Montana Senator Jon Tester signs off on his 18-year term in Congress
By Micah Drew DAILY MONTANAN
Montana’s senior — for another four weeks — U.S. Sen. Jon Tester told members of Congress on Monday that if he cried during his farewell speech it wasn’t due to an emotional reaction from finishing a nearly two-decade long stint in Congress. Instead, he would attribute any shed tears to being convinced by two of his staff members to play basketball over the weekend and the 68-year-old lawmaker from Big Sandy was sore.
It’s a tradition for outgoing Senators to address their fellow lawmakers before the end of their terms. Last week, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich, and Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.V., among others, marked the conclusion of their elected service.
Tester gave his farewell address on Monday afternoon, a few weeks after he lost his re-election bid to Republican Tim Sheehy.
“Look, I’ve seen a number of these exit speeches, and to be honest with you, they remind me a bit of an obituary,” Tester told his peers. “This is the end of this moment in time, this last 18 years that I’ve spent in the United States Senate. The truth is, there’s been other periods of time very similar to that throughout my life. When I went to high school — grade school, high school and college — for example, was about an 18-year period. When that time period was over with, we moved on. My wife, Sharla, and I cut meat for almost exactly eighteen years on the farm, a custom butcher shop. When we shut that down, when I got in the state legislature, that period of time in our lives was over. And now, my time in the Senate is over.”
In his final address, Tester took time to highlight accomplishments he made while in Congress, including on veterans’ health care, infrastructure, and conservation.
Tester was first elected to Congress in 2006 and while he is widely known for his work in the Senate as a moderate statesman, his career in public service dates back decades in the Treasure State.
As a high school senior he was elected student body president, and he spent time serving on multiple elected boards, including the Big Sandy Soil Conservation Board, the county Farm Service Agency, and the local school board, “The hardest public service job I ever had,” Tester said.
“And then the Montana State Legislature, which was the funnest job I ever had. If not for term limits, I’d probably still endeavor to be a state legislator,” said Tester, who served in the Montana Senate from 1999-2007 and was Senate President his last two years. “ All these commitments taught me, most importantly, that you have two ears and you have one mouth. Act accordingly. You never are right all the time, and you’re never wrong all the time.”
Tester said that when he first entered Congress, he expected to serve just two terms at most. But, he said he realized in short order that as a seniority-driven governing body, the longer a senator serves, the more they can get done.
In his final term, Tester was the ranking member and chair of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee and Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee. He used the former position to champion several bills addressing veterans’ mental health and toxic exposure.
But when reflecting on his greatest accomplishments of the last 18, Tester pointed to maintaining his connection with his home state.
“I see my greatest accomplishments as being a United States Senator, as a citizen legislator, having a real full-time job outside this body, in my case as a farmer. This is what our forefathers had in mind,” Tester said. “Trips home every weekend — not only preparing the seed bed and seeding until sometimes three in the morning, or haying, plowing down peas, getting the equipment ready — but also traveling the state, having meetings with my constituents. Doing my job as a senator. I loved every minute of it. Most days.”
Tester thanked the members of his staff, as well as all the unnamed essential workers in the U.S. Capitol that help keep the government functioning, from the bill clerks to the police officers to the Capitol’s woodcrafters.
He also paid homage to his family members, including his wife Sharla and their children, and his ancestors who homesteaded in north central Montana, his parents and older brothers, all whom he credited with instilling his “Montana values.”
“Like telling the truth, like the word is your bond, like your handshake means something, and that you respect people, and absolutely never, never sass your elders,” Tester said. “But most importantly, they taught me that hard work creates luck, and hard work is essential for success.”
In his final remarks Tester urged his colleagues to continue working towards affordable healthcare, promoting family farm agriculture, remaining a strong military deterrent and bolstering public education, the “foundation for our democracy and our economy.”
He called on Congress to “stop these damn carve outs of our tax code,” deal with income disparity, and to work on campaign finance reform.
“I’ve just been through this meat grinder,” Tester said. “Because of our campaign finance system in this country today, we have more division than ever. We are more paralyzed as a body to do policy than we ever had before. Campaign finance reform would be good for democracy. And let me tell you something: It has to be solved with bipartisan solutions.”
Tester ended his speech by saying democracy has resulted in America becoming the greatest country that’s ever existed, but he expressed his concerns about the nation’s future.
“To say that I’m worried about this country’s ability to maintain the strongest economy and the most powerful military in the world would be an understatement. However, I know that a majority of people that serve in this U.S. Senate today are real legislators who want to do real legislating. To those senators, you need to make sure your voices are a majority of this body. If not, this country will change in a way that our children will not thank us for.”
“God bless you all, and tally ho!” Tester concluded.
New members of Congress elected last month, including Sen.-elect Tim Sheehy, R-Mont, will be sworn in on Jan. 3.
