Commerce, Justice, Science, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act, 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I am deeply saddened to hear the news on Monday of the death of our former colleague, Kay Hagan.

She is the sister, the wife, and the aunt of Navy veterans; daughter- in-law to a two-star Marine Corps general; daughter of a former Florida mayor; and niece to a former U.S. Senator and Governor. Service was in Kay Hagan's veins.

She spent an early career in financial services, but it was only a matter of time until she decided to get directly engaged in public policy.

In office, she was a fierce and unwavering advocate for our men and women in uniform, a staunch fighter for the right of every American to have healthcare, and a warrior for women and children. The people of North Carolina and the people of the United States are far better off because of her years of service in the North Carolina Senate and the 6 years in the U.S. Senate.

When she was here she worked on so many different issues. She immersed herself in trying to assist our military personnel. She was the founding member of the Military Family Caucus. She championed the program that offers education support for military spouses. She cosponsored the repeal of don't ask, don't tell, and she drove the investigation of the contamination of water at Camp Lejeune and legislation to rectify that.

She introduced the Hire a Hero Act to try to enable our veterans to get jobs and make that transition from military service to civilian life. She led the effort for overdue recognition of African-American marines who were forced to train at a separate camp outside Camp Lejeune, and that led them to being awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

When it came to women and children, she was there every day in that fight--the fight for a stronger Violence Against Women Act and the fight for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, so women can be paid commensurate with their male colleagues. She authored the Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act to maintain and continue the support for mandatory screening for newborns.

She fought for workers and middle-class America and manufacturing jobs for Americans and for equal opportunity by sponsoring the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, which passed on the Senate floor 6 years ago.

She proceeded to work on banking and financial issues. She was the lead on the SAFE Act Confidentiality and Privilege Enhancement Act, which had to do with some of the nitty-gritty of mortgage licensing. She worked to ensure that groups like Habitat for Humanity could lend money on a zero-interest loan to their homeowners and be able to do so without violating the legal precepts of American law. It was issue after issue.

When I think of her journey, I think about the parallel structure between her life and mine, in that she ran for the legislature in North Carolina the same year that I ran for the legislature in Oregon. I won a seat in the Oregon House and she won a seat in the North Carolina Senate. We both spent 10 years there. We both then decided that we should attempt to take our philosophy of fighting for the people to the U.S. Senate. We threw our hats into the ring at the same moment, running campaigns against incumbent Senators, and we both won.

I recall how every time I checked on how she was doing, she was always doing 5 to 10 points better than I was, and I just kept thinking: I just have to follow Kay Hagan's example. Then, before the campaign was over, she called me up one day, and we hadn't actually met much or talked much, and she said: I just want to check in on how you are doing.

We connected and bonded over our parallel paths and the fight we were in, which was such an intense effort of campaigning with the desire and determination to make this country a better place.

Of course, as I have noted, when she got here, she threw herself into so many aspects of our national life and our legal structure. I was pleased that we were both assigned by Senator Kennedy to the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. We were able to work on the ACA, or the Affordable Care Act, to try to greatly increase health coverage and make it more affordable and available throughout America-- really important for the people of North Carolina, the citizens of my State, and citizens across this country.

Then, we were both assigned to the Banking Committee, and it was Dodd-Frank. We worked on questions such as how do we end some of the predatory lending practices? Both of us worked on payday-loan predatory actions, where interest rates could be 500 percent. We knew the damage done to our families across the country. We didn't succeed on that particular piece of legislation--the payday loan piece--but we were stemming in this fight from the same place. I so applaud her determination to end predatory practices and lending.

Many of the things that we were fighting for did get into Dodd-Frank in terms of fairness and mortgages so that homeownership would be a dream of homeownership that would result in equity for middle-class Americans rather than a nightmare of homeownership, in which interest rates would double after 2 years, and the family would go bankrupt, and they would be foreclosed on and could lose their house.

Apart from all of that, Kay was such a beautiful voice and spirit in this Chamber--cheerful, determined, thoughtful, gracious. She just made you enjoy being here.

I also think about her, as when she served, she was the healthiest Member of this Chamber. She paid a lot of attention to the diet she ate, the food she ate, how she exercised, how she brought balance to her life. That, too, was an inspiration to us.

Here we find that our journeys on this planet are pretty precarious. We never know what is going to happen on the next day or the next week. I think it is a reminder to all of us to use our moments wisely, to treat each other with the sort of graciousness she exemplified--this sort of spirited fighting for ``we the people,'' the people of the United States for whom she was determined to deploy and champion on the floor of the Senate.

Her illness and her death are a real loss to all of us. It is important that we carry her in our hearts. She certainly has a place solidly secured in my heart and, I think, the hearts of everyone who served with her.

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