Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Memorial For California Senator Dianne Feinstein

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor regarding the memorial for California Senator Dianne Feinstein. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Tomorrow, the United States Senate will be closed in observance of the memorial of our late friend and colleague, Senator Dianne Feinstein.

It will be my honor, a sad, tearful, but great honor, to speak tomorrow at my friend Dianne’s memorial, and I thank all my colleagues who will be in attendance. I know that it would mean the world to her for her colleagues to join in this one last goodbye.

I will have more to say tomorrow, but over the past few days I’ve been coming back to the same thought again and again: Dianne Feinstein was a public servant of uncommon integrity. Many of us here try our best to pursue the common good, but Dianne was on another level – when she thought something was right, when she had a cause she believed in, she pursued it until the end, until her cause endured.

I got to see it for myself when she championed the Assault Weapons Ban; the NRA launched horrible, vitriolic, arguably chauvinistic attacks, but she remained undeterred. She knew her cause was just. She persisted, and in the end her cause won the day.

It will be a long, long time until the Senate sees someone as consequential as Dianne Feinstein again.

###