Frank Lautenberg: “I wish to take a couple of minutes to salute the service of one great Senator, Chris Dodd. Chris and I have served…”

“I wish to take a couple of minutes to salute the service of one great Senator, Chris Dodd. Chris and I have served together for more than 25 years. When I arrived here--and I was not one of the youngest people to get here at that time, but Chris was someone I knew from other walks of life--I turned to him, as well as my dear friend who used to occupy this seat, Ted Kennedy, for advice and counsel. Sometimes the counseling was better than the advice, but we were younger then. Chris Dodd has that incredible personality that gets things done, that presents a leadership position on issues. He has shown incredible patience in the way he dealt with financial reform and with health care. But never, as I saw it, did Chris leave the people who disagreed with him with anger, with a feeling of anger or with anything other than respect and friendship. Chris comes from a distinguished family. His father occupied a seat here for a dozen years. Now Senator Chris Dodd has decided to leave the Senate. It was a decision he made with which I totally disagreed. It was bad judgment, I can tell my colleagues that.”