{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/durbin-pays-tribute-to-vice-president-joe-biden-on-senate-floor", "Durbin Pays Tribute To Vice President Joe Biden On Senate Floor", "2016-12-07", "2016", "2016-12", "Democrat", "House", "IL", "Richard Durbin", "D000563", "www.durbin.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "12.07.16\n\t\t\t Durbin Pays Tribute To Vice President Joe Biden On Senate Floor \n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tWASHINGTON\u2014In a Senate floor speech Wednesday, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) paid tribute to Vice President Joe Biden, with whom he served in the Senate for 12 years:  \u00a0  \u201cMr. Vice President, for more than 40 years you have taken all the strength and wisdom you learned from your family, and all of your own experiences with loss and hardship, and you have used those lessons to give countless millions of people in Chicago, in America, and around the world, reasons to hope and ways to heal. You are a public servant in the best sense of that term,\u201d said Durbin. \u201cYou may be leaving public office soon, but I know that you will never leave your calling to help others in every way you can.\u00a0 It\u2019s part of being a Biden. On behalf of a grateful nation and world, I want to say to you \u2013 and to Jill and all of your family \u2013 thank you for making hope and history rhyme.\u201d  \u00a0  Video of Durbin\u2019s remarks on the Senate floor are available here.  \u00a0  Audio of Durbin\u2019s remarks on the Senate floor is available here.  \u00a0  Footage of Durbin\u2019s remarks on the Senate floor is available for TV Stations using FTP in high definition and standard definition.  \u00a0  Durbin\u2019s remarks as prepared for delivery are available below:  \u00a0  Remarks of U.S. Senator Dick Durbin  Honoring Vice President Joe Biden  December 7, 2016  \u00a0  Mr. Vice President: For eight years, seeing you in that seat has always filled many of us with hope. It almost always meant that something big, something historic, was about to happen--  \u00a0  Seeing you seated in the Senate President\u2019s desk today evokes different emotions for many of us: Regrets that a momentous chapter in America\u2019s history is about to close; Pride at what we have achieved during these last eight years; and most of all, respect and gratitude to you for the essential role you played in those achievements and so many others.  \u00a0  The highest praise your old friend Ted Kennedy could give a person in our line of work was to say:\u00a0 \u201cYou have the Irish love of politics and great words.\u201d  \u00a0  Mr. Vice President, you have both of those gifts in abundance, and America \u2013 and the world \u2013 are better because of it.  \u00a0  I know that you are a great admirer of the Irish poet Seamus Heaney (\u201cHaney\u201d) \u2013 and particularly of these lines that he wrote\u2026\u00a0 I quoted them on the evening of your inauguration eight years ago.  \u201cHistory says, Don\u2019t hope  On this side of the grave,  But then, once in a lifetime  The longed-for tidal wave  justice can rise up,  And hope and history rhyme.\u201d   \u00a0  You and President Obama left this Senate eight years ago with an audacious belief that we could, indeed, make hope and history rhyme.  \u00a0  Together, we could heal some of the terrible wounds of our past and together, we could create a better, more just, more prosperous America \u2013 not just for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren.  \u00a0  And let the record show: Under the leadership of President Barack Obama, America achieved great progress.  \u00a0  We stopped America\u2019s slide into a Second Great Depression that could have brought down the entire global economy.  \u00a0  When others said \u201cSave Wall Street but let the American auto industry, the heart of American manufacturing, die,\u201d the Obama-Biden Administration said no.  \u00a0  Today, American auto companies are recording their biggest profits in years,  \u00a0  Car and truck plants that had been idled are running two and three shifts.  For more than 70 years, Presidents from both parties \u2013 Republicans and Democrats \u2013 tried to make health care affordable and available for most Americans.  \u201cObamacare\u201d \u2013 the Affordable Care Act \u2013 finally achieved that goal.  Twenty million Americans have health care today because of Obamacare,  Many of those 20 million Americans have never had health insurance in their lives.  \u00a0  They are good, hard-working people like Judy, the housekeeper in a small hotel in Illinois, where I sometimes stay. At the age of 60, because of Obamacare, she finally had the security to know that she could see a doctor if she gets sick.  \u2003  And every American who has health insurance has better, more reliable care because of the patient protections in Obamacare.  \u00a0  No more annual or lifetime caps on coverage. No more discrimination because of pre-existing conditions. No more of insurance companies calling all the shots and making all the rules.  \u00a0  Believe that further shore  Is reachable from here,\u201d  Seamus Heaney wrote in that same poem.  \u00a0  \u201cBelieve in miracles  And cures and healing wells.\u201d  \u00a0  Because of Obamacare, millions more Americans can now believe that \u201ccures and healing wells are within their reach.\u201d  \u00a0  Achieving that security was what your dear friend, Teddy Kennedy, called \u201cthe fight of [his] lifetime.\u201d And you saw it through.  \u00a0  And you didn\u2019t stop there. You accepted the President\u2019s challenge to direct the \u201cCancer Moonshot\u201d research effort \u2013 to try to find the causes and cures for a rapacious disease that had brought so much pain to so many families, including, sadly, your own.  \u00a0  I look forward to continuing to work with you in the coming years to keep searching for new understandings, new treatments and new cares \u2013 not just for cancer but also for Alzheimer\u2019s and addiction and other diseases.  \u00a0  Mr. Vice President, when you took office eight year ago, America was losing 800,000 jobs a month.  \u00a0  Today, America has the lowest unemployment rate in nine years.  \u00a0  I know that to some people, job-creation numbers are just statistics \u2013 but not to Joe Biden.  