Sen. Lott (R-Miss.) Announces He Will Resign By the Year's End

The people here have given me the opportunity to have some great experiences. I've been on mountain tops; I've been down in the valleys.

But, you know, we have proven, in South Mississippi and all of Mississippi, from our governor on down, that we're, kind of, resilient people, kind of, like these live oak trees.

And as some of you heard me say, I didn't really realize I was a tree hugger until Katrina.

(LAUGHTER)

And then I realized how much I love these live oak trees and how much they symbolized the strength and resilience and the determination of these people.

You know, I took a few licks. I made some mistakes. You know, Victor Marboro (ph) called me a couple of times, wanted to know why I voted the way I did on some issues.

Sometime when you get in the leadership, you get out on a point, and you get your nose bloodied. And I've done that, too, because -- and the people here in my hometown, the people on the Gulf Coast, they gave me a little latitude. They understood that sometime, when you're the majority leader or you're the whip in the House or the Senate, you have to get out and try to find a way to get things done.

But -- and I've been in the majority and I've been in the minority, back and forth, six times. I don't like being in the minority as much. And if I were 20 years younger, I'd be mounting my horse saying, "Let's get this majority back."

But, you know, I showed that I was willing to acknowledge where mistakes were made and just keep on working. I've done that.

Then, you know, '05 was such a tough year: losing my mother and losing my house and seeing my neighbors and my neighborhood, my hometown, and the Gulf Coast, South Mississippi, 42 counties just hammered by Katrina. But they didn't quit, and so I couldn't quit.

And then I went back, and my colleagues in the Senate gave me an opportunity to get back in the leadership. I love being whip. I like to -- I, kind of, consider the whip job the cavalry. You're out there, always scouting, trying to see where -- but not just where the problems are, where the enemy is, but where the solutions are.

LOTT: I've already had calls this morning from my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, including Frank Lautenberg from New Jersey, Hillary Clinton from New York, Pat Leahy from Vermont; not exactly the ones that I'm always partners with, but men and women of the Senate that I've developed a friendship and a relationship with.

So, being able to leave on a positive note, hopefully, being able to spend more time with my family, being able to do some other things with my life, being able to open the door for another, younger person to have the experiences I've had; all of that seems to make sense to me right now. And I feel good about it.

I've prayed a lot about it, by the way, to my colleagues here from the First Baptist Church of Pascagoula, my home church. I started way back in August. Trish and I have talked a lot about it, thought a lot about it, prayed a lot about it. But all the signs were there this was the time. And so that's why I'm doing it now.

QUESTION: Senator, are you in line to be the next chancellor of Ole Miss?

LOTT: Not that I know of.

(LAUGHTER)

I hear speculation to that effect. As I said, I really wanted to be the head football coach, but...

(LAUGHTER)

I love my alma mater. I'm a -- I've always -- I guess it was the way my folks raised me, or maybe it was going to Pascagoula High School, but I've always been one to get involved in different organizations and then really be an active participant.

And that's the way I was at high school, when I knew the Fords here at Pascagoula, and that's the way it was at Ole Miss. I love Ole Miss -- a special place in my heart forever. I worked for the university for, I guess, four years, in the placement and financial aid office and in the work study program and the alumni association. And so I had that great experience. But I don't know what's available there.

And again, while, you know, I've talked to different people about different things, I don't -- you know, I'm not going to work tomorrow for somebody else. I'm working for you until we get right to the end of this session. And then we'll see what's out there.

QUESTION: Senator, how do you feel about leaving behind your work on the antitrust exemption for insurance companies, the work you were trying to do with improving the laws -- changing the laws?

LOTT: One of the things that troubles me now is the great difficulty in passing needed legislation. I've always believed that just by sheer energy and tenacity I could get legislation passed.

And we did that in the '90s, when I was in the majority leader position and working with the president and the other party. We did a lot of things; you know, welfare reform and clean drinking water -- or Safe Drinking Water was the name of that bill.

A balanced budget. Tax cuts. A lot of things that people had thought were not possible.

This year I found, though, that it's awfully tough.

I just, when I was talking to Frank Lautenberg, he and I got through the Senate just last month the bill that was the Lott- Lautenberg bill, and then when we went in the minority became the Lautenberg-Lott bill, to reauthorize Amtrak and to put Amtrak on a solid footing and to modernize our national rail passenger system.

We managed to get that done, but it actually took us three years to get a window of opportunity on the floor of the Senate and make it happen. Now, once we got there, it only took parts of about three days to get it done. It still has to go through the House, it still has to go to conference.

On the antitrust issue you ask about, I thought we were going to move that bill aggressively. It is co-sponsored by the Democratic leader, Harry Reid, by Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on Judiciary, by Pat Leahy, the chairman of the committee. And I have a call from Pat Leahy this morning, I'm going to say, "Pat, please, can we -- can we get this done?"

