Ted Kennedy Quotes

Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy ... President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.

There are ways of trying to undermine that, which the opposition is very clever at. I find that the arguments are old and they’re tired, but they still have a ring to them: the idea that you’re going to have a bureaucrat in every hospital who will be making medical decisions, the idea that hospitals will close, that doctors will leave, that the expenses will go on up through the roof, that you’ll have socialized medicine. All of these features can be manipulated in ways that can impact and affect people’s fundamental decency.

Yes. There was going to be no real opportunity to move it during the Reagan period. That’s when, as you might remember, I went from the Judiciary Committee back to the Labor Committee because there was going to be the massive assault on all the domestic programs. And, at that time, there was going to be the consolidation of all the block granting—all of these programs, some of which were block-granted. It seemed to me that it was just going to be important then to try to hold on to where you were in terms of all of the domestic programs, and that’s primarily what we were engaged in. We were involved and active in other issues then. We went to South Africa, and also we had Chile, and we had the arms control issues where there was some of the back-channeling with Reagan. But on the domestic, we weren’t going to get anyplace at all, and that was very apparent to me. What happened is he continued to have the continuing loss of coverage in health insurance and continuing increased expenditures. The indicators were still going the wrong way.

I won't yield to anyone about guns in our society. I know enough about it.

A continuing aspect is that people are very fair, and they’re rather empathetic and sympathetic about their neighbors. This is something that they understand and they feel, and they appreciate. The question—you can continue to say, “Well, they may feel that, but if they’re going to be up against the wall and have to pay another big chunk of change, how long are they going to feel it?” I think there’s that kind of issue and question, and if the negative aspects are presented to them, in a way, they’ll be influenced by that as well. The idea of fairness in this country still has a ring to it that’s sort of overwhelming, such as when you’re talking about increasing the minimum wage, even among people who all do better than that. People understand it and they’re empathetic and go for it. People understand this. And what’s interesting is that every family knows somebody who has had the circumstances that I’ve talked about, and they feel strongly about it. They are wary.

Mr. President, the death of our friend Speaker Tip O'Neill last month has deprived the Nation of one of its most beloved leaders. Tip was a giant in every way--a giant of a man, a giant of a Speaker, a giant of a friend. He never lost the common touch. Massachusetts has lost one of the greatest public servants it ever had, and all of us whose lives he touched have lost a wonderful friend. By his side, through all those great years, was another great O'Neill, the woman who means so much to all of us and who meant the world to Tip, the woman he always called the biggest contributor to all his campaigns--Millie O'Neill. They had five extraordinary children who share so many of the finest qualities of their parents--Tommy and Kip and Michael and Susan and Rosemary. I think Tip finally got tired of waiting for the Red Sox to win the pennant.

He never mortgaged his beliefs to the passing fashions of the time. He walked with Presidents and Kings, but his favorite stroll was always down the street in Cambridge to Barry's Corner. He became one of the most powerful men in the world--but he never forgot the worker in Somerville, the senior citizens in East Boston, the barker in North Cambridge, the young family starting out whose grandparents he knew. His Irish smile could light up a living room, the whole chamber of the House of Representatives, and the entire State of Massachusetts. The congressional district he served had also been President Kennedy's district when my brother was in the House--and my grandfather Honey Fitz' before that.

Mr. President, this afternoon, in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, the Congressional Budget Office submitted its detailed views on President Clinton's Health Security Act. CBO is usually a quiet place, but in recent months it has been the quiet at the center of the storm, as all sides in the health care debate have awaited CBO's analysis of President Clinton's Health Security Act. Now, CBO's verdict is in, and after all the ideological smoke dissipates, it will be clear that CBO's analysis is a solid vote of confidence in the administration's plan. The plan is sound economically. The numbers add up. The CBO analysis concludes that the plan will provide health security for all Americans, and bring health care costs under control. No reputable study has concluded that any of the opponents' plans will reach those goals--not the Cooper plan, and certainly not any of the Republican plans. There is a health care crisis today because too many families have no insurance and because health care costs are out of control. The President's plan deals effectively with these two basic issues. It guarantees coverage for every American. And it brings health care costs under control. It means that the economy will grow, our living standards will improve, and America will be able to compete more effectively in the international marketplace.

