Bill Bennett: “I wish to pay appropriate tribute to the senior Senator from New York, Mr. Moynihan, on the occasion of his retirement.…”

“I wish to pay appropriate tribute to the senior Senator from New York, Mr. Moynihan, on the occasion of his retirement. I first met Pat Moynihan when I was serving in the Nixon administration. He was then a member of the White House staff. I was serving in the Department of Transportation. He was the President's primary enforcer, if you will, of improvements and efficiencies in the executive branch, particularly in domestic departments. We at the Department of Transportation were a little bit in awe, if not in terror, of the thought of Pat Moynihan showing up and checking on us to make sure we were doing things right. I remember one meeting in the White House where we were outlining what we wanted to do, that which I considered to be fairly bold, and listening to Moynihan saying: Well, in a Republican administration, this is probably about the best you could expect. He wanted us to be considerably bolder than we were. He wanted to go into directions of new initiatives that would have been very good for the country.”