This truly is a homecoming for me. It was here, in this City of Angels, on a warm summer night forty years ago, that America first looked across the … - Ted Kennedy

The opponents of the President's plan and the special interest groups that stand to gain from continuation of the status quo will try to shift the debate away from CBO's fundamental conclusion--which is that the President's plan will guarantee universal, comprehensive health insurance coverage and save money at the same time. The real issue is not the technical question of whether the President's plan or another plan should be included in the Federal Budget. The real issue is which plan does the job of ending the Nation's health care crisis. By this standard, CBO's analysis is a convincing vote of confidence in President Clinton's plan. None of the plans advanced by the President's opponents can claim a similar seal of budget approval.

In this new session of Congress, we must also join together to do a better job of laying the groundwork for meeting and mastering the longer-run challenges before us. We are being called to action again, as we have been called before at decisive times in our history. We are fighting a war against terrorism -- and we are also fighting for our values. Our resources may be limited, but 2002 can be a year in which we make progress on the great unfinished business of our society. One essential priority is to continue our intense focus on education. For too long, public education has been highly unequal from kindergarten through 12th grade. The new school reform law can go a long way to close the gap -- but only if we stay the course, and provide the increased resources and guidance essential for schools and students to meet and fulfill the high potential of this far-reaching and genuinely bipartisan achievement. I was proud to stand with President Bush as he signed that reform into law. But this is no time for any of us to rest on any laurels. We have only just begun to renew our education system. We have much more to do to realize the ideal of "no child left behind."

And of course, all of us in Congress quickly learned to host fundraisers the way Tip O'Neill did it--a thousand dollars if you came, and two thousand dollars if you didn't. Tip was scrupulously neutral in the 1980 Democratic primaries between President Carter and myself. But he told me that every night, before he went to sleep, he was secretly getting down on his knees and praying that we would have another Irish President of the United States. The prayer was a little ambiguous--but Tip's friend Ronald Reagan was very grateful. There was never any secret about the genius of Tip O'Neill. In his years as Speaker of the House, the entire Nation came to know him and love him as we did in Massachusetts. He was a Speaker who was never afraid to speak out for the average man and woman--the worker trying to keep a job, the child going hungry in the night, the family struggling to make ends meet, the senior citizen trying to live in dignity in retirement.