Alexander last week. Lamar is the perfect example of what a United States senator should be. Before i was wet behind wet behs in the senate, my first week here, lamar invited me and my wife jill to dinner. There it began, jill and lamars wife honey became fast friends and lamar and i built the kind of friendship that is essential in the senate. We worked together to get things done for our states, bolstering our National Laboratories and conserving our great outdoors. Something else we shared was mario, our barber in the barber shop and to be honest, that is the best place to learn about the senate, sitting in marios chair. Friendships like i have with lamar and mario is what i will miss most about the senate, the friendships. And because as any good senator will tell you, friendships are what gets you over the finish line. I will cherish the friendships i forged over the last 12 years, i will miss serving the people of new mexico and congress, the greatest honor of my life has been doing that. And im confident that new mexico is in good hands with my friend senator heinrich, my great partner over the last eight years, his dedicated advocacy for our communities, his love of the land and all of that through all of that martin has been an inspiration, with senatorelect Ben Ray Luhan who will fight for new mexico families every single day in the senate. I will miss the righteous struggle we take up in these halls to build a more perfect union, and i will miss all of you, my staff, colleagues, and everyone who works around the clock, the Unsung Heroes who keep the senate running, people like john, leigh, and marianne, all of the folks that are here in front of you. You know, there are too many to thank. First and foremost, i thank my staff. Every senator here knows were only as good as the people on our team, and my friend as my friend Patrick Leahy says, we senators are often a constitutional impediment to the staff. Over the years i have been blessed with staffers who are full of talent, skill, drive, and heart. Madam president , i dont want to leave anyone out, and so i ask to enter into the record all of my staff who have been part of team udall and i want to say thank you to each of you for your hard work, Public Service and your commitment. And i want to thank my family. To my parents, stuart and leigh udall who instilled in me the will to do good and to be good. And to my brothers and sisters, my sister laurie, who is here, and my cousins who have supported me throughout my three decades in elected office. Thank you to our daughter amanda, my forever campaign manager, and our soninlaw, judge jim, just recently a judge in new mexico, for their constant love and support. And most importantly, thank you to my brilliant and beautiful partner of 42 years, jill cooper udall. Jill has been my rock. Shes been my chief counsel, shes been my everything and i couldnt have asked for a better partner to have this Public Service adventure and its truly been an advent ewe for this adventure for this son of the west. For after 20plus years its time for me to go back home. As the Great Western writer Wallace Stegner wrote, it is not an unusual life curve for westerners to live and to be shaped by the bigness, the sparseness, space, clarity and hopefulness of the west, to go away for study and enlargement and perspective that distance and dissatisfaction can give and then to return to what pleases the sight and enlist the loyalty and demands the commitment. Stagner said that we fall into two categories. Were either boomers or stickers. Boomers pillage and run, stickers are motivated by affection, by such a love for place and its life that they want to preserve it and remain in it. And im telling you here today, im a sticker. Im also an optimist, and i want to be more accurate. Im a troubled optimist. I tried to open my eyes to the challenges we faced while never losing conviction in our ability to meet those challenges. As the scientist Rachel Carson said, one way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, what if i had never seen this before . What if i knew i would never see it again . I believe this nation has arrived at a moment what we are opening our eyes to the enormous challenges before us and also to their solutions. Our planet is in crisis, facing mass extinction and climate change, our people are in crisis, ravaged by a pandemic that has laid bayer the inect bare the inequities. We cannot solve onethese one of these crises without solving the other. And thats why im troubled. But all i have to do to be optimistic is look around, look around me. I look at the young people across this country who are calling for change, for climate action, for voting rights, and for immigrant rights, for economic and environmental and Racial Justice. Theyve held sitins in my office, probably yours too, and they are demanding that we do better and their determination gives me hope. And im optimistic as i look back on the small acts of kindness and the big acts of progress that define my time in the congress. I believe that there are lessons in these accomplishments. Now, you may know me as someone who wants to reform the filibuster, but to be clear, ive always supported the talking filibuster. So if you will inculling me, and indulge me, and by the rules of the senate, you have to. You can leave but i get to keep talking, id like to talk about a few of the highlights of my career and what i learned from them. As you know protecting americas outdoor treasures is a cause close to my heart. Its something of a family project. My family