Tribute to Lamar Alexander

Floor Speech

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor, too, to thank the Senator from Tennessee for his service to our Nation and for his work here in the U.S. Senate.

Some of my colleagues have already mentioned the brevity of words with which Senator Alexander can deliver a message. I, too, remember his comments as a Rules Committee member, on the inaugural address, and really capturing the moment of why a transition of power is so important to our Nation. And it struck me that we really had a poet or a writer among us, someone who could sense and feel the moment of what we were going through and express it in words. So I have no doubt that some writing is in Lamar's future here, and I look forward to seeing that.

But I wanted to rise today to thank him for his service and what it has meant to my State and to our Nation. My colleague from Washington talked about their work together on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. I, too, want to thank you for the CARES Act, and I remember your recognition on FOX News about stem cell research and the great work that that has led to.

So we are appreciative of those research dollars, but I want to focus on a role that maybe has not gotten as much attention--the historic role you have played on our energy budget and our National Laboratory budget.

I so appreciate the background of your State and the background of focus on energy funding, from the National Laboratory perspective, which has had to have a constant flow and constantly it has been challenged. Yet it has put every step forward because of the level of investment in helping us make our Nation more secure, create more innovation, and create more jobs. So thank you for holding steadfast on the National Laboratory budget.

I also want to thank you for your work on the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, which we worked together on, which, both, commemorated the history of our Nation and our Manhattan Project at, both, Oak Ridge and at Richland, WA, and Hanford, and to just thank you for the constant focus on the cleanup budget that we have had to have in the Energy Department, as it related to Hanford.

There was a time when we had many cleanup projects around the Nation, and it was very easy to come together and say that we had to get Savannah River, we had to get Oak Ridge, we had to get Colorado, we had to get Idaho, and we had to get Hanford. But as those projects made progress, a lot of people forgot about what it took to clean up Hanford. So I appreciate your constant focus on helping us to get the dollars necessary for cleanup at Hanford.

I also appreciate, recently, your help on making sure that people didn't overstep on the National Nuclear Security Administration and turn that over to a Defense oversight of people but kept it within the Department of Energy. I so appreciate that.

But I will be forever grateful for your focus on public lands. We have a saying in my State: Environmentalists make great ancestors. So I don't know if you want that environmentalist term associated with your name, but I am pretty sure you do want the stewardship.

And the man from the Great Smoky Mountains helped us deliver a monumental piece of legislation by convincing the President of the United States to support the budgetary impact of combining both the national parks enhancement program, which is basically taking care of the national parks backlog, which was in the billions of dollars, and also fully funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a battle that had been going on for more than a decade.

So I want to thank you for that, Lamar. I want to thank you on behalf of the Washingtonians who will go to so many special places, who will get to visit and commune with their families, who will be able to have outdoor experiences, who will be able to really understand the grandeur of Mother Earth. So thank you for pulling off what seemed to be like an impossible effort to convince people to make that level of investment.

We are going to miss the harmony of your voice and the harmony of your legislative skills, but we are not going to say permanently good- bye to you because we hope that you will be sending us messages just like the one you sent today and reminding us that we can do better.

So thank you, Lamar, for your contribution, in a lot of your life, to these very important issues that affect so many of us. Thank you

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