Bill Bennett: “we are all going to miss the Senator from Arkansas. He is a good friend, and I use that in the honest term, rather than…”

“we are all going to miss the Senator from Arkansas. He is a good friend, and I use that in the honest term, rather than the kind of puffery that often goes on around here. He takes the floor twice a year to espouse things with which I disagree. First, he wants to do things to the mining law that I don't want to do. And then he wants to kill the space station in a way that I don't want it killed. So I vote against him on both of these occasions, but I look forward to these because he keeps us honest with his concerns. He has not yet convinced me to back away from my commitment to the space station, but I pay tribute to his tenacity and to his integrity. I have answered at some length in previous debates. I will not take the time to do that now. I simply repeat, again, my commitment to the idea of venturing into the unknown even when it seems expensive and sometimes foolish, because we are never quite sure what we are going to find. But, almost always, it comes back to benefit us. As I stand here I am reminded of the quote, I can't give it to you exactly, of the historian who said: History is a chancy thing. America was discovered by someone who was heading for somewhere else, thought he had arrived someplace other than he had, and was named after a man who never came here. History is like that, chancy. We are never quite sure what is going to happen to us, but great things happen to us when we explore. We are launched on this exploration now.…”