You have never forgotten that basic truth your father taught you when you were a boy. Your dad taught you that a job is more than a paycheck. A job is hope, it is dignity and purpose.  \u00a0  You never forgot how it crushed your dad to tell you that the bank refused to lend him the money to send you to college.  \u00a0  That is why, for 40 years, you have worked to make college more affordable for every family, including working-class and poor families.   \u00a0  The daily struggles of ordinary Americans are not something that you have ever had to be briefed on. They are realities that you lived and have never forgotten.  \u00a0  You are as home in a union hall as you are in the great halls of state and the palaces of monarchs.  There\u2019s a story about an Irishman walking down a street.\u00a0 He passes two guys fighting and asks:\u00a0 \u201cIs this a private fight, or can anyone get in on it?\u201d  \u00a0  You know a little about that, don\u2019t you, Mr. Vice President? \u00a0  \u00a0  For 40 years or more, you have always been ready to fight for those who needed a champion \u2013 whether they were victims of genocide overseas or victims of discrimination here at home.  Your public career has been marked by nearly unbearable losses and sorrows. But it has also been filled with joy, passion, determination and immense accomplishment.  \u00a0  The list of your legislative achievements is long and broad, filled with courage and vision.  \u00a0  One of the legislative achievements of which you are most proud, and rightly so, is the Violence Against Women Act.  \u00a0  That federal law was passed in 1994 to help reduce domestic violence and sexual assault, and to help victims of these crimes.  \u00a0  As you know, women and children make up the vast majority of the victims of both domestic violence and sexual assault in America.  \u00a0  VAWA is helping to change that.  \u00a0  The law you helped pass as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is helping victims of those soul-crushing crimes to heal and to go on and live healthier, safer lives.  \u00a0  The numbers show that VAWA works.  \u00a0  Listen to this:\u00a0 Between 1993 to 2010, the rate of violence against intimate partners \u2013 almost all women \u2013 declined by two-thirds, 67 percent.  \u00a0  At the same time, the rate of US women killed by their intimate partners dropped by 35 percent. And the rate of men killed by intimate partners dropped 46 percent.  \u00a0  But the numbers don\u2019t tell the whole story.  \u00a0  One of my favorite organizations is called Mujeres Latina en Accion. In English: Latina Women in Action. It is located in Chicago.  \u00a0  It opened its doors in 1973 and it is the oldest organization in the United States serving Latina women and children who have experienced sexual assault or domestic violence, or both.  \u00a0  The director of the organization is a dynamo named Maria Pesqueira.  \u00a0  Ask Maria what difference the Violence Against Women Act has made for the women and children her organization serves, she will start by telling you a story.  \u00a0  A few years ago, a woman came to their office.  \u00a0  They first noticed her standing outside their building.   \u00a0  She was a young mother. She was holding the hand of her 5-year-old daughter and she was nine months pregnant with her second child \u2013 ready to deliver any day.  \u00a0  This woman and her little girl had been thrown out of their home by her husband.  \u00a0  Someone told her about Mujeres Latina en Accion. She went to their old building and found it empty and locked.  \u00a0  She didn\u2019t know that the organization had moved to a new facility.  \u00a0  For several minutes, she just stood outside that old building, frozen in fear that that there was nowhere and no one in the world who could help her.  \u00a0  At first, she and her little girl just stood outside the building, until some staff members saw them and welcomed them inside.  \u00a0  Maria says that what she remembers most about that mother was that her eyes were filled with fear \u2013 for herself, for her little girl, and for the baby she was about to bring into this world.  \u00a0  Mujeres Latinas en Accion was able to help that young mother, largely because of support from the Violence Against Women Act.  \u00a0  About two months later, Maria says, she walked into work and a confident young woman told her \u201cgood morning.\u201d  \u00a0  Then, beaming with pride, she held up a little infant and said, \u201cThis is my son.\u201d  \u00a0  For a few moments, Maria didn\u2019t recognize the woman.   \u00a0  Then it struck her: This is the same mother who had stood outside her office, abandoned and terrified just two months earlier. The look of terror in her eyes had been replaced by pride and love and hope -- hope for a better future for herself and her children.  \u00a0  Today, that young mother supports herself and her children as an entrepreneur. She sells some of the best sweet-corn tamales you\u2019ve ever tasted.  \u2003  She still goes back to Mujeres Latinas en Accion, but today she goes to help other women who are hurt, frightened and lost, as she once was. She shows them how to heal and grow strong in the broken places so that they can care for themselves and their families.  \u00a0  Mr. Vice President, for more than 40 years you have taken all the strength and wisdom you learned from your family, and all of your own experiences with loss and hardship, and you have used those lessons to give countless millions of people in Chicago, in America, and around the world, reasons to hope and ways to heal.  \u00a0  You are a public servant in the best sense of that term.  \u00a0  You may be leaving public office soon, but I know that you will never leave your calling to help others in every way you can.\u00a0 It\u2019s part of being a Biden.  \u00a0  On behalf of a grateful nation and world, I want to say to you \u2013 and to Jill and all of your family \u2013 thank you for making hope and history rhyme.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/durbin-pays-tribute-to-vice-president-joe-biden-on-senate-floor"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.6130032017827034, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}