Mr. President, I was fortunate early in my political life to meet several people who became my heroes and mentors and led me to take up public service as my life's calling. The first was a Senator from Illinois named Paul Douglas, and I met him when I was a college intern in his office. And he introduced me to a man named Paul Simon; Simon, who was a Lieutenant Governor in our State, State legislator, Congressman, and, ultimately, the Senator who preceded me in this Senate seat. After Paul Simon passed away, I approached his family and talked about a tribute to him, and they basically said: Well, you remember Paul. He would have been the last person in the world who ever wanted a statue and really didn't care much about having anything with his name on it. That just wasn't his approach to politics. But I thought to myself there were some things that he valued that maybe I can try to help in my own way in his memory. And one of them was in 2014, when I introduced a bill called the Paul Simon Water for the World Act. Simon had written a book that didn't make the New York Times best seller list. It was entitled ``Tapped Out.'' He had a theory many years ago that the issue with the 21st century was going to be water. And he made a pretty convincing case, and, frankly, the events and evidence since then have backed him up.…
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