Senator Kennedy News Update

26.8.09

Vice-President's Remarks

Vice President Joe Biden diverged from planned remarks at an Energy Department event to talk at length -- fighting tears the whole time -- about his friend and colleague of many decades in the Senate.

"I truly, truly am distressed by his passing," Biden said haltingly. "You know, Teddy spent a lifetime working for a fair and more just America. For 36 years, I had the privilege of going to work every day and sitting next to him and being witness to history. ... He restored my sense of idealism."

"He was never defeatist," Biden said. "He never was petty. Never was petty. He was never small. And in the process of his doing, he made everybody he worked with bigger, both his adversaries, as well as his allies ... He changed the circumstances of tens of millions of Americans and in a literal sense literally, literally. he changed the circumstances ... not only the physical circumstances, he changed how they looked at themselves and how they looked at one another." Later he added, "The unique thing about Teddy was he was never about him. It was always about you. It was never about him."

(The Huffington Post)


Senator Byrd wants health bill renamed for Kennedy

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the only senator to have served longer than the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), mourned his friend Wednesday, saying his "heart and soul weeps."

Byrd said he hoped healthcare reform legislation in the Senate would be renamed in memoriam of Kennedy.

"I had hoped and prayed that this day would never come," Byrd said in a statement. "My heart and soul weeps at the lost of my best friend in the Senate, my beloved friend, Ted Kennedy."

Byrd's wistful statement focused on the work accomplished with Kennedy during decades together in the Senate, and called on the healthcare bill before Congress to be renamed in honor of Kennedy.

"In his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on health care reform which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every American," Byrd said.

Byrd, who has himself suffered infirmities keeping him from active participation in the Senate in recent months, famously wept when his younger colleague Kennedy fell ill with brain cancer last year.

Those emotions were again on display in Byrd's statement this morning.

"God bless his wife Vicki, his family, and the institution that he served so ably, which will never be the same without his voice of eloquence and reason," Byrd said. "And God bless you Ted. I love you and will miss you terribly."

(The Hill)

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