John Kerry: “I appreciate my colleagues' patience. I hope we will all have a chance to pay tribute. As the majority leader has just…”

“I appreciate my colleagues' patience. I hope we will all have a chance to pay tribute. As the majority leader has just said, and as we have learned in wonderful stories across the country over the course of the last weeks, my senior colleague and our good friend and colleague to all of us on both sides of the aisle celebrated his 70th birthday on February 22, last week, while we were out of session. But he also records a rather remarkable milestone together with a birthday. It is not only a celebration of 70 years of life, but it is also the milestone of 40 years of service to the State of Massachusetts and to his country here in the Senate. He started his career by setting an extraordinarily high standard in the very beginning because it was when he reached the minimal constitutional age of 30 that he first came to the Senate--one of only 16 people in the history of the Senate to reach this institution at that early and tender age. What we celebrate today, Democrats and Republicans alike, is not only the awe we have for his lifetime of achievement but really the way in which literally almost every single year that Senator Kennedy has been here there has been a milestone piece of legislation that has passed either with his significant support and input or with his outright leadership.”