On the recordOctober 21, 2015
I thank Congressman Scott for those wonderful words. We have quite a number of California Members as well as others who have asked for their statements to be put in the Record, as our time is expiring at this point, but I just would like to make a couple of final comments. We have talked about Don Edwards' legislative record, but it really was rooted in his values. He was someone who cared about people who didn't have enough, and when he rewrote the Bankruptcy Act, he was thinking about working people who couldn't actually make ends meet. When the service workers in the House were laid off every time the House recessed and without any ability to actually have a paycheck, the one person they sought for help was Congressman Don Edwards. I remember lobbyists came in to lobby in favor of discrimination against women, and I was on his staff. He said, ``Well, let me call in the young lawyer I rely on for this.'' When I walked in, that was sort of the end of the conversation. He lived a long time. He changed this world for the better. We loved him greatly. The fact that so many people went out to California to help him--former staffers, people like Jim Copeland and Debbie McFarland, who actually went out to make sure he had what he needed-- was a tribute to the kind of person he was. As has been mentioned, he was very liberal, but he got along with people who were very conservative.…
