Tribute to Senator Kay Bailiey Hutchison

TRIBUTE TO SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to take a few moments to say some words in tribute to the senior Senator from Texas, one who this week marks her tenth anniversary as a Member of this august body, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Senator Hutchison is a wonderful spouse to her husband, Ray; a wonderful mother to her children, Bailey and Houston; an excellent Senator; and a great Texan. I am enormously grateful to be able to work alongside of a woman of her vision, a woman of her energy, and someone who represents the very best of the State of Texas.

After 10 years in the Senate, Senator Hutchison has shown herself to be a great leader in so many different ways. She has devoted herself to our national security. She has dedicated herself to preserving our homeland security. She has energetically sought legislation that will create jobs and greater opportunities for all Americans. She has worked hard to improve health care, not just for people in our State, the State of Texas, but for all Americans.

All of us came here from our various States to serve those States, but we also came here to serve this great Nation. Senator Hutchison came here, in addition, to make a difference, to work to find solutions to the complex problems of modern society, to attain real and lasting change for the good. She has succeeded in brilliant fashion.

President Ronald Reagan once said:

We have been blessed with the opportunity to stand for something, for liberty and freedom and fairness, and these are things worth fighting for, worth devoting our lives to.

Senator Hutchison has devoted her life to these very values. Her life serves as an example to us all, a life of patriotism, responsibility, dedication, and abundant friendship. She has been a leader in Texas and here in the Senate. It is lives like Senator Hutchison's that make me proud to say I am from the great State of Texas, and prouder still to call her my friend.

Senator Hutchison, over these last 10 years in the Senate, has made Texas proud as she works hard for all Americans as a woman of great valor. I thank Senator Hutchison for her leadership, for her counsel, and for her steadfast service to the great State of Texas and to the United States of America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I commend my colleague, Senator Cornyn, for his remarks. Senator KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON has distinguished herself over these 10 years. It is very appropriate that her junior colleague bring that to the attention of the Senate. She is a Senator from our second largest State. She has been a pioneer in women's rights and advancement by women. When she began her career, as was true for our colleague from North Carolina, Senator Dole, not many legal jobs were available to women, much less positions in the Senate.

She has achieved a lot. She is part of our leadership, and I am glad I was here to hear Senator Cornyn's remarks.

I hope both Senators will permit me to comment on the fact that some of the best things in Texas come from Tennessee. A lot of Tennesseans went to Texas in the 1830s. One of Senator Hutchison's ancestors was Governor Hall, of Tennessee, just as Sam Houston was Governor of Tennessee before he was Governor and Senator from Texas. So Tennesseans take special pride in 10 years of service by someone we consider, if not our daughter, at least our cousin.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank my desk mate and member of the freshman class of 2002 in the Senate, LAMAR ALEXANDER, for his comments and his friendship and his great service, not only on behalf of Tennessee but on behalf of the Nation. He did make a very appropriate observation about the connection between the people of the State of Tennessee and Texas. Some have said many of the people who populated Texas were evading their creditors in Tennessee, which is one reason for their going to Texas in the first place, where they believed there would be great opportunity. With a land the size of Texas, with the opportunity to till the soil and take risks and perhaps reap the rewards of that risk, many people came from all over the United States—indeed, the world—to Texas.

One great Tennessean—and I want to just make this comment while Senator Alexander is here—with whom I am proud to connect myself is Sam Houston, who was a distinguished figure in Tennessee before he came to Texas, then served as Governor, President of the Republic, and whose seat in the U.S. Senate I now hold. When Texas was annexed to the United States of America in 1845, Thomas Jefferson Rusk, a former member of the Texas Supreme Court at that time, and Sam Houston, came to Washington to represent the State of Texas.

So I am proud to have that connection, another connection with the good people of Tennessee and with my friend LAMAR ALEXANDER, and to be connected through that lineage to that seat originally held by a great Tennessean, and we claim him as a great Texan, a great American still, Sam Houston.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.