Alan B. Mollohan

Madam Speaker, on January 2, 1974, a gallon of gas cost about 53 cents, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 855, and the top-selling 45 on Billboard's chart was Jim Croce's ``Time in a Bottle.'' That was also the day a recent college graduate, Mary Colleen McCarty, began her professional career, reporting to work in the personal office of Representative Robert H. Mollohan of West Virginia's first congressional district.

On January 2, 2011, Colleen will bring that remarkable career to a close, retiring from my office as Chief of Staff. For the 37 years between those two January days--9 years spent working for my father and 28 in my office--Colleen built a record of service and accomplishment that few congressional staffers can match.

All of us understand how important staff is to our work. It's been one of my privileges to work with many terrific staffers throughout my 28 years in Congress, men and women who have contributed to the first district in a wide variety of ways and whom I am proud to call friends today. But Colleen has always been the one constant. Few staffers survive, let alone thrive, for 37 years in what can be a stressful and demanding work environment. But what's behind that longevity? In Colleen's case, several things.

First is a real commitment to public service. Colleen never lost sight of our purpose here. She came to work every day determined to help the residents of the first district. She began her career as a caseworker, helping somebody get the VA benefits he'd earned or qualify for black lung benefits after a career in the mines, or maybe making sure someone else was getting the right social security check or helping an American stranded overseas with a visa problem. There's nothing abstract about that work; you see the results immediately and tangibly, and that was a lesson that Colleen applied to all of her work in my office--what we do up here matters to people and for that reason alone all of us need to do our best.

Another thing that Colleen brought to work every day was her honesty and the courage of that honesty. I learned early on not to ask Colleen's advice unless I were willing to hear something completely opposite of what I believed or hoped to hear. Colleen never hesitated to speak her mind to me, and, fortunately, she didn't always wait to be asked. I have always understood how important that quality is.

Honesty is only one measure of Colleen's personal integrity. She also has strength and compassion in equal measures. That is true in her personal life as well as her professional one. I know, for example, how deeply her parents came to rely on Colleen as they negotiated the not uncommon challenges of aging. They knew, as I do, that you can always rely on Colleen.

A Congressman's Chief of Staff generally has two major responsibilities. The first is to serve as principal adviser. I just touched on how important Colleen's counsel has been. The other role, of course, is building and managing a good staff, something at which Colleen has always excelled. She cares about people, supports them, and helps them grow, both professionally and personally.

The culture of my office has always been a positive one, and that is thanks in large part to Colleen's leadership. I speak for myself as well as scores of staffers over the years in thanking Colleen for a thousand kindnesses, large and small, visible and hidden. In a very real way, Colleen retires with two bodies of work. The first is her sizable contributions to the congressional work of my father and me. And the second is the large network of staffers who have benefited from her support and mentoring over the years. In both bodies of work, Colleen enters retirement knowing that she made a difference in people's lives, that she left things better than she found them. And what more satisfaction could one ask of any career?

I always dreaded the prospect of having to replace Colleen. She actually tried to retire once or twice but always made the mistake of asking me rather than telling me. My response never varied--``No, Colleen, I just don't think it's the right time.'' And it never was the right time, for me anyway. I simply relied on her too much.

Well, Madam Speaker, now it is, finally, the right time. As I prepare to leave office, I take with me many wonderful things. But few mean as much to me as the support and the friendship of Mary Colleen McCarty. My wife, Barbara, and I offer Colleen our warmest wishes for a wonderful retirement.

Madam Speaker, I'm pleased to stand up and have the opportunity and honor to say a few words about the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, my chairman, David Obey. We all operate on teams here in the Congress. I'm especially proud to be on David Obey's team, serving as one of the chairmen of one of the subcommittees under David's jurisdiction.

David has long distinguished himself in public service. He started in the Wisconsin Assembly in 1963, and served until 1969. At the beginning of his career he may have stumbled into the wrong political party. But seeing the Joe McCarthy experience, he soon learned and developed an aversion for duplicity and felt that the Democratic Party was the home for him. I think they best reflect his Midwestern values and his progressive attitudes. I associate myself with those values and those attitudes, which makes it especially pleasurable to be a part of his team.

I'm sure it's been mentioned here before that David served in Congress for a long time and that he came to the Congress as the youngest Member when he came, at 30 years old, and he's served 42 years. So, do the math. And now he's voluntarily retiring from this institution, having left a very distinguished record from the beginning. Arriving with new ideas about how the Congress ought to operate and how it ought to be more open and how it ought to be more embracing of new Members, he was extremely effective in implementing those ideas, moving on through his career to higher responsibilities and becoming, ultimately, chairman of, as we refer to it, the powerful Appropriations Committee.

His values that he came here with he continued to want to express. It was very important for him to continue his service as chairman of the Labor, HHS, Education Subcommittee where he could really affect all of those constituencies, which really allowed him to do those things that were important to him and to express that progressive attitude.

Madam Speaker, David Obey has been a real contribution to the United States Congress. During his career--and it will be lasting after his career--his mark has been indelible in the reforms that are reflected in how we do business here. I don't know of a person in the institution who could have assimilated within the appropriations process--the rules and changes in procedures in the way we did business in response to legitimate concerns about the appropriations process--better than David Obey. It was his ability to separate the chaff from the grain, to understand what were legitimate expressions of concern about the appropriations process, his ability to deal with them, and his embracing the prerogatives of the appropriations process. At the same time, we recognize the process of the legislative branch reflects that which will really be his legacy.

Madam Speaker, thank you for allowing me to say a few words. I want to personally thank David Obey for his personal considerations.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to alert my colleagues to some growing concerns in Kazakhstan.

As an ex-Soviet republic, Kazakhstan has made great strides in the past several decades. In fact, it was just 1991 when Kazakhstan became the last of the Soviet republics to declare its independence. Today, Kazakhstan serves as the Chair of the 56 member-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

While I commend Kazakhstan for the progress it has made over the past several decades toward becoming a more democratic nation, I am increasingly concerned about ongoing allegations of corruption, human rights abuses, human trafficking, religious persecution, election tampering and suppression of free speech within the nation. In recent years, I have seen reports indicating that Kazakhstan's governmental system lacks the basic rights of democracy--elections are often fraught with fraud; political opposition is suppressed; few independent media outlets exist; and respect for human rights, religious freedom, and freedom of speech is questionable.

The United States has sought a mutually beneficial relationship with Kazakhstan and provides aid to Kazakhstan to enhance economic growth, democracy, security and humanitarian needs. We understand, because of Kazakhstan's centralized location between Europe and Asia, that it is in a unique position to help bridge East and West. However, I am concerned that the current U.S.-Kazakhstan relationship could be compromised and I think it is time we critically evaluate these very serious allegations.

I applaud the work of the Helsinki Commission under the current leadership of Senator Ben Cardin, and previously, Congressman Alcee Hastings for their ongoing commitment to bringing these matters to light and I would urge my colleagues to take the time to look into this issue.