Last election. And we pretty firmly said thered be a last one. I knew from the polls that every day out i could easily be reelected this year. But i. Me too. We wanted to go home. I want to have more time. My kids are grandkids. We both like school, but i would have more time for that. But also, i. Its time for somebody else to come in there. And i wanted to be able to do things, but i. University of vermont and other places to help people. Oh, whats happened . The last half century, you know, youre you are not, in fact, the youre the president protem of the senate, but you are not the oldest senator. There are four others who are older than you, senator feinstein is 89. She was just elected to another term. Senator grassley is 88. Hes in the middle of a reelection campaign. Why is it so hard for so many senators to do what you have decided to do . Well, each one has to answer their own reasons. Of course, i served there with 400, approximately 400 of the 1900 senators whove been here
Senator patrick leahy, youre doing something that is hard for a lot of senators to do. And that is to retire voluntarily. What made you decide to do that . Well, i never thought i was going to be here this long. You know, im the only democrat elected vermont history, the youngest one time. And everybody said id be a one term senator. I thought that was quite possible, but then it got a little bit easier getting reelected. I did not expect to be here this long. And my wife, marcelle and i talked about it right after the last election. And we pretty firmly said thered be a last one. I knew from the polls that every day out i could easily be reelected this year. But i. Me too. We wanted to go home. I want to have more time. My kids are grandkids. We both like school, but i would have more time for that. But also, i. Its time for somebody else to come in there. And i wanted to be able to do things, but i. University of vermont and other places to help people. Oh, whats happened . The last
Term senator. I thought that was quite possible, but then it got a little bit easier getting reelected. I did not expect to be here this long. And my wife, marcelle and i talked about it right after the last election. And we pretty firmly said thered be a last one. I knew from the polls that every day out i could easily be reelected this year. But i. Me too. We wanted to go home. I want to have more time. My kids are grandkids. We both like school, but i would have more time for that. But also, i. Its time for somebody else to come in there. And i wanted to be able to do things, but i. University of vermont and other places to help people. Oh, whats happened . The last half century, you know, youre you are not, in fact, the youre the president protem of the senate, but you are not the oldest senator. There are four others who are older than you, senator feinstein is 89. She was just elected to another term. Senator grassley is 88. Hes in the middle of a reelection campaign. Why is it s
Understand what to make these efforts based not on bias or stereotype or bad data. You want to understand where the growth is happening and you want to focus your attention there. In your opinion what can someone do, who has been year, who understand how things are going, what can anyone of us, any individual who is interested in detroit, whats the best thing we can do with regrowth and supports . Thats a good question. Theres a lot of great nonprofits operating in the area. The frontier question, dan, you asked earlier, has led to come as i said, lots of bad things, crime, a sort of sense of lawlessness but its also created this would thats really force people to step up. You see a lot of, i have a chapter in the book about people kind of stepping in and doing things that people in austin or other sort of normal functioning cities dont have to do. So you hear, you know, i write about this group of guys who just patrol neighborhoods and actually look for and catch criminals. Possibly s
They clearly tell you what theyre going to do. But families can more often and better than the government decide what they want in their insurance policy than the government can decide what they want in their insurancepologies. The stacks of letters that m evy member of my staff got, about people who dont understand why they need policies that cover a half a dozen things had a they couldnt ever possibly use and who dont understand why now those policies are so expensive that they can no longer afford to have the policy that they had, who dont understand why cutting medicare to start a new Government Program makes sense because, mr. President , it didnt make sense and it doesnt make sense to cut a program that clearly is facing challenges as our society gets older to cut funding for that program by 600 billion or 700 billion over ten years so you could start a new program that the costs are clearly going to be so much more than anybody anticipated. Im pleased to join my friends today wh