Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Legacy Of Departing Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow
Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor paying tribute to longtime friend and Senate colleague Debbie Stabenow as she bids farewell to the Senate in retirement. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
Later this afternoon, Senators will gather in the chamber to hear the farewell remarks of a beloved colleague, our friend, my dear friend, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. She will leave the Senate at the end of this year after twenty-four remarkable years in this chamber – and many, many more years in public service.
But today, I don’t want to start my tribute listing off Debbie’s myriad accomplishments, although they are great. Nor do I want to focus on how much all of us in the Democratic Caucus love to work with her, though we certainly do.
You know, as Leader, you can't do everything yourself, and I don’t try. And you give jobs to different people. When you give Debbie Stabenow a job, she gets the job done. Every time I call Debbie – and it’s so frequent – when I ask her to do this or do that, I know it'll get done and get done well because of her phenomenal dedication and ability and energy and drive. And she does it all with a smile on her face. She's just great.
But let me begin a couple blocks down the street from Debbie’s alma mater, Michigan State University, at an old bar called the Coral Gables. There, as a college student, Debbie was a regular, working – of all things – as a folk singer. Yes, Debbie sang part time to earn a little money on the side back in college.
And many years later, once in the Senate, her love of folk music led to achieving a lifelong goal of singing with Peter, Paul and Mary, all for raising money for anti-bullying causes. She was in a little singing group. She’ll probably mention it. I hope she mentions it on the floor when she speaks.
But why do I mention this? Simple: for Debbie Stabenow – an elected leader with very few peers in this chamber, the first woman to represent Michigan in the U.S. Senate – politics by itself has never been the end goal. For Debbie, the end goal has always been her community, and about building support for worthy causes, and about being a constant presence in her home town, on campus, in Lansing, or all over the state. The kind of person who loved getting to know everyone on a first name basis.
That has always been Debbie at her core. Add to that a thirst for fairness, a love of complex problems – and a knack and persistence for winning – and you get the Senior Senator from Michigan.
Saying goodbye is heart-wrenching. And saying thank you is hardly sufficient.
After two decades, there is no policy issue left that Debbie hasn’t shaped or progressed in some meaningful way. She’s authored hundreds of bills that have become law.
Her work has often been ahead of the curve – look no further than her legacy on closing the gap for mental health policy. She so cared about people's mental health. She knew that the federal government had to step up to plate. It was a decade-long campaign and she never gave up. It didn't matter if it was a Democratic president, Republican president, Democratic majority, Republican majority. She kept at it, kept at it, kept at it. And when the time was right to add significant dollars to mental health on several different occasions, she did – most recently on our major gun bill in 2022, where over $14 billion was added for mental health. That wouldn't have happened without Debbie Stabenow. She does amazing work. Amazing work.
Of course, her true love will always be the place she calls home. It will always be the people of Michigan, from the rural farmers she’s relentlessly championed through the farm bill. I'll never forget her devotion to the cherry farmers, and reminding us that Michigan is the biggest sweet cherry state in the country. I reminded her that New York is the biggest sour cherry state in the country. Anyway, she's always fiercely protected the farmers of Michigan, and the Great Lakes, and the small-town and working class and middle class families just trying to afford health care and prescription drugs.
When the auto industry needed saving in a moment of crisis, Debbie came to the rescue.
When hungry kids and hungry families needed someone to fight for their needs in the highest echelons of government, Debbie was their voice. There were a lot of people on the Agriculture Committee who didn't want to help feed children, hungry children, or give them what they needed. Debbie knew they needed certain things. She always was able to weave together a coalition that would pass the farm bill, help hungry children can and help the farmers.
And when our caucus needed good leaders and team players to guide us and organize us and help us achieve our goals, Debbie stepped up to the plate.
Just four years into her time in the Senate, she became the third-ranking Democrat in the caucus when named Caucus Secretary by the late Harry Reid.
And for many years, she has been an expert and skillful force as Chair of the DPCC – our Democratic Policy and Communications Committee – organizing weekly lunches, providing messaging and strategy resources, and organizing our caucus’ yearly retreat. At all of our Tuesday lunches, Debbie would get up and go over our strategy, every Tuesday, and everybody listened and everybody followed. She published a list of who's helped us, giving them credit and then expanding the list of who else would help us, because they weren't on the list the previous week.
And of course, I want to thank Debbie for her many, many years as a leader of the Ag Committee and on the farm bill. It’s a cause that she’s dedicated herself to. Together, we worked to get help for our specialty crops, our fruits and vegetables, which Michigan and New York have so much produce from. She was a champion of this legislation, all agricultural legislation, and I commend her for her recent work in releasing a strong bill.
I begged her to stay when she told me a year and a half ago that she wasn't going to run. Although true to her commitment, Debbie said: don't worry, we'll have a great new senator to take my place and I'll make sure she wins. And she did, and now we have Elissa Slotkin coming, a protégé of Debbie’s. You know, when she makes a commitment, there it is, it gets done.
Finally, what’s incredible about Debbie’s legacy is that things could have turned out very, very differently.
In fact, Debbie’s preference growing up was to serve in a different capacity – perhaps criminal justice, perhaps social work, which she studied in college. Political life may not have been in the cards at all, were it not for an incident that occurred in graduate school.
Because while she was studying at Michigan State, she’s a Spartan, a local county commissioner announced he was shutting down the only nursing home in town that served low income seniors.
The decision lit a fire within Debbie, a deep anger at the utter callousness of the decision. What this official did was simply unfair, it was mean-spirited, so Debbie – then just twenty-four years old and with no political experience – decided to run against him. The incumbent wasn’t exactly respectful about a younger woman challenging his seat.
But then she won. In fact, she won in a landslide. And of course, her goal was not to win the election, but to save the nursing home and she did.
And along the way, Debbie discovered that she loved running for office because she loved people. She just has that friendly, all-embracing look and she would meet people, she'd shake hands, she’d get to know the entire town ton a first-name basis, and most of all listening to what her neighbors were thinking as she met them.
So, from then on, Debbie never looked back. Thank God for that too. Debbie's mom instilled in her a belief in political life. She just passed away, but made sure she mailed her absentee ballot while she was sick, one of her last acts was to make sure she voted. That’s where Debbie got it all, she always talks glowingly about her mom. And her mom knows, we all know that Debbie Stabenow leaves our country a better, stronger, healthier place than the day she chose to save the nursing home.
So Debbie: thank you, thank you, thank you. We will miss you. I certainly will miss you. You were one of my best friends and one of my best members of the team. But we are happy for you and your family. And we know you can continue to do great things for our country and for Michigan in the years to come. Debbie, Godspeed. Godspeed.
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