Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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TRIBUTES TO MARK UDALL

Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I wish to take a moment today to speak about my friend Mark Udall, who is soon going to be finishing his term. Mark's sister Doty describes him as an OK politician but an extraordinary public servant. I think it is fair to say that Mark could never reduce his role as a representative of the people of Colorado to just politics. It is not in his DNA.

It is with a very heavy heart that I see him leave the Senate, because he is my friend. But it is especially sad at a time when Mark's kind of leadership and constructive engagement is exactly what this place needs.

``Udall'' is a name that is synonymous with the West, and Mark and the collective service of the Udall family have come to represent the very best of our western way of life. They have embodied that pioneering and entrepreneurial spirit dating back to the days when Americans were building entirely new lives on the frontier. They have a historic love for the beauty and majesty of the West. They have spent lifetimes protecting it.

Mo and Stu Udall, Mark's uncle and father, both served our country during World War II. Stu was elected to serve the Second District of Arizona. When President Kennedy asked Stu to serve as the Secretary of Interior, Mo won Stu's seat in Congress.

Unlike his son Mark, Mo never ran for the Senate. He explained why. He said:

I told the Arizona Press Club with [Barry] Goldwater present that there were three reasons I was not running for the Senate: 1. I love the House. 2. My wife and family are against it. And 3, I have taken a poll and you are going to beat the hell out of me.

Although, he did run for President. The New Republic reported on that:

The Arizona Congressman, Morris Udall liked to tell a story about a response he got at a barber shop in Maine: He looked in at the door and, meaning to introduce himself, said ``Mo Udall, running for president.'' ``Yeah,'' the barber said, ``we were just laughing about it this morning.''

It is not hard to know where Mark acquired his self-deprecating approach to the world, just as it not hard to know where he inherited his commitment to civil rights, to conservation, and to good government.

Mark has said it was during this time that his political views were formed. He himself went on to seek office.

In 2008, when Mark was elected to represent Colorado in the Senate, his cousin TOM--Stu's son--was elected to serve the State of New Mexico and is one of our colleagues today.

Mark Udall's connection to the West and to public service comes from both sides of his family. Mo Udall, a man of many talents, met Patricia Emory, MARK's mother, while playing baseball in Colorado. Patricia or ``Sam'' Udall was a sharpshooter, pilot, Peace Corps volunteer at the age of 56. She was a native Coloradan and the person Mark credits most for his passion for the outdoors, for backpacking and climbing.

Today in the 21st century we face a profound set of challenges and a dramatic test of our democratic institution. Can what Mark Udall often calls this glorious experiment in self-government continue to thrive into the next century and beyond?

Mark has carried the tradition of his family by serving as a moral forward-pointing compass. Throughout his career he has defended personal freedom and liberty, and he has built a legacy of conservation and preservation. As a member of the Colorado General Assembly representing Longmont and parts of Boulder County, Mark toughened the laws against poaching big game as trophy animals. As a Member of the House of Representatives, he worked across the aisle to establish the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge, cleaning up the former nuclear site and preserving 4,000 acres of wild land near Denver. He established the James Peak Wilderness Area, protecting 14,000 acres of some of our most scenic land in Gilpin and Grand Counties. He passed the Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness Act to designate nearly 250,000 acres within the park as wilderness, including Longs Peak, which is actually a 14er that I have climbed. Mark Udall has climbed all of them in Colorado, every single 14er we have, because they are included in the tallest 100 mountains that we have, each one of which has been summited by Mark Udall. These are lands that will be protected long after any of our political careers are over and long after they remember who it was who protected those lands to begin with. But if anybody cares to check, they are going to know that it was Mark Udall.

Mark has been vocal, active, and effective in his fight against climate change and in his promotion of renewable energy. He was the statewide cochair of the successful 2004 campaign to pass Colorado's amendment 37. This measure required Colorado's power companies to generate most of their electricity from renewable sources. Colorado was the first State in the Union to take the issue to the voters. Amendment 37 passed. Mark Udall was the driving force behind that effort. After his victory in the State, Mark took this issue to the House of Representatives. The House has twice passed the national renewable electricity standard championed by Mark.

During his time in the Senate, he has continued to push for a national policy, and his doggedness in standing up for Colorado's wind energy production saved

thousands of good-paying jobs across the State and ensured that we will continue to lead the Nation in developing our clean energy economy.

The same is true for our ski areas, which have expanded recreation activities and summertime job opportunities thanks to a law Mark passed in this Senate.