homesteaded in the west almost 180 years ago, and like generations of udalls before me, i grew up with a special connection to the land, to the gorgeous, untamed beauty of the west, to the 60mile vistas, snowkoaferred mountain covered mountains, lakes and wildlife. Mitt romney knows this. Our greatgrandfather settled the same small western community. S tagner called the west the geography of hope. It inspired me. Thats why im so proud of what we accomplished together to conserve our natural heritage. On the appropriations committee, we worked together for resources for public lands and Environmental Protection on a bipartisan basis. In the face of massive proposed cuts and weve held off antienvironmental riders that have no place in these bills. Thank you to my friend, lisa murkowski, who has been the best partner i could ask for this work. In new mexico where public lands are central to our way of life, weve had enormous success on locking tens of thousands of acres of enchanted land for all of us to enjoy and for martin to hunt on every now and then. Each of these efforts was collaborative and Community Driven and that collaborative work culminated in one of the biggest conservation victories in american history, the passage of the Great American outdoors act. Thanks to the determination of a grassroots coalition, and many champions here in congress, we got this bill over the finish line. For the first time weve realized the stroms of the land promise of the land and Water Conservation fund. The promise my father envisioned 55 years ago almost 55 years when he helped create our nations most successful conservation program. After more than 20 years of fighting for this in congress, im thrilled we got it done and we got it done together together. The law is a model for how conservation and economic recovery go hand in hand. It will help us achieve the urgent goal of protecting 30 of our lands and waters by 2030. Enacting the Great American outdoors act at a time of immense division is a tremendous feat and it tells us a lot about what were capable of. It tells us that conservation is popular, a political winner, Environmental Protection can be an area of cooperative action. It must be if you if humanity is to survive and prosper. As i talk about my love of the land i cannot neglect to acknowledge how much i learned from the original stew warts of this stewards of this land, native american people. I fought along many who have hurt and died and they have been hurt by this nation by our Nuclear Weapons program. My work as vice chair of the Indian Affairs committee has been the honor of my lifetime, and another area where this committee has achieved bipartisan progress. I thank my chairman, senator hoeven and senator barrasso for their partnership and friendship. We worked together as a committee for Better Health care, education, housing and urgently needed resources for native american communities, especially as they battle this pandemic. The federal governments obligation to uphold its trust and treaty obligations is sacred. Some of my proudest achievements have been the result of working with tribal leaders to advance indian countrys priorities to support miew annexations new mexicos 23 tribes. Recently we passed legislation for tribal selfgovernor unanimous, to provide governance to secure investments in language revitalization. The achievements i remember most fondly are those we did together. Indeed those are the only kinds of achievements that are possible in this body. Take the Frank Lautenberg chemical safety for the 21st century act, our landmark reform of the toxic substances control act. It was the biggest environmental reform in a generation. I was proud to lead that effort to protect our families from toxic chemicals. It was hard work and it took years. But if you can get a project where jim inhofe and ed markey are working for the same goal, you can get a lot done around here. Its another example of how friendships get you over the finish line. My friendship with david vitter, my partner on tsca reform was sort of like ted kennedy and or run hatchs friend and orrin hatchs friendship, a political odd couple. Me the son of mormon pioneers, david a son of new or liens, two or liens, two different political backgrounds and different views on the big problems before us. But i will never forget the dinner we had after Frank Lautenberg passed away when we decided to take on tsca reform. We looked at each other after that dinner and shook hands and said, were going to get this done. And we did. It passed the senate unanimously. We agreed there was a problem. We found Common Ground on a solution. Thats still possible in the senate. But i didnt come here to just list accomplishments. You can check my twitter feed to see if you want to see more of that. I do want to share some final thoughts about challenges our nation faces before i leave the senate. I believe that for all of us here, Public Service is a calling. It certainly is for me. In my life ive had the privilege of learning from many dedicated servants. One of them was senator john mccain. Senator mccain was a friend to me and a friend to my family. When john first came to the house, my uncle mo, big uncle mo, 6 feet 5 took him under his wing. John did the same for me and worked together on issues Like Campaign finance reform, native american issues, and others. John often said to me, we disagree in politics but not in life. Lets remember that. We disagree in politics but not in life. My great grandfather helped settle st. Johns, a small farming and