Mr. President and Mrs. Reagan and friends of my brother here at this ceremony and everywhere, on behalf of Ethel and her children and all the members of our family, let me thank you, Mr. President, for this great honor that you have given to Robert Kennedy. And it is appropriate that he should receive it from you, for he understood so well that the common love of our country transcends all party identification and all partisan difference. And you should know that after he debated you on international television in 1967, my brother Bob said that Ronald Reagan was the toughest debater he ever faced and, obviously, he was right.

The demand of our people in 1980 is not for smaller government or bigger government but for better government. Some say that government is always bad, and that spending for basic social programs is the root of our economic evils. But we reply, the present inflation and recession cost our economy $200 billion a year. We reply, inflation and unemployment are the biggest spenders of all.

Many Iraqis have been working with our Armed Forces, our diplomatic mission, and our reconstruction teams in Iraq and have performed valiantly, and their lives are at risk. Many have lost their lives and many more have lost their homes, their property, and their livelihood. For some, it will be too dangerous to ever return home. America has a special obligation to keep faith with the Iraqis who now have a bulls-eye on their back because of their association with our Government. Our bipartisan legislation will establish the kind of process that Ambassador Crocker, David Keene, Julia Taft, Roy Medved, Lanny Davis, and many others have called for to help these Iraqis who have sacrificed so much for the United States. I ask unanimous consent that the Washington Post article and other articles I have mentioned be printed in the Record. I urge my colleagues to support our legislation, S. 1651, to keep the faith with the many brave Iraqis whose lives are in great danger because they have the courage to work with the United States.

There was at once an intensity and a gentleness in him that made him a unique spark of hope in a dark time. The violence that struck him down has threatened and touched so many others. The nation and the world have felt the pain so recently. Those of us who were with Robert Kennedy when he died in 1968 felt a special sense of relief this year, Mr. President, at your own recovery from the attack against you. And today, all the Kennedys feel a special sense of pride in the brother, husband, father, and son who went before us. He was often misunderstood in life. But people everywhere know how much he meant, for they have missed him so much all the years since his loss. To you, Mr. President, to the Congress, and to our fellow citizens, we are grateful for this gracious tribute today. Our family is grateful to Ethel, the light of his life, who stood with him on countless platforms around the nation and around the world, a friend who has sustained our spirits in dark passages and bright days.

I was exposed to the most extraordinary groups of doctors and nurses at the Lahey Clinic. Dr. [Herbert] Adams, who was the head doctor up there—there may have been a day when he didn’t come in and see me, but I don’t remember it. This included Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, the whole time I was up there. The commitment and the dedication of the doctors and the nurses, and the support systems and the professionals, was just breathtaking. I think it probably led me to the very strong commitment that I’ve always had, politically, to strong support for nurses, for support personnel, because I always recognized their indispensable role. The doctors, yes, but the support personnel for their patience and their time. During the period when Teddy—Now we’re probably into ’74, so we’ll have to come back to how this intersected with the policy judgments and decisions. It was all within a few years of each other—the dramatic time that I had in the Dana-Farber Institute in Boston with my son Teddy. He had a treatment and we found out that he had this leg cancer that required the loss of his leg, and that’s a special circumstance that we can get into.

The impeachment process was never intended to become a weapon for a partisan majority in Congress to attack the President. To do so is a violation of the fundamental separation of powers doctrine at the heart of the Constitution. It is an invitation to future partisan majorities in future Congresses to use the impeachment power to undermine the President. It could weaken Republican and Democratic Presidents alike for years to come. This case is a constitutional travesty. We deplore the conduct of President Clinton that led to this yearlong distraction for the nation. But we should deplore even more the partisan attempt to abuse the Constitution by misusing the impeachment power.

A year ago, a number of us in Congress took up a cause and a challenge that had already stirred at the grassroots across the country. We called for an immediate, mutual and verifiable freeze between the United States and the Soviet Union on the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons.