I love solving problems for folks in wyoming and america. I like working on legislation. It might shock those who know me, but i never intended to get into politics. While i always had Great Respect for those who serve in public office, it wasnt my calling when i left college. But over 50 years ago i joined the young mens leadership Training Group known as the j jaycees. At a convention in cody i spoke with the value of leadership in communities. And al simpson would go on to serve years in the state senate. After i gave my pitch, senator simpson did his usual fascinating and humorous speech and then took me aside and said, i dont even know what party youre in, but its time your put your money where your mouth is on this leadership stuff and get into politics. At the time gillet needs a mayor. My wife diana and i had moved to gillette a few years earlier. The town was facing a crisis as the discovery of oil, gas and coal turned it into a boomtown. The population start today skyrocket and City Services were not keeping up. On the way home from that cody meeting while my wife was driving, i told her what senator simpson had said and that i was thinking maybe i should run for mayor. And it must have come to quite a shot. She ended up serving into the pit and coming back onto the road. Ween we ended up talking about it seriously for the four hours it took to drive back to gillette and a lot of things needed to be done to make a difference for the town. I was new to the community, 29 years old, but i thought that gel let was in need of budget agendas and planning. Not the most exciting topics on any peoples attention. I ran anyway and i did win. Nearly five decades later, having served as mayor, having served in the state house, having served in the as a state senator, and then as a u. S. Senator, i still find myself motivated by the urge to help my community and my country. I also find myself still pushing those same three ideas that i did when i first ran for mayor, budgets, agendas and planning. I keep finding myself wanting to help solve problems. Once you embrace that responsibility, its hard to ever ignore it again. I have found that many of my colleagues in congress tend to feel the same way. The senate is a very different place than when i arrived in 1997. And its a very different place than it was in 1789 when the very first senate met, but over all of those years its been a place for folks rising to the challenge of being a leader. We are looking to make our communities and country a better place. We might not always agree on what the solutions are, but we can respect each other for working to find one. Over the years, ive learned a great deal from those around me. Just like i listen to senator simpson all of those years back there, ive tried to keep an open mind to learning from others, and now that my time in the senate is coming to a close, id like to pass along some of the lessons i was taught and so i learned the hard way. In the hope that it may be useful for my colleagues working to get things accomplished in the senate, and for anybody who wants to be a leader in their community. In my office, we have a Mission Statement. It reads, we have been given a sacred trust to work for our families, grandparents, and grandchildren. We will respect the wisdom of those before and the future of those to follow. We will discharge this trust through our legislative policy, our constituent services and the way we treat each other guided by these three principles, doing whats right, doing our best, and treating others as they wish to be treated. These last three principles are advice my mom gave me often. And they remain my core values. Every member of my staff is given that Mission Statement when they start and we rely on it to remind us why they are were here and how we should act. It isnt just a saying, its a way to work, build trust and a way to govern. These values are not always easy to live by. Were all human and we all struggle to live up to these ideals that we set for ourselves, but these why we call them ideals. I believe these are values we can all agree on and by remembering the values we share, we can Work Together to tackle tough problems and find shared solutions, do whats right is a great slogan, but you might ask what it means at a practice cal level. People see a mess in washington. So how do we actually make progress . I believe it involves focusing on Common Ground over compromise. Especially when it comes to legislating. People sometimes think that compromise is the answer. I think it means i give in to something i dont like and you give into something you dont like and we both wind up with something neither of us like. Its not legislating. When it comes to legislating often the best way to get something done that everyone can agree on is to leave out the things you dont agree on and focus on what you can get done. Thats why i suggest my 80 tool. Generally speaking, people can talk civilly on 80 of the issues. Its only about 20 of the issues that we find real contention. Now, even picking a single issue out of the 80 you might still find disagreement, but once again, you can probably focus on 80 of the issue that you can agree on. Its all about focusing on what you can get done and not focusing on the points of disagreement. The weeds of debate that have choked issues or to say it another way, its all about what you leave out. Former senator ted kennedy from massachusetts and i used this tool when we led the health, education, labor and pension committees together. And it worked great. It worked even though we were on complete opposite sides of the political spectrum. I once showed senator kennedy an article that mentioned how unusual it was for the most conservative senator and the third most liberal senator to Work Together to which he said, so who is ahead of me . [laughte [laughter]. We were able to get legislation passed that others had been trying to do for years. Here is how we started working together. I wanted to change things with osha, occupational safety. And senator kennedy did let me take it through a section at a time. Thats the way we did it. He said in all of my time legislating, i never had somebody take me through the bill a section at a time. Im still going to have to vote against it. Lathe he called me about a safety bill he had been working on for over a decade. A bill to save nurses and medical janitors from accidental