National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2017

Floor Speech

THE PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Fischer). Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 56, nays 42, as follows: [Rollcall Vote No. 96 Leg.] YEAS--56 Ayotte Baldwin Barrasso Bennet Blumenthal Blunt Boozman Burr Capito Casey Cassidy Coats Collins Cornyn Cotton Crapo Cruz Daines Donnelly Ernst Fischer Gardner Graham Hatch Heinrich Heitkamp Hoeven Inhofe Isakson Johnson Kaine King Klobuchar McCain McCaskill McConnell Moran Murkowski Perdue Peters Portman Risch Roberts Rounds Rubio Sasse Scott Sessions Shelby Stabenow Sullivan Thune Tillis Toomey Vitter Wicker NAYS--42 Alexander Booker Boxer Brown Cantwell Cardin Carper Cochran Coons Corker Durbin Enzi Feinstein Flake Franken Gillibrand Grassley Heller Hirono Kirk Lankford Leahy Lee Manchin Markey Menendez Merkley Mikulski Murphy Murray Nelson Paul Reed Reid Schatz Schumer Shaheen Tester Udall Warren Whitehouse Wyden NOT VOTING--2 Sanders Warner
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, almost a year ago exactly I met with a remarkable woman. She was wise, gracious, and funny, but I think what struck me the most about her was her idealism. Cassandra Quin Butts believed in the revolutionary promise on which our Nation was founded; that all men and women are created equal. She spent her entire working life trying to expand that premise.

On the day we met, her nomination to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas had been blocked for more than a year for reasons entirely unrelated to her qualifications. That did not make her cynical. It did not diminish her desire to serve. She just wanted to know if there was anything she could do to help. It was typical. Cassandra Butts asked the question, How can I help?

Sadly, Ms. Butts will never receive the vote she deserved on her nomination to be Ambassador. She died over a week ago at the far-too- young age of 50. She felt ill for a few days, had seen a doctor, and died peacefully in her sleep before learning of her diagnosis, acute leukemia.

Cassandra Butts was a longtime friend of President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. Ms. Butts and the future President met during their first days of Harvard Law School in the financial aid office. Neither one of them came from families that could simply write checks for tuition. In a statement mourning her passing, the President and First Lady remembered Ms. Butts and said as ``a citizen, always pushing, always doing her part to advance the causes of opportunity, civil rights, development, and democracy.''

``Cassandra,'' the Obama's wrote, ``was someone who put her hands squarely on that arc of the moral universe, and never stopped doing whatever she could to bend it toward justice.''

They continued. ``To know Cassandra Butts was to know someone who made you want to be better.'' Ms. Butts began her distinguished career in public service about a year after graduating law school. She worked as legal counsel to U.S. Senator Harris Wofford. After the Senate, she went to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, following in the footsteps of one of her heroes, former U.S. Justice Thurgood Marshall.

She returned to Capitol Hill in 1996 as a senior adviser to House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt and the House Democratic policy committee. From 2004 to 2008, she served as Senior Vice President for Domestic Policy at the Center for American Progress--with a few breaks in service to help her old friend. When Barack Obama was elected to the Senate in 2004, Cassandra Butts was there, helping him to get his office up and running.

Later, she helped her old friend the President launch his historic Presidential campaign. When he won, Cassandra Butts was there again to offer advice on transition. She stayed on to serve the President as Deputy White House Counsel. Among the lasting marks she leaves on our democracy, Cassandra Butts helped shepherd through this Senate the nomination of the first Latina ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Ms. Butts was a remarkably humble person, especially for one who worked so close to power. She left the White House in November 2009 to serve as Senior Advisor at the Millennium Challenge Corporation. During her time there, she kept an exhausting schedule, traveling to some of the poorest places on Earth, searching for innovative ways to use America's leadership and ingenuity to help lift desperately poor people, especially women and children, out of crushing poverty.

It saddens me that Ms. Butts never had the opportunity to serve as Ambassador because she could have had so many ideas that she would have brought to represent America's values and help the people of the Bahamas.

She had hoped that being an African-American woman, it would help to underscore America's commitment to equality. While he waited for a vote on her nomination, Cassandra Butts represented our Nation well on the world stage in a different capacity. She served with distinction as Senior Advisor to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

Accounts of her life will always lead off with the fact that she was a close friend of the President and First Lady, but that was only part of the story. Cassandra Butts was a friend to countless people around the world, from the famous to the voiceless. She was a seeker of truth and justice. She was also warm and funny, smart and passionate, deeply decent. She loved jazz, the UNC Tar Heels, fast cars, especially her BMW.

She left this world too soon and she will be missed. Loretta and I wish to extend our condolences to her many friends and family, especially her mother Mae Karim, her father Charles Norman Butts, her sister and brother-in-law, Deidra and Frank Abbott, her two nephews whom she adored, Austin and Ethan Abbott.

It is a sad reality that as I stand here today and pick up this publication on the desk of every Senator, the Executive Calendar for the Senate of the United States, and turn to look at it closely, I find in this calendar, on page 5, the name of Cassandra Butts, waiting for the Senate to approve her position as the Ambassador to the Bahamas.

She waited and waited and waited. Eventually she passed away, waiting on the Senate Calendar to serve this country. When the Senators who had a hold on her for all this period of time were asked: Why? Why did you hold up this woman, one of them was very candid and said: We knew she was close to the President, and if we stopped her, we knew the President would feel the pain. I hope today we all feel the pain that this lady can no longer have the distinction of ending her fabulous public career as our Ambassador representing the United States to the Bahamas.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source