But the problem for these bills is the majority leader and the minority leader have a limited amount of time to do issues. And we've spent so much time fighting over Iraq or trying to deal with just the big issues that we've passed and had signed into law one appropriations bill when we should have done a dozen.

And I recently have been talking to Chairman Leahy about this antitrust exemption, which clearly needs to be changed. There's no justification for one industry, the insurance industry, being exempted from antitrust laws. None that I can see.

But the chairman was concerned that we might not have the votes in the committee. And I said, "You know, Pat, what I do for a living? I count votes. I believe we've got the votes."

But it has not been scheduled because the Judiciary Committee has become such a battlefield over judicial nominations -- remember, it took us years and tried three different Mississippians to get into the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Finally, just last month, we got Leslie Southwick done after a ferocious battle and after I worked for months to line up, you know, I think 13 or a dozen Democrats, as well as every Republican, plus my good friend Joe Lieberman. But it was a huge lift, and took an enormous amount of time.

I point is, again, I'm not mad about that or frustrated about it, but I'm just making the point: It's so different now to get things that should pass relatively easily.

I've been working on the FAA reauthorization. I want to modernize the air traffic system in America. Jeez, do we need to do that? Have we missed the congestion in New York area? But we have not been able to get it to the floor in a propitious way. But I'll continue to work on that.

And then it comes back to the other point. When Phil Gramm, great senator from Texas, retired, I was just heartbroken because he was really one of the smartest guys I've ever known; certainly one of the smartest senators I've ever known. And I was whining about it and eulogizing him, you know, at the final dinner. And he got up and he said, "Don't worry. Somebody will pick up the flag and carry on. You'll be fine."

LOTT: And that's it.

You know, in Washington, in life, we tend sometimes to get to thinking that, you know, we're especially anointed; that only we can do this job. Somebody will pick up the flag and carry on.

I asked Frank Lautenberg, when I talked to him a while ago, I said "Frank, are you going to drop my name from the bill?" He said "Never. We're going to get it completed before you leave." So, we'll see.

Anybody else?

QUESTION: Senator, is there any work you've been doing on hurricane recovery that you hope your successor will pick up and carry on?

LOTT: Well, I'm still going to make a push on antitrust legislation.

We still have issues we need to deal with. I talked to Senator Susan Collins and I've talked to Joe Lieberman, who is the chairman now of the Government Affairs and Homeland Security Committee. Susan Collins is the ranking Republican, a great senator, and she helped us with a lot of the Stafford Act reforms.

We need to still come back and take a look at the bigger question of the legislation that helps us -- that controls FEMA and helps us in the immediate aftermath of a man-made or a huge natural disaster.

The law is just not up to date. It's too difficult to get decisions. You've got lawyers saying "Oh, you can't do that." You've got -- a lot of times it's just regulations, not the law.

I hope we will continue to work on that.

Obviously, one of the biggest problems we still confront along the coast is the accessibility and the affordability of insurance. And we are -- I have talked to the chairman of the committee, Chris Dodd, the ranking member, Richard Shelby. We've has some difficulty getting real reform on flood insurance. We've had difficulty in trying to decide what to do about wind.

But it's really bigger than just Katrina and just this natural disaster. In the future, we've got to think about, you know, how are we going to deal with man-made disasters. It's getting more and more difficult to get insured -- to afford insurance for wind, obviously, earthquakes, tornadoes, fires. And the question of catastrophic coverage has got to be dealt with.

But because of the magnitude of it and the difficulty of it and the cost of it, this may not be something that can be resolved in a month or a year.

But I -- in fact, I joined with Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska twice in the '90s in trying to get catastrophic coverage.

What happens is, after every major or every disaster, people say. "Oh, we've got to do something," and there's a little bit of a momentum. But if you can't pocket quickly, like Thad and I were able to do, you know, after Katrina, and with the help of the administration and both parties, the momentum gets awfully tough to move.

So, twice in the '90s, Senator Stevens and I made a run at it, but could not get it put together.

So that's an issue clearly that the local congressman, Taylor, and Thad and other successors and other senators -- you know, when I talk about catastrophic insurance, one of the people I talk to is Dianne Feinstein in California, because she's concerned about this. And when it comes to tornadoes, the senators from Oklahoma have got to be conscious of how you get this coverage.

But I could go on and on and on. Again, as you see, I still like the legislative process. I still enjoy getting involved in it. And I'm going to keep doing that as long as I can and, frankly, hopefully, as long as I live.

But, thank you all for coming and giving me the opportunity to speak to the people here in my hometown and along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and my friends and associates and colleagues from around the country.

God has blessed us richly, and I know he will continue to do so. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

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