Thomas Daschle: “I would like to say farewell to a wonderful group of young men and women who have served as Senate pages over the last 5…”

“I would like to say farewell to a wonderful group of young men and women who have served as Senate pages over the last 5 months and thank them for the contributions they make to the day-to-day operations of the Senate. This particular group of pages has served with distinction and has done a marvelous job of balancing their responsibilities to their studies and to this body. Their final day as Senate pages is tomorrow, but I hope we will see some--or all--of them back in the Senate someday, as staffers or Senators. I suspect few people understand how hard Senate pages work. On a typical day, pages are in school by 6:15 a.m. After several hours of classes each morning, pages then report to the Capitol to prepare the Senate Chamber for the day's session. Throughout the day--and sometimes into the night--pages are called upon to perform a wide array of tasks--from obtaining copies of documents and reports for Senators to use during debate, to running errands between the Capitol and the Senate office buildings, to lending a hand at our weekly conference luncheons. Once we finish our business here for the day--no matter what time-- the pages return to the dorm and prepare for the next day's classes and Senate session and, we hope, get some much-needed sleep. Despite this rigorous schedule, these young people continually discharge their tasks efficiently and cheerfully. In fact, as one page put it, ``We like working hard.…”