S. Senate. The only thing he had to say was she has been a very fine Congresswoman. Then he was asked what his most significant legislative achievements had been during the previous term that had helped Rhode Islanders. He said: You know, I really can't think of one right now. My memory is not as good as it should be. One would think those answers would be lethal politically, but Rhode Islanders loved it and they loved him for it because he was as genuine and as authentic as a man could be. I guess one of the great lessons of his life is that voters don't want you to be perfect; they want you to be you. They want you to be authentically who you are and from there to fight for them, and he certainly lived that. For his authenticity and gentleness of spirit, Claiborne Pell was beloved by all of us in the Ocean State who were privileged to know him or work with him or learn from his example. We all will miss him deeply. To his wife Nuala, to his children, Toby and Dallas, and their families, and to the families of his departed children, Bertie and Julie, I know I join my distinguished senior Senator and all in this body and indeed all of America in holding them in our thoughts and prayers. As his family reminded us last week, Senator Pell summarized his role as a Senator with seven simple words: Translate ideas into actions and help people. Would that all of us could have ideas as big as Claiborne Pell's and the strength, grace, persistence, and courage to translate them into action. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.