Barney Frank: “I join my colleague in thanking the majority leader for really speaking, I think, on behalf of the whole House in his…”

“I join my colleague in thanking the majority leader for really speaking, I think, on behalf of the whole House in his very personal eloquent statement. We will have to be forgiven, those of us who do this as a profession, because, to be honest, we are all reacting personally in these last couple of days. Joe Moakley had enormous benefits to the country, to this institution, to the city and the State, but for us also the personal was there. We could not come into this Chamber on the worst of days, having encountered all kinds of unpleasantness, and not have our spirits uplifted by sitting with Joe. There was no way that anyone could fail in his presence to be cheered. And for that personal element, even in this time of trial for him, he has been cheering the rest of us up. Typical of this really quite extraordinary man. I also want to talk about another aspect in which he is extraordinary. He is a great stereotype breaker. One of the things we suffer from in this country is this assumption that if we are A, we cannot be B; if we are X, we cannot be Y. Joe Moakley showed us that we could be.”