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[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 158 (Tuesday, September 30, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10116-S10119]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                          TRIBUTE TO SENATORS

                             pete domenici

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, a lot of people think they know Senator Pete 
Domenici. They know him as a man who has been a leader in the Senate 
for decades on energy issues, and he was the chairman of that 
committee, and on budget issues, and he has been the chairman of that 
committee. He is a man who has been a leader on the Appropriations 
Committee. I have known Senator Domenici in that regard, as have the 
American people, but what I think is so interesting about Pete Domenici 
is a side that a lot of people don't know about him. Here is a man who 
can talk about Wall Street, he can talk about financial markets, he can 
talk about the budgetary problems facing this country, but in a 
personal, private conversation, he can talk about baseball.
  Here is a man who was a star athlete. He was a great baseball player. 
As a young man, he played American Legion Baseball. I played American 
Legion Baseball, but Pete's team was good. Mine wasn't so good. Pete 
led his team to the regional championship.
  American Legion Baseball used to be the baseball for young men.
  They did not have all the State tournaments they had in high schools, 
so in the summer, the best athletes would get together, the best 
baseball players would get together and play American Legion ball, and 
the winter regional championship was significant.
  Senator Domenici went on to letter all 4 years, of course, in high 
school. He was a standout pitcher for the University of New Mexico, and 
he was All Conference. His final year he had a record of 14 and 3. That 
is quite a record. In those days, when Senator Domenici was in high 
school and college, they would play a lot of games, as they do now. A 
record of 14 and 3 is a very significant record.
  But that was not the end of his career. He went on to play 
professional baseball. After college he played for the hometown crowd 
as a left-handed pitcher for the Albuquerque Dukes. I know he must have 
had a great fastball and a great curveball to accomplish what he did in 
baseball. But in the Senate, Pete Domenici does not throw curveballs, 
it is the high hard one all the time. He is a person who tells people 
how he feels.
  With my long-time relationship with Senator Domenici, I only had one 
problem my entire career with Pete Domenici. That was a time when--I, 
frankly, do not remember whether I was the ranking member of the 
subcommittee or the chairman of the subcommittee because we went back 
and forth often. That was the Energy and Water Subcommittee of 
Appropriations.
  As a relatively young Senator, I had a position of power, and I 
thought what I would do is go and talk to members of that conference 
and get the votes. I did it very quietly. I did not say a word to 
Senator Domenici. I surprised everybody. I called for a vote 
unexpectedly and I won. Senator Domenici did not say a word to me there 
publicly. Well, when that was over, we had a little heart-to-heart 
talk. He said: We have to work together. If we are going to work 
together on this subcommittee, I want to tell you something about how 
we do things in the Senate. We do not surprise each other. If you had a 
problem with that issue, talk to me. If you have the votes, you do not 
need to try to embarrass me publicly, you go ahead and do what you need 
to do.
  I learned a great lesson there. I learned a lesson that can only come 
by someone teaching you, such as when I practiced law. It is not 
pleasant to talk about, but you learn from your mistakes in the 
practice of law. When you make a mistake, you never do that again. As a 
result of the teaching moment I had with Senator Domenici, I never, 
ever did that again. So I appreciate, if for no other reason than that, 
that one experience with Pete Domenici. It made me a better Senator and 
a better person.
  It was very clear that when Senator Domenici realized he would not be 
playing for the New York Yankees, even though he was a good athlete, he 
decided he would become a teacher. Then he went to law school, and 
after graduating, Pete Domenici entered politics. First, he was elected 
to the city commission in Albuquerque. Then he climbed up that ladder 
of local politics and became mayor of Albuquerque and was elected in 
1972 as a young man to the Senate.
  My relationship with Senator Domenici began, my first experience 
coming to the Senate, in 1986. I was very fortunate that year. I was a 
brand-new Senator. I got on the Appropriations Committee. As we now 
know, Senators wait a long time to get on that committee. I was so 
fortunate that Barbara Mikulski and Harry Reid, two brand-new Senators, 
were placed on that committee. From that day, I got to know Pete 
Domenici.
  My experience on the Appropriations Committee goes back to the day 
that John Stennis, the Senator from Mississippi, was chairman of that 
committee. By the time I got to the Senate, he was in very frail 
health. He had been shot in a robbery, he had lost a leg, he had 
cancer. So he was very weak.
  His chief of staff was a man by the name of John Sullivan. He had 
been chief of staff of the Judiciary Committee, Armed Services 
Committee, now the Appropriations Committee. And he called me. After I 
met Senator Stennis, he called me in his office and said to me: Senator 
Reid, you got on the best committee in the entire Senate. He said: You 
can do a lot of good things for your State, but do not be greedy.
  That was a real good lesson for me. I have always tried to follow 
that. Senator Domenici has been someone I have worked with on that 
committee. I did not immediately get on the Energy and Water 
Subcommittee. It takes a while to get on that. That is one of the most

