Mr. Isakson madam president. The presiding officer the senator from georgia. Mr. Isakson madam president , i ask unanimous consent to be able to address the senate. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Isakson thank you, madam president. Its an honor to be here today on whats not my last day but everybody is acting like it. A few months ago i had to an announce that after much consideration to be able to serve the people of georgia, when i knew i couldnt do the job i was going to quit and let somebody do it who wouldnt be hampered. Im not hampered yet. Im pretty tough. But its getting close. In august i decided to tell my wife about it, and we decided to go ahead and retire at the end of december, which ive announced and said i was going to do. The governor of georgia is making an appointment to take my place and you might look in the history books, current history and it might have an isakson in the glossary, but i doubt it. I have been here for 15 years. This is the most enjoyable thing i have ever done in my life, to be part of the United States senate. Politicians get a bad rap, a real bad rap. Some will take pot shots at people who are politicians and serve the people in their community. I never do that, not because i am one but because i am one i know what you have to do. Its a tough job. If its not done right, it doesnt get done the way it should for people there. So im making sure that when i leave, the last thing i do is to leave the people of georgia in good hands, given the senior senator from georgia retiring. Unfortunately today at lunch, the members gave me a luncheon and stole all my material. I had dont let this paper fool you. I threw it all away coming in here. They have stolen all my good jokes, took over all the things i was going to say. So im going to make this very brief. In the end, very brief is good. My dad told me one time, he said son, your words have more power by how few you use than how many you use. I always remember that. Speeches are really important. I make short speeches. I get to the point and i get out. I will give you some reasons that works. But i decided when i knew i was going to be outshined by the other members of the senate at this luncheon today that i would do the best i could to honor mitch mcconnell, who is the greatest leader ive ever worked for in my 45 years in public life. People like the Vice President of the United States who i am so proud is in the chair, and i can tell my grandkids, who are all here, by the way, i hope you remember the time you were there with mike pence, the Vice President. You will be president by then, mr. Vice president , to hear a speech i made. But everybody is here, thank you for being here. Im not going to call out names because i will miss somebody. Except tester. You cant miss tester. But everybody else i would miss, and i dont want to miss anybody because every one of you are important to me. The people that help us in the lunch room, the people that help us in the stores, get in and out of the cars, bad days, snowy days, icy days. It takes a lot of people to run a senate, and only one person to mess it up. I want to talk about one subject today and one subject alone. And its going to be short. But there has been something missing in this place. I am given credit sometimes for being a bipartisan person. Sometimes im known for being a bipartisan or being a softy. Some will say worse than that, but im not going to do that. But i am a bipartisan person. I never saw people get things done by not agreeing with each other. You have to come to an agreement. I made a living selling houses. You cant ever solve a problem if you have two people ant you want to agree to a price and a time to move. You have to find Common Ground. The same thing with a law. If you capital pass a law, you cant solve a problem, just period end of sentence. If youre one of the people who says my way or the high way, then were all in real trouble. I want to talk about bipartisan. What bipartisan really is i dont think most of you really know what bipartisan is. I shouldnt say that to an educated group like this who have been down a lot of tough trails like i have as well. Bipartisan doesnt mean a democrat and republican talk to each other every once in a while. It means that two people come together. Probably have differences. Probably have a lot of differences. But they find a way to get to the end of the trail where there is a possibility of a solution. Then they do the things you have to do to get that position. Americas today is built on people who found a way to get to that end of the solution. No question about it. I hate to ask this question when i came in the back door, is john lewis here yet . Wheres john . John, youre getting shorter. John lewis is one of the finest people i have ever known and a great friend of mine. We were invited i was invited to speak to the senate a couple days ago. I recognize john who was there, and he introduced me and said some things that meant more to me than anybody has ever said to me. I said i want you to come to my last speech because i want to say a few things about you. Because in essence, really, john, to a much greater extent than me, but john and i together represent that things can change. If people want to change and they are willing to do the things that let them change. John was born in the 1940s. I was born in the 1940s. John went to was born lived in alabama. I lived in georgia for a while. John got his good senses. Shelby was there, so he came to alabama. Hes a good guy. John came there and john worked and lived in a shotgun house. Thats where the hole in the back and hole in the front. If you shoot through, you dont hit anything. John was a great civil rights leader in his youth. He was the president of student nonviolent coordinating committee. And john walked the streets of atlanta, georgia, where i live. I was part of the people that earl war revenue who had all the signs around georgia i thought he was running for office. It said impeach warren. I never figured that out until i got older. Earl warren had been part of the brown versus board of education, schools were going to be intergrated. The only way to prove you were going to get it done was through the numbers. They figured how much of a