Tribute to Senator Warner

Floor Speech

TRIBUTE TO SENATOR WARNER -- (Senate - September 04, 2007)

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, last Friday the senior Senator from Virginia announced that he would not seek reelection to the Senate. I speak today, therefore, in tribute to Senator John Warner.

I have known John Warner for nearly 30 years. In 1978, the people of Montana and Virginia sent us both to the Senate for the first time. I thank the people of Montana and Virginia for giving me the opportunity to serve with John Warner. The election of 1978 brought 20 new Senators to the Senate. From that class, many Senators moved on to other pursuits: Bill Armstrong, David Boren, Rudy Boschwitz, Bill Bradley, Bill Cohen, David Durenberger, Gordon Humphrey, Roger Jepsen, Nancy Landon Kassebaum, Larry Pressler, David Pryor, Alan Simpson, Donald Stewart.

From that class, three have gone to their final rest. We all recall the memory of colleagues now departed: Jim Exon, Howell Heflin, Paul Tsongas. May their memories serve as a blessing.

From that class, four remain in the Senate: Thad Cochran, Carl Levin, this Senator, and John Warner.

As a young man, John Warner fought forest fires in Montana. Very often when I am talking to John, he recalls those times in Montana. His eyes brighten up. He very much reminisces about how much he enjoyed spending time in the State. Whether it was fighting fires or whether it was around Bozeman, MT, it comes to him very clearly when he talks about Montana in his early years.

At the age of 17, John Warner joined the Navy to fight in World War II, part of the ``greatest generation.'' John Warner is one of five World War II vets left in the Senate. He shares that distinction with Danny Akaka, Danny Inouye, Frank Lautenberg, and Ted Stevens.

John Warner went to college on the GI bill. Then he entered the University of Virginia law school. But when the Korean war broke out, John Warner, with his intense sense of patriotism, interrupted law school to fight for his country again. This time he served as an officer in the Marine Corps.

After returning from Korea, John Warner finished law school, clerked on the court of appeals, worked as an assistant U.S. attorney and worked as a lawyer in private practice. He returned to public service in 1969 as Under Secretary of the Navy. Then, in 1972, he succeeded our former colleague, John Chafee, as Secretary of the Navy. He represented the Defense Department at the Law of the Sea talks in Geneva.

In the Senate, John Warner has served as chairman of the Rules Committee. He has served as chairman and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. He has come to be known as one of the Congress's most influential voices on matters of national defense.

But I have come to know John Warner on the Environment and Public Works Committee. John Warner and I have worked together on that committee for more than 20 years. I joined the committee in 1981 and John joined in 1987. There, for most of that time, both of us have worked together as chairman and ranking minority member of one subcommittee or another.

We worked together on transportation bills. Those are the bills with such colorful names as ISTEA, TEA-21, SAFET-LU. For a while, we were chairman and ranking

minority member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee. We worked on at least four renewals of the Water Resources Development Act.

I remember fondly working closely with John on the transportation legislation in 1997 and 1998, TEA-21. We worked with our late colleague, John Chafee. The three of us were a wonderful team. You will not believe the chemistry with which the three of us worked together. We decided early on we would stick together as a team: John Warner, basically the Southern donor States; John Chafee, basically the New England States; and I, representing in some sense the Western donee States. We represented the three major components who put together the Transportation bill.

We stuck together. We worked together. I mean we worked together. There is a lot of talk about we needing less partisanship around here. I have to tell you, John Warner, John Chafee and I, we sat down and worked things out. We had a terrific staff working for us, John, myself, and John Chafee. We were all together in John Chafee's office, sometimes in John Warner's office, deciding what was best on how to get a highway bill together.

It was a wonderful opportunity working in that office, working together. There were countless long days, many very long nights. You learn a lot about a person when things get tough, when the rubber meets the road. But I have to tell you, in our case, when anything was a little bit difficult, we did not ever get personal, did not get upset, did not ever attribute ulterior motives to anybody; we decided we were going to figure out how to get it done.

As I said earlier, there was a certain chemistry that came together with all six of us working together, my staff, his staff, their staffs, and the six of us all together. It was wonderful.

I think I learned a lot from watching John Warner and John Chafee, too, for that matter. They were two of the same. They both served as marines, and they both were Secretaries of the Navy. But John Warner was a person who listens. He sat there and listened; I had a point; John Chafee had a point. In other negotiations I have been in where John Warner has been there, John Warner is going to listen. John Warner will listen and say: ``Okay, that is interesting. Let's see how we can make that work.'' I might say also he is a very skilled statesman in that he cut to the core of matters pretty quickly.

Not a lot of fuss or muss, never got wrapped around the axle in details, when things kind of got off tangent in the wrong direction, but got to the core of the matter. He came to the core of the matter. He would sum it all up in a very wonderful, sort of statesmanlike, solid way, as only John can. We all sat there saying, ``Yes, that is about it. That is right.'' That is kind of what John said. ``That is probably right. We will go on from there.'' I learned a lot from John Warner. I hope I can use that in later years.

Both leaders spoke about how John Warner is not partisan, and it is true. I hope, frankly, that as we finish this year and next year, a lot of us remember the tone and the style with which John Warner conducts himself.

It is also very important to mention John Warner spoke up courageously in the State of Virginia; he did not support his party's nominee for the Senate. That was a gutsy thing to do, but he did it in a very civil way, not in a negative way, not in a partisan way. He spoke his mind about what was right. It was very courageous and also the tone made his message and his belief that much more important because people saw he was not personal, people saw he meant it, people saw he was courageous and he was doing what he thought was the right thing to do.

The same is true with respect to Senator Warner's decision about the war in Iraq. It is not the party line, John's statements. He is saying what he thinks is right. He is saying what he thinks is the right thing to do. It is not partisan. It is courageous and said in a very civil tone.

That is why people have called him a consensus builder. It is why people
often say he has a potential for bipartisan collaboration. I stand here saying I appreciate John Warner. When I got the news he was not going to seek reelection, I thought to myself this institution will be losing a great man. He is a wonderful person.

I hope all of us, when we finish these next 15 months or so working with John, thank John for what he is and also use John as a kind of point of departure, saying: ``I wish to be more like John Warner. I wish to do what is right; I wish to be courageous; I wish to be civil; and I wish to do what people of our States ask us to do.'' I salute John Warner.

Source