Johnny Isakson: “I thank Senator Alexander for the recognition and for joining with Senator Blunt in this colloquy. As I was listening to…”

“I thank Senator Alexander for the recognition and for joining with Senator Blunt in this colloquy. As I was listening to you talk, I thought back to what happened in my family Sunday night. I want to start my remarks with that. My wife Dianne and I went to my son Kevin and his wife Katherine's house to cook out hamburgers on Sunday night. Three of my nine grandchildren were there: Elizabeth, Sarah Katherine, and William. Elizabeth had arrived late, by the way, because she had been at a birthday party, the theme of which was dressing their American Girl dolls. When Elizabeth finally got home, she sat down by me and she said: Grandpa, I want to talk to you. She calls me ``Pops.'' I want to talk to you about my American Girl doll and some accessories that I want to buy. So she went over with me how much money it would take to buy the accessories and how much money she made for her chores. We sat down and kind of budgeted how many chores it is going to take to make the amount of money she needs to buy the American Girl doll accessories. Riding home that night I commented to my wife: You know, I just spent more time talking about budgeting and appropriating with my granddaughter than I have spent the entire year in the Senate. This morning I was with Bud Peterson, the president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and you can identify with this as a former president of the University of Tennessee, and Senator Blunt, the former president of Southwest Baptist University.…”