Life and Legacy of President Jimmy Carter

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, today our Nation paid tribute to the life and works of President Jimmy ``James'' Earl Carter here in the Nation's Capital. The ceremony was beautiful, appropriate, uplifting, and hopeful.

I had the privilege of serving him during his term in the White House, and I can attest to the man he was: faithful, honorable, patriotic, measured, disciplined, and pensive, with the most genial, broad smile that came from growing up in a real community of family and friends.

He was a selfless, true American patriot. He was a graduate of the Naval Academy in the top 10 percent of his class. He was a dear friend of our Admiral Hyman Rickover, the Father of our Nuclear Navy who selected him among the best of individuals in our Nation.

The President founded the Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Education because he wanted to help with America's future security. I shall never forget the hope we all felt witnessing history when President Carter negotiated the historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt with Menachim Begin and Anwar Sadat standing next to him on the lawn of the White House.

Finally, his brilliant national security team lead by Zbigniew Brzezinski that set in place the dominoes that would ultimately result in the collapse of the Soviet Union starting in Poland in 1989 and then 1991, the entire USSR, giving millions of people a chance to have liberty for the first time in 100 years or more.

Though he served just one term, the travails of that period blurred his extraordinary accomplishments. His historic accomplishments, subsequent to his elected service when he returned home, defined what a noble private citizen who never stops giving can do for his nation and world. President Jimmy Carter set a standard for generations to come. As time passes, he will shine forth in history as one of the rare, most honorable Presidents. He faced severe political trials and tribulations, yet gave everything he had to his family, our nation, and its future.

I believe that President Carter will go down in history like President Truman, an honest man, who, when he finished his service, went back home to a place called Plains, Georgia, where he and Rosalynn, his wife, and family lived out their years in a brick home that they built themselves when they were first married.

He was not interested in money. He was not interested in power. He was interested in preserving this republic and strengthening it. His life is a lesson to all.

politics changed Washington.''

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