[[Page S10117]]

sought-after committees you can get on in the Appropriations process.
  I worked with Pete Domenici since the first day I have been in the 
Senate but on a very close basis from the time I got on that 
subcommittee. So we worked together on that Energy and Water 
Subcommittee for 22 years. Some of these years Pete was the chairman, 
as I indicated, or I was the ranking member, and other years it was the 
reverse.
  But, frankly, for the two of us, it did not matter which party 
controlled the Chamber. We continued to work for the people of Nevada 
and New Mexico and the country on a bipartisan basis. We have traveled 
the country. We have gone to some of the labs that are so necessary for 
our country's science--Livermore--and the great facilities we have in 
New Mexico--Sandia. I can remember going there so clearly. It was a 
wonderful experience. The two labs in New Mexico are among the best. We 
also traveled to a facility we fund in Missouri.
  Anyway, we have done a lot of things together over the years. In 
addition to that, because of the relationship of the spouses, his 
wonderful wife Nancy and my wife Landra, have become very good friends. 
They are very small people physically but big people in other ways. 
They are both generous, thoughtful, kind wives, mothers and good 
people. They have done a great job of raising our children, and they 
have many conversations about the good and the bad, as all families 
have in raising their children.
  Pete Domenici is now the longest serving U.S. Senator in the history 
of his State, New Mexico. But longevity does not tell the story of 
Domenici's legacy. He has established himself as one of America's 
premier leaders on energy policy, national security, scientific 
research. While I talk about national security, one of the things I am 
very satisfied--I do not want to use the word ``proud''--satisfied that 
Pete Domenici and I worked together on was the safety and security of 
our nuclear arsenal.
  Now, you cannot put these nuclear weapons we have in some storage 
facility and leave them alone. There must be a way of making sure they 
are safe and reliable. We worked for years to accomplish that goal, and 
we have been successful.
  Pete Domenici has been one of the leaders on scientific research 
because of his work on the national labs and fighting nuclear 
proliferation. He has been to the Nevada test site, 90 miles outside 
Las Vegas, on a number of occasions. He has worked hard to ensure the 
competitiveness of American workers in the global marketplace.
  We hope within the next--before this year ends, that we can pass the 
legislation--we have done it here, it has not made it through the 
House--that we can pass the legislation he and Senator Wellstone 
started working on more than 10 years ago. It is no secret that these 
two great individuals, wonderful Senators, did it because they had 
experience in their own families, problems with mental illness.
  As a result of that, they became the experts, the leading advocates 
to do something about mental health parity in our country. If we 
eliminate the work he has done on scientific research, national 
security proliferation, competitiveness, eliminate all that, if he had 
not done that and all he had done is lead us on the road to mental 
health parity, that would have been enough to have a very successful 
career.
  But for the millions of Americans who suffer from mental illness, 
Pete Domenici is the hero. He has joined Senator Kennedy, as I have 
indicated, the late Senator Wellstone, as national champions on issues 
related to mental health.
  So I would hope that one of the last things we do during the year, 
that will be the end of his great Senate career, is figure out a way to 
make sure we get this legislation passed. Senator Domenici made his 
farewell remarks this past Saturday. He described himself as nearly 
incapable of sitting still in a crisis. With these years of service to 
New Mexico and our country, that description fits him perfectly.

