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textsTRIBUTES TO HON. ARLEN SPECTER Arlen Specter U.S. SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA TRIBUTES IN THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TONGRESS.#15 Arlen Specter ? Tributes Delivered in Congress Arlen Specter United States Senator 1981-2011 a ? Compiled under the direction of the Joint Committee on Printing CONTENTS Biography............................................. v Farewell to the Senate................................ xi Proceedings in the Senate: Tributes by Senators: Akaka, Daniel K., of Hawaii.................... 12 Alexander, Lamar, of Tennessee................. 3 Bennet, Michael F., of Colorado................ 21 Boxer, Barbara, of California.................. 23 Casey, Robert P., Jr., of Pennsylvania......... 15, 24 Cochran, Thad, of Mississippi.................. 19 Conrad, Kent, of North Dakota.................. 8 Dodd, Christopher J., of Connecticut........... 11 Durbin, Richard, of Illinois................... 11, 17 Enzi, Michael B., of Wyoming................... 9 Harkin, Tom, of Iowa........................... 22 Hatch, Orrin G., of Utah....................... 13 Levin, Carl, of Michigan....................... 5 Murkowski, Lisa, of Alaska..................... 26 Reed, Jack, of Rhode Island.................... 5 Reid, Harry, of Nevada......................... 5, 7 Sessions, Jeff, of Alabama..................... 20 Udall, Mark, of Colorado....................... 22 Warner, Mark R., of Virginia................... 5 BIOGRAPHY Since first elected in 1980, Arlen Specter has brought rugged individualism and fierce independence learned from his youth on the Kansas plains to become a leading Senate moderate. His work as Philadelphia's tough district attorney gave him insights to write the Terrorist Prosecution Act, the Armed Career Criminal Act, and coauthor the Second Chance Act. His legal background and experience in constitutional law provided the skills to serve as Judiciary chairman during the confirmation hearings of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. In earlier confirmation hearings he had the courage to cross party lines in opposing Judge Bork and disagreeing with conventional wisdom in supporting Justice Thomas after dissecting the contradictory and highly charged testimony. As a consummate legislator, he has counseled compromise and conciliation in a Congress that has established new records for partisan discord. In foreign affairs, he has advocated dialogue and accommodation as an antidote to belligerency and saber rattling. Arlen Specter's five terms have made him the longest serving U.S. Senator in Pennsylvania's history. A voice of reason, his independence and balance have won endorsements from the AFL-CIO and high marks from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the Americans for Tax Reform. Time magazine listed him among the Ten Best Senators in 2006. Knowlegis rated him the second most powerful Senator in 2006 behind only Majority Leader Bill Frist. A November 11, 2007 Philadelphia Inquirer editorial stated: ''Senator Arlen Specter has more clout than some sovereign nations.'' Senator Specter attributes his zeal for public service to his experience as a child when he saw the government mistreat his father, Harry Specter, who migrated to the United States from Russia in 1911. Private Specter, serving in World War I in the infantry, was seriously wounded in action in France's Argonne Forest. When the government broke its promise to pay World War I veterans a 00 bonus, the veterans marched on Washington. President Hoover called out the Army which fired on and killed veterans on the Mall in one of the blackest days in American history. As a metaphor, Senator Specter says he has been on his way to Washington ever since to get his father's bonus and since he hasn't gotten it yet, he's running for reelection. The incident over his father's bonus has made Arlen Specter a fierce advocate for veterans' benefits and the ''little guy'' in his battles with the Federal Government. From his immigrant parents, Arlen Specter learned work ethics the hard way. His father, Harry Specter, who was a peddler, took 5-year-old Arlen to small Kansas towns selling cantaloupes door to door with a small basket in hand. In his dad's junkyard in Russell, KS, 16-year-old Arlen Specter cut down oil derricks with an acetylene torch and loaded scrap iron into rail freight cars headed for the smelter. His credentials include votes for the line-item veto and a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget. As a two-term Philadelphia district attorney, he fought for tough sentences for tough criminals and later, in the Senate, wrote groundbreaking legislation providing for life sentences for three-time recidivists on violent crimes. Since 1981, he has played a significant role in Supreme Court nomination hearings, for Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justices O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsberg, Breyer, and Judge Bork. Notwithstanding debilitating chemotherapy treatments in 2005, he stayed on the job as chairman of the Judiciary Committee to preside over historic Supreme Court confirmation hearings. His work on the Judiciary Committee has included writing significant legislation on dealing with constitutional law, civil rights, and privacy. As a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, he led the fight to increase