Bennet Pays Tribute to Senator Lamar Alexander, Urges Colleagues to Follow His Bipartisan Example

In Remarks on the Senate Floor, Bennet Calls on Colleagues to Honor the Retiring Senator by Making the Senate Work

VIDEO: Watch Bennet’s Speech HERE

 

Washington, D.C. – Today, Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet spoke on the Senate floor paying tribute to U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who is retiring at the end of the 116th Congress after 18 years in the Senate and over 40 years in public service. In his remarks, Bennet spoke about his work with Alexander over the years and the example the Tennessee Republican set for humility, curiosity, and bipartisanship. Bennet also called on his colleagues to follow Alexander’s example and take responsibility for fixing the Senate and putting it to work for the American people. 

“In a chamber filled with people who think they have a monopoly on wisdom, Lamar has never stopped learning. He’s always been curious,” said Bennet in his speech. “The Senate is going to be diminished by Lamar’s absence. It’s hard to believe that we can be any more diminished than we are.”  

Bennet continued: “[T]here is no other body in America or in this democracy, as Lamar said, that's set up to decide the hardest questions that our country is facing and to make those decisions stick...He's left us with a challenge, and I hope we’ll take him up on it. Because there is no excuse for the way this place works and the American people are tired of hearing that it's the other side’s fault. There are a hundred people that can fix this place. And I hope we will. I can't think of a greater legacy for Lamar to leave than a Senate that’s actually working. That's what the country deserves, and that's the inspiration that Lamar Alexander has set for me.” 

Over the years, Bennet has worked with Alexander on several bipartisan initiatives, including efforts to improve treatment and outcomes for babies born prematurely, simplify the federal application for student aid, and pass the Every Student Succeeds Act -- the last comprehensive reform of federal education policy. As a former member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Bennet worked closely with Alexander who served as committee chairman.

The text of Bennet’s remarks as delivered are below. You can watch a video of the remarks HERE.

I was not planning on speaking today, but I was so inspired by what Senator Alexander had to say about his career and about the Senate that I wanted to share a word or two of reflection on what he said. 

Anybody who’s spent any time around Washington, D.C., or even around this Capitol, knows there are statues built all over this town of people nobody remembers. 

And when I go by one of those statues in Washington, whether it’s in a circle somewhere, in a traffic stop, or in the hallway in the Capitol, I think about the importance of dying at the right time. You want to die at a moment when statues are in vogue if you’re going to have a statue. 

But, there’s no – none of these people are ever going to be remembered in the long view of history and the stoic philosophers on whom we base so much, or at least attempt to base, so much of what we do here had a solution for that. And their solution was, whether it was the Greek or Roman philosophers, their solution was, do your best. Show up, and make a contribution. Do your best. Don’t worry about how people are going to remember you. Don’t worry about your own mortality. So few of us follow that advice. 

I think Lamar Alexander embodies that. As President of the University of Tennessee, as governor, as the Secretary of Education, as a senator. In every one of those jobs, it’s always been about doing his best. 

In a chamber filled with people who think they have a monopoly on wisdom, Lamar has never stopped learning. He’s always been curious. Up to this day, I’ll bet today he probably got up and asked somebody on his staff, or one of his colleagues, to tell him about something he wants to learn more about, so he can be more effective and make a greater difference, so he can do his best. 

The Senate is going to be diminished by Lamar’s absence. It’s hard to believe that we can be any more diminished than we are. But we are going to be diminished by Lamar leaving. 

Susan and I were lucky enough to be invited to his home to spend a weekend there. And I’m going to say something now that I never said to Lamar Alexander, but he gave us the great privilege of standing in the family’s cemetery in Eastern Tennessee in the Smoky -- his beloved Smoky Mountains where he will forever keep the windmills out. 

And as I stood there a little awkwardly in the cemetery, because that’s not usually part of a tour, all I could think about was how lucky Lamar and Honey were to know that that would be the place that they would be. And that long after they were remembered by anybody that they would know that they had done their best. That they had always done their best. 

And so what I would say to my colleagues today is that we have an opportunity to follow Lamar’s example. Take him up on what he said. We’re not memorializing Lamar today. He’s going to have a lot more years left to contribute to his state, to his community, and to the country. 

But he won't be in the Senate. And we are in the Senate. We could work in a Senate that works five days a week, Mr. President. Or even six days a week, Mr. President. Sign me up for that Senate. We could work in a Senate that has 25 amendments a bill instead of 25 amendments in a year as we did last year. 

Because there is no other body in America or in this democracy, as Lamar said, that's set up to decide the hardest questions that our country is facing and to make those decisions stick. That’s what Lamar Alexander said to us today. 

He's left us with a challenge, and I hope we’ll take him up on it. Because there is no excuse for the way this place works and the American people are tired of hearing that it's the other side’s fault. 

There are a hundred people that can fix this place. And I hope we will. I can't think of a greater legacy for Lamar to leave than a Senate that’s actually working. That's what the country deserves, and that's the inspiration that Lamar Alexander has set for me. 

Thank you, Mr. President.