National Personnel Records Center

Floor Speech

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Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I love Senator Durbin. I hate his amendment. Here is why. These SDRs are not free money. They are not free money. They are like a cryptocoin. The IMF issues the cryptocoin to all the countries that are members of the IMF, and these countries take that cryptocoin, and guess what they do. They come to the United States of America and say: We want to exchange our cryptocoin for dollars. And guess what. We don't have the dollars because we are dead broke. So we have to borrow the dollars to give to the Chinas and the Venezuelas and all the countries that hate us in exchange for their cryptocoins.

Now, that is just a natural fact, and if you check the record, you will find that as to the countries that really need the money to vaccinate their people, about 10 percent of this money is going to them. The rest is going to all the larger countries, like China, like Venezuela, like the countries in Europe. Virtually no money gets sent to the people who need it. This is an incredibly inefficient way to do it.

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Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, the International Monetary Fund issues special drawing rights. A special drawing right is like a cryptocoin-- it is not worth anything. It is only worth something if you exchange it for real money. The Biden administration decided to encourage the IMF to issue all of these cryptocoins, and guess what they are all doing? They are bringing the cryptocoins to the United States of America and are saying: We want dollars. Give me dollars for the cryptocoin.

Yet we don't have any dollars in our checking account, so we have to borrow the money. There is no free lunch, and you don't get one now.

All my bill would do would be to say that we are not going to issue special drawing rights to perpetrators of genocide or state sponsors of terrorism--in other words, no free money to China, no free money to Syria, and no free money to Iran. It is ludicrous for us to be borrowing money to give dollars to exchange for cryptocoins to China or Syria or Iran.
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Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I want to just spend a few minutes today saying goodbye to a friend. Louisiana weeps right now. Gov. Charles E. Roemer III passed away last week. He went by ``Buddy.'' He served our State from 1988 to 1992. Before that, he served a number of terms in Congress.

I guess I am biased because Buddy brought me to the dance, if you will. I was sitting in my office in New Orleans practicing law, earning a good living, you know, thinking about happy hour on a Friday afternoon, and Governor Roemer had just been elected and he asked me to come up to Baton Rouge and work as his legal counsel. And I did, and I stayed for 4 years. And I liked government service, and I have been in it, off and on, since then.

Buddy was one of the--Buddy was an extremely--I say ``was.'' I am going to say ``is'' because he lives with us. But he was one of the most and is one of the most complex, interesting people I have ever met. He was immeasurably talented. He was raised on a cotton farm, but it wasn't really a farm because his parents and his family, they were all so accomplished.

They put together a cotton farm with their own sweat and blood and some free enterprise capital of about 10,000 acres in North Louisiana. It is a big farm in Louisiana. But the kids all worked, including Buddy.

They didn't have a television. Mr. Budgie, his dad, and Ms. Adeline, his mom, would require the kids, in their free time, to read books. And, boy, it stuck with Buddy. I never saw him without a book. I would ride with him to go to a speech. He would have a book in the car, and he would read it driving over there.

He went to Harvard when he was 16. He would have gone sooner. Harvard offered him a position, but his mom and dad said: You are too young. You have got to stick around.

And he stayed at Harvard for graduate school.

Buddy was--how can I put this?--one of the first real intellectual Governors that we ever had in Louisiana. I am not putting down our other Governors, now--I am not--because all of our Governors have been intelligent, just like in the Presiding Officer's State. You don't rise to that position without being intelligent. But Buddy truly believed in the power of ideas, and he truly believed in the worth of education.

I have used his words often. He used to say: Kennedy, the future in Louisiana is education. It is not the price of oil. It is not the unemployment rate. It is not who the Governor is. It is education.

And he would say that time and again.

During his 4 years--when he became Governor, we had a $7 billion budget. We had a $1 billion deficit. That is what he was left with. Roemer balanced the budget. It wasn't easy, but he did. And then he implemented fiscal reforms that dramatically and totally changed our way of budgeting in Louisiana for generations to come, because of Buddy's efforts.

He announced in Louisiana--and this was heresy at the time: I am going to find out which of our teachers can teach, and, by God, I am going to pay them.

And he said: But I am also going to find out which of our teachers can't teach, and I am going to either teach them how or tell them to find a new line of work.

Boy, was that ever revolutionary. And he did it.

He totally rewrote our campaign finance laws. When Buddy became Governor, there was no reporting of campaign money. If you were running for office, somebody could bring you a suitcase full of cash-- $200,000--and it was perfectly legal. You didn't have to report it. And if you got the money on a Thursday, if you decided on a Friday you weren't going to run and you withdrew from the race, you could keep it. You could keep it.

Buddy completely rewrote all of that. Now you have to report every penny in, every penny out. There is a cap on contributions. No cash. And we enforce it. It changed our politics dramatically.

I will tell you one quick story that epitomizes the Buddy I knew.

There was a central piece of his education program. I won't bore you with the details. It had to do with higher education. It was key to our future, and we really needed to pass it.

I was handling it, lobbying it for the Governor, and we needed one more vote in the senate--one more vote to pass this landmark bill. And this one Senator said: Kennedy, I will vote for it if you will have the Governor give me this project.

So I was all excited. I went back to see the Governor. I said: Governor, I think I got it put together.

It was a road project.

He said: Call him over to our department of transportation and see what they think.

And the folks at the department of transportation said: Yes, we can do it, but if we do it, we will all go to jail.

So I said: Oh, man.

So I go back, and I tell Governor Roemer. I was young, but I was passionate, and I said: Governor, we can't do it.

He said: I agree. We are not going to do that.

I said: But listen. This is so important. This particular Senator lies to us all the time. Let me just lie to him. Let me just go to him and tell him we will do it. We will get his vote, and then I will go back to him later and say we changed our mind.

The end does justify the means. I will never forget it.

Buddy says: No, we are not doing that.

And I argued with him, but he finally just said: Look, Kennedy, I made my decision. We are not doing it that way.

I am going to really miss Buddy. He wasn't a perfect guy. I told him one time--I said: Governor, if I were back in law practice in the private sector and you came to me as a private client, I would represent you, but I would quadruple my hourly rate.

He was so smart, but he could be very opinionated. Tip O'Neill gave Buddy sort of his slogan phrase. Tip O'Neill described then-Congressman Roemer one time. He said: Congressman Roemer--often wrong, never in doubt.

But I am going to really miss Buddy. All he ever wanted to do was change Louisiana, and he did. He wasn't reelected, but he did.

But Buddy always understood. This was his barometer of success. He used to tell me and say: Kennedy, here is how you know when you are doing a good job: if you are making the right people mad.

He used to say: If nobody is mad at you and if the wrong people like what you are doing, you are not doing your job.

So he did make people mad, and it cost him his reelection. But he changed Louisiana, and Louisiana weeps. And when I count my blessings, I count Buddy Roemer twice.

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