percentage of how many black people would constitute a good number to say you were desegregated, and vice versa. Solving the problem with statistics. I was on some of those first bus that is rode through atlanta, georgia, taking black students to white schools. And i had some good friends who were black. Thats another thing southerners are blamed for. They always say we had some really good friends who are black. One of them is john lewis. John lewis is one of my real heroes in life, because i watched what he went through to help us see the light in the south, in my part of the south, georgia. And he was a hero, and he was a hero to me. When i got to congress, one of the things i am most proud of, john introduced me to be sworn in. Vice president of the speaker of the house swore me in. I was down at the podium. Let me tell you what happened that morning. The clerk said, mr. Isakson from georgia won a special election yesterday in atlanta, georgia, and has been declared the winner by the secretary of state. We would like to ask mr. Lewis to escort him to the front. Well give him one minute to make his acceptance speech. Well get back to business. I thought one minute. I only get one minute . I cant do anything in one minute. But i wasnt going to argue with the guy my first day at work. So i went to the back of the room with john. John walked down the aisle on the house side. Of course i was not paying a lot of attention. I figured the best thing to do is follow john. I followed john. When john got through introducing me, i followed him to the well. I said thank you to everybody and named three or four people that helped me get there. Then i said well, im going to work. And im honored to be here. What they didnt tell me was that if youre in the house, at that particular day, the mike for the people who were republicans was on the left. Republicans spoke from the right. This dummy followed john, who was smart, and went to the right where he was supposed to go. I went to the left. Where i wasnt supposed to go. I noticed these eyeballs on the front row just going around and around. Some guy slipped up behind me after i gave my oneminute speech, so youre going to start this day demonstrating what a liberal guy you are. Thats one of the voices that came over the back of my shoulder just like something hanging on my head. I turned around and looked. This other guy come up to me and said dont pay any attention to that. Named tom blakeman, he went on about his business. I asked what does that guy mean by that . The problem is you got labeled when you got elected. You got elected in a republican district but they say you said nice things about democrats. I said is that wrong to do . We were trying to get some way to get boehner to not appoint you to a committee. We heard you helped write no child left behind. Thats how i started out in the house of representatives. I was a republican in a majority Democratic House that was unwanted. In fact, newt lost some of you know this, because i see a few faces over there. Newt lost that race by seven votes in the house, Seven Members who said we wont vote for newt for speaker. Newt got reelected and tom knows this he couldnt get reelected speaker so he resigned. And i didnt know he was going to do that. I was going to speak at the National Realtors conference out at disneyland at a convention. I got to the hotel that afternoon and there were 72 phone messages for me. The guy came and said boy, i hope nobody died at your house. I said thats a great way to get to a hotel. He said you have 72 messages. I said let me see them. The first 71 were from my wife. I called her and she said have you heard. Heard what . Newt quit. Quit what . He quit as speaker and a member of the house. Everybody is calling on you to run. Nothing computed. Very quickly, i learned a lot about partisan politics. A lot of people wanted somebody to take newts place. His body wasnt even cold yet and they were picking over it. They wanted to pick as so in some kind of skirmish. To make a long story short, partisan politics was pretty rough in those days. Its a lot rougher now but it was pretty rough back then. People voted not with their hand but with a hammer. Not their heart, either one. So i learned in an area where if you were a republican, a republican, a democrat, a democrat, and dont ever cross. Dont work with anybody. Dont make it easy. If if you have the votes, use them. We kept getting beat or kept getting outtricked all the time. Or tricked. Outtricked is probably not the right word. The whole game plan was to have enough republicans to beat the democrats or vice versa. Its something everybody tried to do. I thought that was stupid. I didnt say that. 435 is a lot of people, you dont want to get run over. But a few weeks down the line, i made a speech on the floor of the house about something very important to me in my state. It was a problem that we had in the state where our state was divided rural and urban. Not republican and democrat, but rural and urban. But because republicans were pretty much rural back then and urban people were democrats in the suburbs, at that time, then you got divided on the political ways anyway even though it was an economic issue and an ag issue, things like that. They divided up over party. By the time the issue got to the floor on some kind of compromise vote, we couldnt pass anything. A kidney stone, we couldnt pass a kidney stone much less anything else. We couldnt get anybody to agree on anything. We had the parties cross each other and everybody else. I decided if im going to be in this thing i was at that age. I was about 60, i guess. Im not going to sit the rest of my life down here arguing about silly, stupid things. There were some silly, stupid things said over there. Im not going to say who was saying them, but you know who they were. Both parties. That was bipartisan, both parties i saw the stupid statements. We had some real battles. Finally i decided i will be an example of what we need to be like. I would try to do everything i could to be bipartisan, which meant to me i did what i thought was right. And i think thats the way to do it. Mark twain said when confronted with a difficult decision, do whats right. You will surprise a few and you will amaze the rest. I try