On the recordDecember 12, 2014
I rise to talk about Senator Harkin. As the soon-to-be Chairman of the HELP Committee, Senator Alexander is right about the HELP Committee, it is an important committee. Sometimes I say it is not that important unless you care about your health, your kids' health, your parents' health, your kids' education or your education, if you want to work sometime in your life, and you plan to retire. Other than that, it is not very important. But I want to talk a little bit about Tom Harkin, not as a Senator but as a staffer. We have seen today when the Senators give their final speeches, they talk about their staff. Tom came in 1969 as a staffer for Neal Smith from Iowa. The staffers, as much as we treasure our staffers, they love this work for their Member and they love working in this institution, and they love working in Congress--at that point he was in the House. So at this point he is, I believe, 29 or 30 years old. This was during the Vietnam war, and there was something called Vietnamization. President Nixon asked a congressional delegation to go to Vietnam to look at how Vietnamization was working and what was going on. While Tom Harkin was there as a staffer, a couple of Congressmen were told about some conditions on an island called Con Son where there were prisoners that the South Vietnamese Government was abusing very badly.…