cattle community on the arizonanew mexico border in the 1880s. He had an embroidery that hang on his frontier home that read, if the good folks dont get into politics, the scowndz drells will take the scoundrels will take over. I believe there are a lot of good folks here in the senate, but the system were caught in makes it too hard to Work Together, to remember that we we need to remember that we disagree in politics but not in life. And im not the first to say in a farewell address and i wont be the last but the senate is broken. The senate is broken. And its not working for the american people. We are becoming better and better political warriors. Were good at landing a punch, at exposing the hypocrisy and ruling each other up and rialing each other up but were not fostering our better angels, our peacemaking skills are at friday if iing. Every hurt takes time to heal and each time we hurt each other, it sets us back. But unfortunately the structures we have built reward us for hurting one another. We need to reform those structures or well never make progress. Make that progress we need to make. Ive proposed senate rules changes when i was in the minority and when i was in the majority to make sure this institution does not remain a graveyard for progress. The founders did not envision a senate requiring 60 votes to act. The filibuster came to be through historical accident. And it is now woven into the institutional framework. The promise of the filibuster is that the majority will find Common Ground with the minority. But the reality of the filibuster is paralysis, a deep paralysis. On top of this we have a Campaign Finance system that is out of control. John mccain told you that over and over again. And he called money the cancer growing on our democracy. And john mccain knew a lot about cancer. Secret money floods campaigns to buy influence instead of letting the voters speak. Voting rights are under attack. We can do our best to be good people in a system like that, but its no surprise that americas faith in government is declining. These structures are antidemocratic. They reward extremism. They punish compromise. Our government is supposed to respond to the will of the majority while protecting the rights of the minority. Instead we have the tyranny of the minority. That tyranny is super wealthy, politically powerful, and dangerously out of touch with the american people. The majority americans support pandemic relief, health care for every american, action on global warming, Racial Justice and police reform, and so many other priorities that dont see much progress in the senate. People are losing their faith in the system rightfully so. We have to do something to fix this. If we are to take bold action necessary to tackle the urgent problems before us, we must reform our democracy. We must make it easier to vote. We must end the dominance of big money, and we must root out corruption. And we do not have any time to waste. We have no choice but to be bold. Because the crises before us demand bravery. Hundreds of thousands of americans are dead from a pandemic, a pandemic that this administration haskell lousily ignored, a consequence of its continued rejection of science. In new mexico weve surpassed 108 cases of, over 1,700 are dead and tens of thousands have lost their jobs. Meanwhile, our nation is facing dual climate and nature crises of epic proportions. Earlier this year much of the American West was engulfed in wildfire as an arid state new mexico is in the crosshairs of climate change. We lose a football fields worth of nature every 30 seconds. A million species are at risk of extinction because of human activity. Our planets life support system is under threat. A as as the Climate Crisis worsens, ecosystems are destroyed. As ecosystems are destroyed, we emit more harmful greenhouse gases. We cannot solve one crisis without solving the other. Protecting nature is about protecting humanity. Its just that simple. And marginalized communities, communities of color, lowincome communities and Indigenous People are bearing the worst consequences of the environmental destruction and pollution caused by the rich and powerful. We have the power to solve these crises, the power and the obligation. All it takes is clear eyes and political will. And remembering that we may disagree in politics but not in the future that we want for our children. When i was a young man, i spent the summer of 1969 in the mountains of colorado teaching students wilderness skills. Each night we would look up and open our eyes to the moon that seemed impossibly far away. Im reminded of rachel cashsons carsons wortsdz. One words. One way so open your eyes is to ask. What if i had never seen this before. When we emerge from the wilderness, we learned what apollo 11 had achieved. We had landed on the moon, the moon that seemed so impossibly far away. We should never forget that we can do, we, all of us can do the impossible when we open our eyes to the challenge and Work Together to meet it. So i return home to the west so as i return home to the west, i am cleareyed about, even troubled by how farway our des far away our destination is but i am optimistic that we will get there like we always have. The presiding officer the senator from colorado. Mr. Gardner thank you, madam president. Thank you to the people of colorado for this incredible honor youve lent to me these last six years to serve you in the United States senate. Thank you to my fame jamie, mom and dad and lisa who supported me this last decade of service with your love and