On the recordFebruary 15, 2018
I am grateful to my colleague from Tennessee for yielding to me. One of the reasons Howard Baker was one of the great leaders in this place is he had good staff, and one of those folks, who was maybe the senior member of his staff lo those many years ago, was Lamar Alexander, now Senator Alexander. Howard Baker would be very proud of the kind of Senator he has become--a great Governor, Secretary of Education. He is someone who speaks, more often than not, with great wisdom. He and I agree on not everything but pretty much everything. I am mister glass half full. My wife says to me that I need to be more of a realist. She says I am too much of an optimist. I am not an optimist today. I feel like we leave here--get on a train, go home-- feeling like we have not done our job. The Senator from Tennessee has said that the President did his job, but I just don't agree. I just don't agree. He served as Governor; I served as Governor. if we had an impasse on a difficult issue in Delaware--we are lucky; we are a small state--we can pull people together to resolve just about anything and figure out what we call the four c's. One of those is close to Delaware. No. 1 is communicate. No. 2 is compromise. No. 3 is collaborate. No. 4 is civility. Those are the four c's. That is the reason why we had some success in our State. I am not sure we really demonstrated enough of those today. I am not sure the President did as much as he could have done and should have done.…