needle sticks. And asked if id take a look at it. I did. The biggest suggestion that i gave was to leave out a couple of the small parts, that had been jamming up the bill. The bill passed the senate and the house unamended and was signed. The and now you see needle stick disposals in restrooms, and all sorts of places. And the issue has never been had to be readdressed. Later, i became the Health Education and labor pensions chair and senator kennedy was the ranking member. We used the 80 tool, we were able to get 35 bills through the Health Committee in the 109th congress, 27 of them made their way to the president s desk and from signed into public law and in between we were able to report out 352 nominations for consideration by the full senate. So here is how the 80 tool worked. The beginning of each year, each of us made a list of what the committee should do we compared list and made an effort to argue some to be on both lists, then we worked on the ones on both lists. We usually had duplication of about 80 of the issues. And then we could pick out any issue and work on it usually agreeing on 80 of that issue. If we couldnt find a new way to do the part that had been argued for years, we simply left it out. Believing that 80 finished is better than 20 that only makes the press. This is the 80 tool and its where all of our energy and talents could be focused. If we just work on the 20 that we dont agree on, and never will agree on, well only generate headlines about how hard were working with nothing actually getting done. Just gridlock. When the news comes on if were here in the chamber arguing and bickering and getting nothing done, were focusing too much on the 20 . If people do not see much of us, that means were taking on the 80 and making progress without headlines and often with unanimous consent. What we are really talking about is working together. Thats what the heart of the 80 tool is. Often times people say, what we need is more bipartisanship, and there is very practical reason for that. In the senate you cant get anything done without working with the other side unless one party has 60 votes or more, which is rare. And even with 60 votes from within party, the bills that party passes when they have a super majority often are flawed. It turns out when we Work Together, we can create a better bill than when we just try to do it alone or force others to accept our ideas. Thats why success is not really about compromise. Its really about what you leave out or finding a way to accomplish it doing a mutually agreeable new way. We used to take the people that had similar amendments and send them off to see if they could come up with one amendment and quite often they could. And it was fascinating when they came back, they said, it was my idea. And when all of them report to you that it was their idea, you know youve got enough votes to pass it. And thats why success is not really about compromise, its about what you leave out, or finding a third way to come up with a mutually agreeable goal. Here are a few key steps that i used to find that Common Ground to pass legislation. First, find someone from the other side of the aisle who likes to legislate. Second, discover and agree on common goals, third, consult with stakeholders that will or could affect the changes being discussed. Fourth, hold round tables instead of hearings. With hearings, each side beats up on the other witnesses with clever professortype questions. At a round table, people who have actually done something on a policy share their real life experiences. And finally, you set aside the part of the issues you cant agree on for another day. Now youll have a bill that has a good chance of being passed and signed into law. Thats the heart of the 80 tool. This way of working also ensures that we can disagree without being disagreeable. Theres a lot of vitriol in our politics and our world right n now, but you can stay true to what you believe in without treating others badly. Nothing gets done when were just telling each other how wrong we are. Just ask yourself, has anyone really changed your opinion by getting in your face and yelling at you and saying how wrong you are . Usually that doesnt change hearts or minds. That might make the attacker feel better in the moment, but it doesnt do much for getting anything accomplished. Following the 80 tool will not get you notoriety. It wont get you fame, it wont get you headlines. Most Media Coverage requires blood in the water. However, the ability to work among your peers using this method can and will move us forward and get things done. This tool is only successful if were actually working on passing legislation together and that means letting the senate work as it was intended. One of the best ways to do that is allow the members of each committee to actually take time to craft bills. The committees are where the experts are and where i think some of the best work gets done. Ive already made it clear that i dont think that hearings are overly useful and often wasted on collecting sound bites for the evening news. Instead, we should be encouraging committees to give their members more say in crafting legislation and working together on best solutions. If you look at bills that pass with strong bipartisan support, theyre usually because flaws were ironed out in committee. Legislation is often times at its best when it has taken time and committee is hashed out until its ready for prime time. Now, you might not always be able to get everyone on board, but if youd done it right, you should see strong bipartisan support. Sometimes this also means letting others take credit for your ideas, and an old salesman trick is to convince other ideas that your good idea was really their good idea. Dont let your vanity stand in the way of getting the job done. Too often in the modern senate, legislation is rushed to committee, rushed out of committee to the senate floor and once it gets the senate floor both sides try to prevent amendments, but the process of allowing amendments debate is how it was, and without the fresh air that did he legitimate debate brings, the idea that each party is worried about the election to hold onto the majority, theyre trying to take perilous votes or avoid taking those votes themselves. No matter which party is in charge, we end up blocking amendments and shying away from allowing legislation to be altered on the floor