Colorado's aerospace industry is thriving in part thanks to Mark Udall. His work on space policy also dates back to his time in the House of Representatives as ranking member on the Space Subcommittee. Mark helped revitalize aeronautics and aviation research and development at NASA and ensure that the Hubble space telescope received service and funding.

In the Senate, Mark helped lead the Colorado delegation opposition to a proposal that would have canceled the Orion Program, costing the State 1,000 jobs. The administration backed off. Last week, with a shuttle and rocket--both built by companies based in Colorado--NASA launched a successful test flight of the Orion vehicle. We will again carry astronauts into space, traveling deeper than ever before and eventually maybe even visit Mars.

As everybody in this Chamber knows, Mark has been a staunch defender of the rights and freedoms we cherish as westerners. As a member of the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, Mark fought every single day he was here to protect the security of the American people and the Bill of Rights. He has taken on NSA and CIA when they violated our constitutional values.

In 2011 he worked on a classified level to pressure intelligence officials to dismantle a massive email collection program that affected American privacy. Administration officials were unable to provide evidence that the program was effective. It was shut down. It only became public information when the New York Times reported on it in July of 2013.

Well before Edward Snowden made headlines in 2013, Mark warned of the NSA's overreach. In 2012, on this Senate floor, he warned the American people that they would be shocked to learn about what the NSA was doing in secret. He introduced landmark, bipartisan surveillance reform legislation with Senators Ron Wyden, Richard Blumenthal, and Rand Paul. It became the basis for the USA FREEDOM Act, which received 58 votes just a few weeks ago. There was a time, before the relentless use of the filibuster, when a majority of votes in the Senate would have been enough to ensure passage of that bill.

Earlier this week the Intelligence Committee released the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's study of the CIA's detention and interrogation program. Nobody in this place fought harder than Mark Udall to shed light on these tactics. His goal from day one has been holding the CIA accountable, shedding light on this dark chapter of our history, and ensuring that the neither the CIA nor any other agency or future administration would make the grievous mistakes that were made here. He accomplished his goals with respect to the process without leaking classified information but by applying pressure both politically and privately until the report was finally released. He has been effective because he has stood on consistent principle on every issue we have faced.

He voted against the PATRIOT Act. He opposed the war in Iraq. He helped lead the fight to end don't ask, don't tell.

Mark truly is the very best of what it means to be a public servant: independent, responsible, tough, focused on the future, and possessing an abiding can-do spirit. His calm presence, his unassuming nature, and his ability to see pure good in those around him are exactly what we so desperately need in our process today.

Simply put, Mark Udall has fought for Colorado families in the most constructive way possible--by pushing thoughtful commonsense solutions--but has never ever fought to achieve a partisan political fleece.

When Colorado was struck with a series of natural disasters, from wildfires to floods, Mark was at his very best, standing up for our State and our families to lead the efforts to ensure that our communities had the support they needed to recover and better prepare for the threats we faced next. He has strengthened the way we respond to the growing threat of wildfire by emphasizing preservation efforts that will save lives, property, and tax dollars. We would expect nothing else from a man who has dedicated himself and his career to standing up for Colorado families, the middle class, and the values of the American West.

As a Senator, a Representative, a State legislator, director of the Colorado Outward Bound school, Mark has been a model public servant. He has lived up to and exceeded the high standards his family has set for more than a century. Throughout all of his work, Mark has always fought against the dysfunction that persists in Washington.

It is true, however, that Mark cannot take full credit for the work. His wife and partner Maggie Fox shares his commitment to leaving more opportunity for the next generation. She has worked as a teacher and community organizer on the Navajo and Hopi reservations of Arizona, New Mexico, and for the Colorado, North Carolina, and Northwest Outward Bound schools. She has become a leading voice in many efforts to protect our land, our air, and our water. Their partnership is a genuine one. It has made Mark's work possible.

Mark's staff has been among the finest, most professional, and most effective in the Senate. It has been a pleasure for me and for my staff to work alongside them on behalf of the people of Colorado.

Over the past few years I have learned that really there are two broad categories of people in Washington: There are those who embrace and add to the dysfunction because it serves their ideological convictions or gives them an opportunity to star on the cable news or both. Then there are the people who are actually trying to save the place. They are looking for areas of compromise to break the gridlock and to move us forward.

Mark is one of the good ones, and I have no doubt he will continue to make profound contributions to Colorado and to our Nation in a variety of ways, but we are diminished by his loss. Every one of us, for the sake of this institution, would do well to live up to the example Mark Udall has set.

I yield the floor.

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