to start amazing everybody. I voted for some things. They sent somebody over from the whips office. What did you do . Did you get confused . No, i didnt get confused. Finally they knew they had somebody to deal with. When the partisan people figure out they can deal with you, they will deal with you. Thats the way you build bipartisanship. Thats the way i did it on my own, going through my six years in the house of representatives and my 15 years in the United States senate. Trying to find that little thing that could bring two people together. Notwithstanding what party they are in. I never looked at the party first. That was the last place i looked. Chuck schumer said some nice things to me. One of the nicest he said to me was i was a kind person. He said i was a kind person. My wife might differ with that. I try to be a kind person. Somebody you like to sit down with. If you cant get along with somebody, you cant sit across the table from somebody. You build everything that way. I hope this senate and this congress and all of us in the years ahead, we have got some big problems. We will start having a main goal personally. Were going to do everything we can to be a part of the solutions and the decisions that are going to have to be made. If you dont want to do it, dont do it. You will find something if you figure out, if you try and do it, others watch you do it, you start making decisions, others solving problems, you will be more popular than other people. This is not a popularity contest and governing is not a popularity contest, but if this is a will of minds, bipartisanship is a state of being. Its a state of mind. There are people in the United States senate that i work with that i love working with every day. Im looking at some right now in the eye. And they have an attitude that i like. I can sit down and talk with them and if they say no, i will stick it. I wont stick my tongue out at them or call them bad names or anything else. But i will be there tomorrow and ask them to do something for me. The best way to get somebody to do something for you, is if you cant ask them to do something. Its a quid pro quo thats a bad word. Im glad i remember that joke. But those are the types of things you have to do. Even to level the playing field. So my words to you today are this. When you are fortunate enough to see a john lewis from georgia or someone like that, step out of his comfort zone, do what he thinks is right, if somebody tells you he is wrong, dont do that, judge your conscience and your heart, not some tv commentators or some who is filled with hate. We still have some people in the United States of america who play the hate card. We have some politicians who will dance around the issue of hate. They wont use the buzzwords, but they will get awful close to it. They did in charlottesville. I have had people in the basement of my house from Law Enforcement from time to time because it gets pretty close, the issues get pretty tough. Whether its College Scholarship admissions or whatever it may be. Weve got to stand up to the evenings of society today. I decided i was going to tell you what i really believe. And that is america, weve got a problem, just like apollo had and the problem is were not going to exist much longer. We live in the greatest country on the face of this earth. Nobody better than the United States of america. Everybodys trying to break in. Nobodys trying to break out. We are always placing laws people are trying to break in. It is the safe west, richest, happiests place in the world. Were people to protect that happiness and people who go into the military on a voluntary basis, less than 1 of the population has served in the military and makes us the greater defender of freedom. If we ever lose that with a club, with a two by four, well lose our coverage of ethics and Standby Support and all the other things we love and the things we do. Were that close, though. I see things happening that im asked about by people that scare me. And ive heard some people i know say some things that terrify me. Were better than the hate and vial statements that some people make and weve got to be better than that. Weve got to talk not over them or under them, weve got to talk to them. Weve got to the city down and say, why did you say that . Whats your problem . Weve got a problem. Lets get it out in the open. The best country in the world, the strongest country in the world cannot succumb to crushing itself. The challenges in life today are americas changing. Its changing for lots of reasons. A lot of people are big internet people and think they have all the solutions. I think the solutions are right here. I think its in their heart. Im telling you from my heart after 45 years in elected office, raising three children and eight grandchildren, which my kids have done a great job of raising them, living in a Great Community and going to a great church, i see some of that slipping away. The churches dont have the membership that they used to have and its significant, School Curriculum is getting a whole lot tough ter than it used to be and i was a chairman of the board of state for a few years. All of the things we love and believe in like god and country and school and religion and sunday school, there are challenges. Im rolling up my sleeves on whatever ive got left because i said i was going to leave on december 31. Its not because im leaving you. Im not leaving ufl. Ill leaving you. I want to be here for you and when the bell rings to say, america, we dont have a problem anymore. We solved it. You helped us do it through our tax policies, through our federal policies, education policies, how we treat people, we helped you do it. Lets dont get back in that shape again. We have the people and spirit of john lewis and other people i know in this room who are willing to do it and some who think this is just a bunch of sunday school from somebody who is leaving, dont believe it. I will be back to make a speech again sometime and give a progress report. We need some progress. Now, the last thing i want to talk about, the best thing the example to me of what bipartisanship means is a picture taken of john lewis and i last week. Bipartisanship doesnt mean one is black one is white. It could be one black and on