  Pete and Nancy have eight wonderful children.
  Now, how can I describe in my words how I feel about Pete Domenici 
leaving? I guess we should, as Dr. Seuss said: ``. . . not cry before 
it's over, smile because it happened.''
  That certainly applies to our relationship: Don't cry before it is 
over, even though there are times when you would like to shed a tear, 
smile because it happened.
  No distance or place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of 
those who are thoroughly persuaded of his work. I am persuaded of the 
work of my friend, Pete Domenici.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise to say thank you to the 
distinguished majority leader for his kind words about my service in 
the Senate with him and my service in the Senate generally. I wish to 
say you have been far too generous in your words. I accept them and 
appreciate them abundantly.
  I also wish to correct one slight error, I was a right-hander, not a 
left-hander. But that is all right. Everything else you said was 
correct.
  Mr. REID. I have described him as left-handed all the time I have 
known him because I did not think we had two right-handed pitchers. I 
thought Bunning was the only right-hander.
  Mr. DOMENICI. My pitch was a very gifted one. I was right handed, but 
the ball broke automatically as if I was pitching left handed. So you 
were close. When you have a right-handed pitcher who throws a certain 
kind of fastball that breaks into the right-handed batter, that is the 
screwball. You go to a lot of trouble throwing a screwball; but mine, I 
did not have to go to a lot of trouble, it did it anyway. I wish there 
were things around here that worked that way, that you did not have to 
work so hard to make something happen. But you have to work here.
  It has been my pleasure to work on many measures, so people will know 
it is not just talk when you say you work in a bipartisan manner--on 
the Appropriations Subcommittee, on Energy and Water, a strange-
sounding title. We have had the task of maintaining the safety of the 
nuclear arsenal. We were given a brandnew approach, this Senator and I, 
to saving and securing our arsenal without testing for the first time.
  So we inherited a job of seeing that nuclear weapons were safe, and 
we were no longer going to test them as we had from their inception. We 
were given a concept called science-based stockpile stewardship. 
Remember those words, Leader? For a long time we had trouble saying 
them, science-based stockpile stewardship.
  That meant we were going to use a scientific manner of assessing what 
was going on inside a nuclear weapon as it matured. We had put together 
a plan, paid for it, and it took a long time. Every national laboratory 
had to have something, as you recall, some piece of this project. We 
are not yet finished with the biggest piece, which is in California, at 
the laboratory there, a gigantic laser facility, multilaser facility 
that will look inside nuclear weapons and see that they are safe.
  But I give you this one example: Two Senators did that. No audiences. 
No television. They were all welcome. It was open. But we went about 
our business. As we moved along, nobody could tell who was chairman and 
who was ranking member. It was a pleasure. I could count on you and you 
could count on me. I do not think we ever once deceived each other.
  Your story about my getting perturbed at you was slightly different 
than it was. You were ranking member and you went to the Republican 
side and got a proxy. What I told you was to never do that again. When 
you get a proxy from a Republican on my side, you have to tell me. And 
you were very apologetic and found out that I was telling you right. We 
never had another word. We never had another situation where proxies 
got mixed up. Republican proxies were sought after by the Republican 
person. If you couldn't get them, you would go somewhere else. But we 
had to have an open hand there and tell each other what was going on. 
That is the way we did it. We told each other the truth. With the truth 
came great things from that subcommittee on which we were totally 
bipartisan.
  We had kept the nuclear arsenal safe enough where those who ran the 
three Laboratories could tell the President every year that the United 
States nuclear arsenal was safe and sound. They

