Dick Lugar: “I rise to honor my good friend and our distinguished colleague, Joe Biden, who will be ending his remarkable Senate…”

“I rise to honor my good friend and our distinguished colleague, Joe Biden, who will be ending his remarkable Senate career to assume the office of the Vice President of the United States. It has been my great privilege to serve with Joe Biden in the Senate for 32 years. He and I have served together on the Foreign Relations Committee for all of the 30 years that I have been a member of that panel. He entered the Senate as the sixth youngest person ever elected to this body, having been elected at age 29 and seated soon after he reached the constitutionally required 30 years of age. He leaves as the longest serving Senator in the history of his State and the 14th longest serving Senator in U.S. history. He has cast more Senate votes than all but nine other Senators in history. Joe Biden comes from a modest Irish-Catholic background. He started out in Scranton, PA, where his father was a used car salesman and his mother was a homemaker. The oldest of four children, Joe and his family moved to Claymont, DE, where his father had found a better job. It may be hard for many to believe today, but as a teenager, Joe had trouble speaking because he had a stutter. But showing the grit and determination we all have come to know, he undertook to give a speech to his entire school as a way to force himself to overcome his impediment. At the University of Delaware, he majored in history and political science, and he received a law degree from Syracuse University.”