funding for the National Institutes of Health from 2 billion to 0 billion to expand medical research to find cures for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other maladies. He has supported expanding health care for seniors and children and has proposed legislation to cover the almost 50 million Americans who do not have health insurance. Because Senator Specter is keenly aware of the importance of understanding the younger generation, he often visits and speaks at universities and high schools. He credits his parents, both immigrants, with emphasizing the importance of education which has enabled his brother, two sisters, and himself to share in the American dream. To empower others with access to education, he led the fight on the Appropriations Subcommittee to increase Federal spending by 138 percent and raise funding for scholarships and student loans. Constituent service and promoting Pennsylvania's economic interests have been the hallmarks of Senator Specter's Senate career. He maintained offices in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Erie, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and the Lehigh Valley to help residents of those areas who needed assistance to cut Washington's redtape. From his experience as a teenager working on a farm in Kansas, the State where he was born, Senator Specter has understood and worked on the problems of Pennsylvania's farmers from his position on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture. He frequently argues in the International Trade Commission to assist the steel industry from being deluged with unfair foreign imports. His proposed legislation, endorsed by both business and labor, would create a private right of action in Federal courts to stop subsidized or dumped products from being imported into the United States. He has supported the coal industry by promoting legislation for clean coal technology and securing 00 million for a Schuylkill County project to turn sludge into high octane, environmentally safe gasoline. Recognizing the long-term effects of global warming, he has cosponsored the Bingaman-Specter bill to reduce harm from carbon emissions. As chairman of the Intelligence Committee in the 104th Congress and a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Senator Specter traveled extensively meeting with world leaders including Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev; French President Francois Mitterrand; Israel's Prime Ministers Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert; China's President Hu Jintao; Indian Prime Minister Singh; Pakistan's Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto, Mohammad Zia, and Pervez Musharraf; Jordan's Kings Hussein and Abdullah; and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Strongly agreeing with Moshe Dayan's famous statement that we make peace with our enemies not our friends, he has met with Syria's Presidents Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad; the Palestinian Authority's Chairman Yasser Arafat; Iraq's President Saddam Hussein; Cuba's President Fidel Castro; Libya's Leader Muammar Qadhafi; and Venezuela President Hugo Chavez. From these meetings and his studies of foreign affairs since his undergraduate days at the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in political science and international relations, Senator Specter has been a forceful advocate for aggressive diplomacy to solve international conflicts. He wrote, with staffer Chris Bradish, an article for the Washington Quarterly (Winter 2006-2007), outlining a blueprint for diplomatic initiatives in the Mideast with emphasis on bilateral negotiations with Iran and Syria. Similarly, he has urged bilateral, as well as multilateral, negotiations with North Korea. Early in his Senate career in 1982, he was among the first to call for a U.S./U.S.S.R. summit in a resolution which passed the Senate 90 to 8. He participated extensively with the Senate observers at the Geneva Arms Reduction talks in the 1980s and led the fight for the broad interpretation of the ABM Treaty. Senator Specter consistently supported appropriations to fight global AIDS and promoted worldwide support for underdeveloped countries including free trade agreements. Arlen Specter was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1980 and served five terms. In 2005, Senator Specter became Pennsylvania's longest serving U.S. Senator. He was a senior member of the Senate Judiciary, Appropriations, and Veterans Affairs Committees. Senator Specter was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee since he came to the Senate. As such, he played an instrumental role in many of the Senate's most important issues, including the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Justice Samuel Alito to serve as Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Senator Specter also shepherded through the Judiciary Committee legislation on asbestos litigation reform to absolve what the Supreme Court once called an ''elephantine mass'' clogging our judicial system. Senator Specter has worked in a bipartisan fashion to reauthorize key provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, an important tool in the U.S. war on terror. He has also authored legislation to help consumers better protect the privacy of their personal information in the face of recurrent data security breaches across the country. On the Judiciary Committee, Senator