[[Page S10118]]

must do that as a matter of law, you recall.
  I say thank you. I close and say I, too, am sorry about leaving. You 
indicated something about sadness, but I am hopeful things will be all 
right with me, and certainly the Senate will have to continue to be a 
great place.
  As we close, we had this one dialog this morning, and I have the 
chance, before my distinguished Republicans waiting to speak, just to 
say I hope with all the strength of my being that we can put together a 
package that will gather the votes in the House and Senate to put this 
plan, this recovery plan, in place so we are not going to suffer 
irreparable harm for the people by the financial markets falling apart.
  I am so sorry we got started with this concept of calling it a 
bailout. There is nothing to bail out. We are buying assets that are 
stopping up the system. I don't know how that got to be a bailout. You 
buy them and you own something and you sell it later. If you don't buy 
it, the entire system behind those bad assets, which were stuffed into 
the system over a number of years because we sold mortgages that were 
not good mortgages--I wish the people could understand that we are not 
bailing out Wall Street. We are not bailing out anything. We are trying 
to make sure the American financial markets in your own backyard--your 
bank, your savings and loan, all the other things, your payroll 
checks--are going to function under this very fabulous American 
financial system which has some very big kinks in it now. It won't 
work. We have to make it work.
  Again, I thank the majority leader for his comments.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, while both the majority leader and Senator 
Domenici are here, I want to say I appreciate the opening remarks of 
the majority leader today. It is precisely that tone of necessity and 
bipartisanship that will enable us to achieve the result to which 
Senator Domenici referred. I hope to continue in that same vein with 
some comments I will make in a moment.
  If I could turn to Senator Domenici, the majority leader pointed out 
several of the things that have been commented upon before regarding 
Senator Domenici's leadership. I want to focus on two other things 
briefly. The majority leader spoke to his leadership on matters 
relating to the preservation of our great National Laboratory assets, 
two of which are located in New Mexico. He referred to Senator 
Domenici's leadership on mental health reform, on nuclear power; that 
is to say, our production of electricity on which Senator Domenici has 
worked so hard. I don't recall if he mentioned all of the budget reform 
that Senator Domenici put in when he was chairman of the committee, but 
we are certainly all aware of that.
  I would like to briefly mention two others, to express appreciation 
to Senator Domenici for his help in achieving one of the landmark 
Indian water settlements in the history of the country related to 
Arizona a couple of years ago. Without his help, that wouldn't have 
been possible. And I want to indicate something that probably not a lot 
of folks are aware of, but people in New Mexico will become aware of, 
that Senator Domenici has worked hard to lay the foundation for an 
equally historic water settlement for New Mexico. Unfortunately, that 
will not be completed before the end of Senator Domenici's service, but 
it will not be completed without the foundation he helped to lay.
  Finally, something that has happened recently that only his 
Republican colleagues would be familiar with, but in these last several 
weeks in which we have confronted this financial crisis, several 
leaders have risen to accept the challenge of leadership. Senator 
Domenici is one of those. Perhaps because he had been here a long time, 
had the respect of his colleagues, always spoke thoughtfully on these 
issues, it would be expected that he would perhaps rise to that 
leadership role. I know in our Republican conference during the 
meetings we have had to discuss this, and others, it was frequently the 
case that Senator Domenici stood and thoughtfully and quietly expressed 
the words that only very respected leaders can speak. He did that on 
one occasion to bridge a gap between two groups of Republicans, to 
compliment one group and to demonstrate how we all could work together 
to restore confidence to our markets. He has done that subsequently in 
a thoughtful and, I even suggest, profound way.
  I have heard Senator Domenici speak eloquently before, but I have 
never heard him speak more eloquently than when he has been addressing 
this crisis. It allows us to return to the proposition that as this 
great Senator nears the end of his service in the Senate for the people 
of New Mexico and the people of America, he is joining together in a 
bipartisan way to work on a problem of great significance to the 
people. He has done everything he can.
  I know when he leaves, he will be able to say he did everything he 
could do--and he did it well. I appreciate his service. I have 
appreciated the personal relationship we have had, the friendship we 
have had, his assistance to me. I know that will continue even though 
he and Nancy will not be here in the Senate. But we will be close, 
since we are neighbors in the great Southwest. I join the remarks of 
the distinguished majority leader and compliment my friend for his 
years of service to the people of this country.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I once again thank my friend from 
Arizona. He has given me far too much credit, but I appreciate it. I 
have tried to understand the significance of this agreement. I only 
wish that every Member had the luxury of understanding it because I 
don't think they do. I don't think some do. I wish far more that the 
millions of Americans who are writing their Congressmen saying this 
bailout should fail, it is no good, it doesn't help me, I wish they 
would understand the way I have been privileged to understand. I want 
them to know it didn't come easy.
  The first couple of days I didn't understand, maybe the first 3 days. 
It looked to me like it was all crazy and wild and it would never work 
and what were we trying to fix. It turns out I finally got it.
  Once I did, there was no citizen who could write to me and say I 
shouldn't vote for this because it is bad because I would have to call 
them and tell them they didn't understand. That is why I am talking to 
you. I hope some additional citizens hear us.
  If they say: Why should he be telling us we don't understand, I am 
telling you, citizens, you don't understand if you are against this on 
the basis that it bails out Wall Street. There is no bail out. If it 
bails out nothing, how can it bailout Wall Street? It buys something. 
We will agree to that, right, it will buy something. But the something 
it is buying is an asset that is clogging up the financial rivers of 
America because they are toxic. They are not good mortgages. If you 
don't buy them up, they will continue to clog it up.