of the senate. And usually those tough votes dont really make any difference. It might help if members made it clear to leadership that theyd be willing to take some tough votes in return for more chances to amend major legislation on the floor. People might be less likely to demand votes on a poison pill or messaging designed to put the other party in a tough spot if they knew they could face the same treatment. In the end of the onus is on the members of the senate, on us, to take the responsibility to Work Together in return for a chance to pass legislation. I suggest that amendments should have to have 60 votes. If it were so bad that it needed a filibuster, the 60 votes would be required to end that, but that takes about three days, and so many have been willing to allow their amendment to have the 60 vote threshold, that it was Strong Enough to pass anyway i ask you to avoid comprehensive bills makes it so large that everyone can find a reason to vote against it. Senator alexander is a big promoter of step by step. Thats taking a piece of legislation and solving and the next step and solving it and so on. This practical solution would avoid passing comprehensive legislation. Comprehensive legislation is usually a byproduct of compromise not Common Ground and orin ends up being incomprehensible. Giant bills that try to do everything usually end up with too many unintended consequences and include a litany of unrelated pieces of legislation that are merely hitching a ride because otherwise they would never be able to stand on their own merits. These Christmas Tree bills are often designed so if you vote against it youll be voting against some key legislation for your constituents. Once again, the ugly nature of compromise over Common Ground is clear. Now, a simple solution ive proposed would be to pass more bills as individual pieces of legislation. Thats step by step. And in wyoming, bills have to be focused on a single subject and all amendments need to be relevant. In the past ive introduced a bill that would require that here, but it never was really treated seriously. To talk on a little different article, my favorite article of the constitution is article five, and the reason it is, is it assures that all states will have equal representation in the senate. And that cant even be changed by a constitutional congress. And since i come from one of those low population states, its very important to us. Sometimes were criticized for being overrepresented in the senate. We have two senators, the same as california and new york and texas. But in this argument of unfair representation for states, we find the same inherent issues we do at the filibuster. Our government was not set up to be majority ruled by population alone. Our founders through their own debate were able to understand the risk of pure democracy and the benefits of a federalist system, where ideas were represented not just by population, but by regions and shared cultures. Wyomingit wyomingit wyomingites deserve to have their culture represented, were all the United States of america. Its more than the people, and protecting the individuality of the state and those in the region of the country less populated and represents states that founded our federalist system. Of course, at that time, several of them had little population. And ive covered a lot of ground, but for my last piece of advice i would call on my colleagues to recognize that its time to formally allow electronics on the floor of the United States senate. [laughter] its an issue near and dear to my heart and one i think will help to work in the senate. Its clear that anyone who watches cspan that all of us are already breaking the spirit of the law checking our phones on occasion as we walk off or onto the floor. Those devices are often inseparable from our ability to do our work. We rely on them to do almost everything, its time to make this common sense change, allowing ipads to be used for speeches, as long as theyre laid on the lectern like a paper speech and the senators could do some work from their desks like early senators had to do. We would listen to more of the speeches and get something done. I do remember when i brought that one up before that it was covered by in 97, they thought it was important that we have that use and Time Magazine did a special article on it and i remember senator mcconnell going to new york city and coming back to report to me that he got the cab and the cabdriver said youre a United States senator, arent you . And of course, he proudly was. And the guy said so when are you going to let the guy from wyoming have his computer on the floor . So senator mcconnell told me if id lobbied the cabbies that it was time to do it, but we still havent done it. As we move forward, of course, our country has no shortage of problems we need to address. Some of out of our control, but many of are our own making. If my experience over the years taught me anything well never be able to tackle these challenges unless we find common areas of agreement first and work to solve these problems together. I hope everyone listening, specially my colleagues in the senate, remember the core values i spoke of today. Do whats right, do your best, treat others as they wish to be treated, i truly believe that if we adhere to these ideals the world will be a better place for our children and grandchildr grandchildren. I want to again thank the people of wyoming for giving me the opportunity to serve them and i also want to thank my colleagues and friends who supported me over the years. I want to thank all the amazing staff that ive had over the years in my personal office, in the d. C. Office, in my state offices in wyoming. And my staff on the Health Education, labor and Pensions Committee and on the budget committee, over the years ive gotten to work with incredible staff that have made it possible to do more than a senator by him or herself could ever do. Thank you for working so hard over the years. I also want to give the most thanks to my family and all of their support over the years, especially for my wife diana. Its been a long journey since i told you, diana, that i was thinking of running for mayor. You supported me more than anyone can truly comprehend, and in no uncertain terms, i couldnt have done it without you. Its been more than 50 amazing years together
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