On the recordJanuary 10, 2024
Mr. President, I am going to be brief. I decided this morning that I wanted to come and talk about the events involving Secretary Austin and what we now know are his challenges with prostate cancer. I want to look at it from two different perspectives. One, I want to be very brief. I think that Secretary Austin made a mistake by not notifying Members of Congress and by not notifying the administration--in other words, moving through the transition. I think that was a mistake, and I hope Secretary Austin has learned from that. But I am not here to talk about that. That was just a mistake. It shouldn't have been made, particularly in the circumstances we are in now with conflicts in Israel, conflicts in Ukraine, threats across the world, and threats to this country. I am here to talk about this because it was 2 years ago this month that I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I made a decision very quickly after I learned about it. It took me about a month. I had gone to my doctor for my annual checkup. You always check your PSA. I found out in probably the September-October timeframe that my PSA was up. I went back for a followup exam through the Christmas holiday. Then, in the first or second week of January 2021, my doctor said: You have prostate cancer, and you need to take some course of action. And there are several different courses of action, but I made the immediate decision to be public with the fact that I was going through prostate cancer.…