  So, citizens, turn some of your Members loose whom you are holding 
hostage by telegram and phone call to allegations that are not correct, 
that are untrue. If we continue to have our citizens believe them and 
thus lead our Members into not permitting this vote to occur with a 
majority vote, we are going to do irreparable harm to a system that 
brings us the luxury of America, the luxuries of everyday life, the 
luxuries of buying so many things which come from a financial system, 
the luxury of buying cars that come from a financial system. Nothing is 
paid for in cash today.
  I don't want to offend the few people who do pay in cash. Some people 
pay in cash, but 99.9 percent of every transaction has some credit in 
it. If it has some credit in it, it is not going to work a couple of 
weeks from now because it has fallen apart.
  I wish when we started it off we would have huddled and said: How do 
we talk about this? They are still using the phraseology ``bailout'' 
this morning. In fact, some are saying ``the bailout,'' but then they 
say: But it isn't a bailout. But they started by saying it is a 
bailout. So we have citizens all over the place telling House Members 
who are running for office--and I don't blame them--don't vote for the 
bailout.
  I have taken these few minutes. I probably won't come back to the 
floor this morning. I hope not. I have burdened the Senate enough. I 
have bothered you enough. You just came down

[[Page S10119]]

to say a few words. Here I got up and said it all over again. What I 
didn't do, I say to the Senator from Tennessee, I didn't use the 
metaphor about a superhighway.
  Mr. KYL. I will use that.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I dreamt it up with my staff, and it is pretty darn 
good. That is one where what you are going to say, if the American 
people are telling their Congressmen that this is a bailout, if they 
listen to you, they will find out there is no bailout. They will find 
out there are some broken down cars in the middle of the road, and they 
have to be moved.
  In any event, let me say one other thing about your mentioning my 
activities and just say to you, a number of things I have done lately I 
could not have done without your help and your leadership. I want to 
tell you one of them because it is a good one--I will be gone, and you 
need to stand up for it; if you have to filibuster, you have to--that 
is opening all of the offshore of America for drilling for natural gas 
and crude oil.
  If the new President or the majority tries to reinstate those 
moratoria, I am saying thanks for helping me who started that thing. I 
got it started with a little bill because my staff and I said: What is 
the biggest thing we need. And we needed that so we put it in. Then, 
thanks to this leader, we made the bill grow. Then it grew, and then 
the people bought it. That is how it happened. The people said: Drill, 
drill, drill.
  Don't let it go away when I am gone. I am just asking you. You are a 
good filibusterer, so do it. The first time they want to close up some 
of that, and the first one will be California, you tell them to get an 
estimate of how many billions California will get if they start that. 
Then you ask that Governor: How would you like to have a gift for your 
people over the next 10 years, 15 years of, say, for California, maybe 
$12 billion. They may fall over out of a chair if you told them that, 
and that might be the case. I don't know the number. I am just telling 
you it is big.
  With that, I say thanks. It is nice being here again with you.

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