Political Quotes

“I rise today to honor the career of my longtime chief of staff, staff director of the Democratic staff on the Senate Banking Committee, former staff director for Republicans on the HELP Committee, and my good friend Mark Powden. Mark is the model of a public servant and of a Senate staffer. He spent decades serving in these Halls, first for Senator Jeffords, and then, in 2007, he joined my office, becoming my chief of staff less than 2 years later. I was a brandnew Senator. I still had a lot to learn. There were few better teachers in this institution and this city than Mark Powden. He helped steer our office in its early days, setting up a well-oiled machine, I would like to think, that would serve Ohioans at home and advocate for them in Washington. Under Mark's leadership, we delivered results for the 12 million people in Ohio. When the country wanted to write off the American auto industry, we said no. We weren't going to abandon this industry and millions of American workers--literally hundreds of thousands in Ohio. Mark was passionate about making sure we got the best deal possible for Ohio workers. It wasn't just auto workers. Mark took over the job as chief of staff in my office during the depths of the recession around the time President Obama took office, after the economy was tanking with a loss of 800,000 jobs a month at the end of the Bush administration. Ohio had lost 423,000 jobs over a 2-year period--nearly 8 percent of the jobs in the State.…”