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Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, every year, scores of bright young people arrive on Capitol Hill to begin careers of public service. On the whole, they tend to be bright, ambitious, principled, and patriotic. I have been fortunate to have the best of them on my team.

But I am certain no one has ever shown up on day one better prepared to advocate for a State he is not from than my deputy chief of staff of policy, Scott Raab.

From the moment he walked in the door in 1999, Scott knew as much about my legislative record and about Kentucky's priorities as anyone on the team. Before long, he was fluent in the Commonwealth's smallest towns and counties. Somewhere along the way, he turned into a rabid fan of Kentucky basketball. And for years, new arrivals to my staff in the Republican leader office have consistently mistaken this honorary son of the Bluegrass for a native one.

I say all this to make it clear the kind of person we are dealing with. This is the sort of friend and adviser that simply doesn't grow on trees: the natural whiz who still studies relentlessly; the wonk whose expertise runs both deep and wide; the man for whom loyalty is not a transactional currency but a way of life; and, of course, the champion of ``Blue Shirt Thursday'' and the only member of my staff who can pull off the bow tie.

This exceedingly rare breed--this is Scott Raab. As my policy director, there is no topic that falls outside his portfolio. And there is no problem that isn't, in some way, his to solve.

This is hardly a recent development, and it is certainly not by accident. After just a few years on my personal office staff, through steady and unassuming competence, Scott became a clearinghouse for input on important decisions. Our entire team leaned on his encyclopedic knowledge, his good judgment, and, of course, his upset picks for March Madness brackets.

For much of Scott's tenure, his colleagues turned to him as a resident expert on healthcare policy. He had to protect my blind side on a set of issues I confess have always confounded me. But when you are as good as Scott is at boiling complex problems down to their essence, you wind up pulling extra duty. It didn't matter if an issue wasn't in his portfolio. If it was really hard and really important, it, of course, would wind up on Scott's desk.

Eventually, as is often the case with the greatest flying aces, it fell to Scott to lead the whole squadron, to marshal the strengths and expertise of my entire team, and to deploy them in pursuit of an outcome. There have been very few outcomes Scott has pursued and not achieved. And that is because he is one of the very few people in Washington who, by their very involvement in an issue, signal that things are probably going to somehow work out.

I am speaking, of course, about Scott's daily arrival to light and tend the fireplace in my chief of staff's office. In meetings anywhere in the Capitol, Scott speaks with my authority but a command of policy nuance and procedural nuance entirely his own.

Without uttering a word, Scott's patrols along the back wall of this Chamber are a sign to our colleagues things are under control--or at least they will be very soon.

Scott, of course, is too modest to acknowledge this. He is too self- effacing to admit the number of times where the price of rescuing must- pass legislation or keeping the Federal Government's lights on has been his nights, his weekends, and his all-hours attention.

For a husband and father with a young family, it is difficult to quantify this sacrifice. It is impossible to overstate how the road to high-stakes government funding agreements has so often been paved with missed swim meets and soccer games and with goodnight calls and bedtime stories over FaceTime illustrated with a Cookie Monster hand puppet.

So I am grateful to Scott's dear wife Katherine for her patience and to Molly and Lauren for sharing their dad with us so often.

There is simply no way to make sense of the quarter century of honorable service Scott has rendered without talking about a certain intangible devotion. You don't stick around that long for the pay. You certainly don't do it for the flexible hours. But if your name is Scott Raab, you might just do it because you love the Senate and believe in the people you work with.

As it so happens, Scott's colleagues over the years have believed in him too. They say that ``his input was essential''; that he would be ``the person in my will to take care of my kids''; that he ``does the right thing the right way''; and that they are ``proud to call him [their] friend.''

Well, I am as well.

I am going to miss staring down the toughest fights with Scott Raab at my side. But if anyone is entitled to cut the net down and walk out of here satisfied they left it all on the court, it is Scott.

So Scott, thanks for everything.

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