Tribute to Lamar Alexander

Floor Speech

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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I was not planning on speaking today, but I was so inspired by what Senator Alexander had to say about his career and about the Senate that I wanted to share a word or two of reflection on what he said.

Anybody who has spent any time around Washington, DC, or even around this Capitol knows there are statues built all over this town of people nobody remembers. When I go by one of those statues in Washington-- whether it is in a circle somewhere in a traffic stop or in the hallway in the Capitol--I think about the importance of dying at the right time. You want to die at a moment when statues are in vogue if you are going to have a statue.

But there is no--none of these people are ever going to be remembered in the long view of history. The stoic philosophers on whom we base so much, or at least attempt to base so much of what we do here, had a solution to that. Their solution was--whether it was the Greek or Roman philosophers--their solution was: Do your best. Show up and make a contribution. Do your best. Don't worry about how people are going to remember you. Don't worry about your own mortality.

So few of us follow that advice. I think Lamar Alexander embodies that. As President of the University of Tennessee, as Governor, as the Secretary of Education, as a Senator, in every one of those jobs, it has always been about doing his best.

In a Chamber filled with people who think they have a monopoly on wisdom, Lamar has never stopped learning. He has always been curious. Up to this day--I will bet today, he probably got up and asked somebody on his staff or one of his colleagues to tell him about something he wants to learn more about so he can be more effective and make a greater difference so he can do his best.

The Senate is going to be diminished by Lamar's absence. It is hard to believe we can be any more diminished than we are, but we are going to be diminished by Lamar leaving.

Susan and I were lucky enough to be invited to his home, spend a weekend there. I am going to say something now I never said to Lamar Alexander. He gave us the great privilege of standing in the family cemetery in Eastern Tennessee, in his beloved Smoky Mountains, where he will forever keep the windmills out. As I stood there a little awkwardly in the cemetery--because that is not usually part of a tour-- all I could think about was how lucky Lamar and Honey were to know that would be the place where they would be and that long after they were remembered by anybody, they would know that they had done their best; that they had always done their best.

What I would say to my colleagues today is, we have an opportunity to follow Lamar's example and take him up on what he said. We are not memorializing Lamar today. He is going to have a lot more years left to contribute to his State, his community, and to the country, but he won't be in the Senate, and we are in the Senate.

We could work in the Senate that works 5 days a week or even 6 days a week. Sign me up for that Senate. We could work in a Senate that has 25 amendments in a bill instead of 25 amendments in a year, as we did last year, because there is no other body in America or in this democracy, as Lamar said, that is set up to decide the hardest questions that our country is facing and to make those decisions stick. That is what Lamar Alexander said to us today.

He has left us with a challenge, and I hope we will take him up on it because there is no excuse for the way this place has worked, and the American people are tired of hearing that it has been the other side's fault. There are 100 people who can fix this place, and I hope we will. I can't think of a greater legacy for Lamar to leave than that of a Senate that actually works. That is what the country deserves, and that is the inspiration that Lamar Alexander has set for me.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

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