Specter built on his foundation as a lawyer and former district attorney. He was the author of the Armed Career Criminal Act, which has been praised for its long prison terms for repeat offenders, and the Terrorist Prosecution Act, which authorizes criminal actions in U.S. courts for assaulting, maiming, or murdering Americans anywhere in the world. As a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Specter was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. This subcommittee oversees Federal funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control, educational programs like Head Start, Pell grants, and GEAR-UP, and worker safety programs. Under his leadership, funding for education has increased by more than 130 percent. Senator Specter was also instrumental in doubling the budget for NIH, which has made major advances in curing Parkinson's, cancer, heart disease, and delaying the onset of Alzheimer's. Finally, Senator Specter is a strong proponent of stem cell research for the purposes of discovering knowledge that may lead to cures for these same ailments. Strengthening our Nation's security has been a longstanding priority of Senator Specter's. Thirty days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Senator Specter drafted the legislation that established the Department of Homeland Security. While serving as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the 104th Congress, he authored the bill creating the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency, marking the only reform legislation to emerge from the Iran-Contra affair. Senator Specter continues his strong advocacy for veterans, a passion born from the first veteran he ever knew, his father, Harry Specter, who was wounded in World War I. As a former chairman of the Veterans Committee, he pushed for just treatment for veterans and increased benefits. Working closely with the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Senator Specter oversaw the opening of four new veterans outpatient clinics in Fayette, Northampton, Venango, and Warren Counties and passed legislation to create a new veterans cemetery in Southeastern Pennsylvania. A frequent visitor to all of Pennsylvania's 67 counties, Senator Specter places constituent service high on his priorities and has been instrumental on the Appropriations Committee in promoting Pennsylvania's interests in agriculture, high-technology, steel, coal, tourism, mass transit, highways, and military installations. In addition to tackling the major legislative business before the Senate, Senator Specter also engaged in a personal battle with Stage IV-B Hodgkin's lymphoma cancer in 2005 and 2008. In both cases he underwent nearly 5 months of chemotherapy, but still maintained all of his senatorial duties, including chairing hearings, voting, and brokering important legislative initiatives. In July 2008, Senator Specter received his last chemotherapy treatment and has since received a clean bill of health. Senator Specter was born to immigrant parents in Wichita, KS, and grew up in the small town of Russell, KS. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He began his career in public service as an assistant Philadelphia district attorney. While serving in that position, he was named assistant counsel on the Warren Commission investigation into President Kennedy's assassination. Two years later, Senator Specter was elected district attorney of Philadelphia at the age of 35. Senator Specter lives in Philadelphia with his wife Joan. They have two sons, Shanin and Steve, and four grandchildren, Silvi, Perri, Lilli, and Hatti. Farewell to the Senate Tuesday, December 21, 2010 Mr. SPECTER. Madam President, this is not a farewell address but, rather, a closing argument to a jury of my colleagues and the American people outlining my views on how the Senate and, with it, the Federal Government arrived at its current condition of partisan gridlock, and my suggestions on where we go from here on that pressing problem and the key issues of national and international importance. To make a final floor statement is a challenge. The Washington Post noted the poor attendance at my colleagues' farewell speeches earlier this month. That is really not surprising since there is hardly anyone ever on the Senate floor. The days of lively debate with many Members on the floor are long gone. Abuse of the Senate rules has pretty much stripped Senators of the right to offer amendments. The modern filibuster requires only a threat and no talking. So the Senate's activity for more than a decade has been the virtual continuous drone of a quorum call. But that is not the way it was when Senator Chris Dodd and I were privileged to enter the world's greatest deliberative body 30 years ago. Senators on both sides of the aisle engaged in collegial debate and found ways to find common ground on the Nation's pressing problems. When I attended my first Republican moderates luncheon, I met Mark Hatfield, John Chafee, Ted Stevens, Mac Mathias, Bob Stafford, Bob Packwood, Chuck Percy, Bill Cohen, Warren Rudman, Alan Simpson, Jack Danforth, John Warner, Nancy Kassebaum, Slade Gorton, and I found my colleague John Heinz there. That is a far cry from later years when the moderates could fit into a telephone booth. On the other side of the aisle, I found many Democratic Senators willing to move to the center to craft legislation
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