The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“TRIBUTE TO REBECCA WARD AND MEREDITH BOOKER” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Senate section on pages S5019-S5020 on July 23, 2019.
The Department is primarily focused on food nutrition, with assistance programs making up 80 percent of its budget. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, said the Department implements too many regulations and restrictions and impedes the economy.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRIBUTE TO REBECCA WARD AND MEREDITH BOOKER
Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I rise to recognize two members of my team who are leaving the Senate after their years of dedicated and important work. Becca Ward will be leaving on August 7, and Meredith Booker will be leaving on Friday, July 26.
Both of them joined my team as interns. They have worked their way up within Team Merkley and have made tremendous contributions to my office and to our Nation. I know they are both going to do extraordinary things in the next chapters of their lives, but, first, it is worth reflecting on their service in the U.S. Senate.
Becca Ward has been an invaluable member of our team for 6 years. She started as an intern in my Oregon office, and she worked her way up to be my lead adviser on climate chaos and energy policy. Becca joined Team Merkley as a full-time staff assistant in 2013. Over the years, she rose to be a legislative correspondent and then a legislative aide. She drafted and sent responses to more than 225,000 Oregonians who were concerned about the climate and the environment.
Becca's terrific work made it clear that she was capable of more, so she became my top policy adviser on the threat of climate chaos. Climate chaos presents an existential threat to our planet. Her professionalism, her substantive expertise, her creativity, and the network she created proved to be powerful tools in our working to advance a progressive climate agenda.
When Becca first started working on climate change, she took the lead and the effort to protect the Arctic Ocean from oil and gas drilling, which led to the introduction of the Stop Arctic Ocean Drilling Act. Over the course of her years on this portfolio, she has helped a lot with the mission 100 bill, which aims to transition the United States into a 100-percent clean energy economy, and with my Keep It in the Ground Act, which would stop the expansion of the leasing of our Federal publicly owned properties for the production of fossil fuels.
More recently, she has contributed by collating the Senate's version of the Green New Deal, which has set a high bar for progressive climate efforts in the future. Just last week, she led my staff through the introduction of the Good Jobs for 21st Century Energy Act--a bold, new bill that required extensive coordination between the environmental community and the labor community. It is designed to create good-
paying, family-wage jobs and to have high labor standards--a race to the top in employment during the transition to clean energy.
Becca's efforts to take on the global challenge of climate chaos hasn't been limited to the United States. She has repeatedly traveled with me and on my behalf to U.N. Conference of the Parties meetings and to other international events to engage in the diplomacy that is necessary for a true global response to a global crisis. She has shepherded my efforts through the Appropriations Committee to maintain funding for climate programs and to introduce and pass bipartisan amendments that support the Green Climate Fund.
In addition to her substantive policy responsibilities, she has been an incredible team player and a remarkable individual to have with us. I think it is safe to say that Becca will likely go down in Team Merkley history as the only member of our team who is also an Olympic medalist. She has been a fantastic manager and mentor to the members of the climate team and has been a huge contributor to our office's efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in our work. I know her absence will be felt especially strongly every year when the annual cherry blossom run comes around.
Becca, you might need to plan a trip to DC for next spring.
While Becca is going to do incredible things for the planet in her next chapter of helping to expand a recently formed environmental organization, the Clean Energy Leadership Institute, she will be greatly missed here as a colleague, as a friend, and as a mentor to so many of us on the team.
We are counting on you, Becca, to save the planet, so no pressure. We appreciate your service to Oregon and to our country, and I look forward to hearing about your efforts in your journey ahead.
Now we turn to another member of Team Merkley, Meredith Booker, who is, sadly, leaving us in July--in fact, at the end of this week. Meredith embodies the heart and soul and work ethic of Team Merkley, and she will be sorely missed by everyone in the immigration, civil rights, housing, and LGBTQ rights portfolios.
Meredith joined our team as an intern in August of 2016 and quickly became indispensable, joining the legislative correspondent ranks in December of 2016.
In June of 2018, she was promoted to legislative aide and hasn't looked back, taking on more and more responsibility. She came into this position with a deep understanding and background in criminal justice and has brought a top-notch performance to every project and task she has touched. I think most of our office would agree. She is the best organized member of our team. Her meticulously crafted policy-tracker spreadsheet has helped our team stay on track in many areas and will remain a lasting part of her legacy here on Capitol Hill. It doesn't matter whether it is the smallest project or the biggest high-stakes moment, Meredith always gets it done and gets it done well.
This work ethic has extended from volunteering countless time to pitching in with coding parties. Coding parties are when the team stays late in the evening to work to try to have a prompt response to the thousands of letters we receive from Oregonians.
It stems from that to hustling to perfect every line and section of the 2019 Equality Act, resulting in a record of 47 Senate sponsors and bipartisan passage in the House of Representatives this May. That act has yet to be considered on the floor of the Senate, but it is way past time that we establish equality of opportunity for every single American.
Meredith skillfully navigated working with two different legislative assistants at times--and sometimes with one LA and sometimes with no LA--without letting a single decision, memo, or project fall through the cracks.
She managed reintroduction of the American Savings Act to expand high-quality retirement savings accounts to every American.
She managed our annual August Breastfeeding Month resolution to recognize the importance of breastfeeding to American families and to the health of the children and the health of the mothers.
Just a short time ago, when the Department of Agriculture laid out a plan to destroy Civilian Conservation Corps centers across America, she dove into the tricky and wonky world of that and proceeded to work intensely to prevent that from happening and worked successfully to do that.
She threw herself into the challenge of the retirement integrity act, designed to make IRAs work more cost-effectively for working Americans rather than be a loophole for the megawealthy.
Though we have always known we were lucky to have Meredith on Team Merkley, she has truly stepped up and gone above and beyond in the last year, after my June 2018 trip to Brownsville led to intensive work on the issue of family and child separation and to a lot of efforts by many parties to push back against President Trump's cruelty to migrant families. When President Trump proposed locking families up in internment camps, she led the drafting of the No Internment Camps Act to say that we will never repeat that shameful chapter in our history. When President Trump threw thousands of children into unregulated child prisons at Tornillo and Homestead, she leapt into action and worked with the immigration team to draft the Shut Down Child Prison Camps Act to end this horrific practice.
Just a few weeks ago, she was instrumental to the introduction of the Stop Cruelty to Migrant Children Act, legislation to ensure we treat children with dignity and respect, and that act already has 40 Senators sponsoring it.
As I have traveled to investigate the Trump administration's policies toward migrants over the last year, Meredith's codel, or congressional delegation, binders have become legendary. Whether they are assembled in support of trips to Texas or Central America--or when she joined the trip herself, as she did earlier this year when we went to the child jail in Homestead, FL--you have never seen a binder assembled with so much meticulous care and attention to detail.
In addition to her many accomplishments supporting legislation and oversight trips, she worked with countless outside groups to organize a hugely successful hearing through the Democratic Policy and Communications Center, or DPCC, on family separation in June of 2018. She reprised that role this week--in fact, today--working to help organize another DPCC hearing on the treatment of children at the southern U.S. border. It occurred just earlier this afternoon, with the focus on stopping the cruel treatment of migrant children.
She has done all this without letting the effort to respond to Oregonians' letters fall through the cracks. She probably holds the record for our team responding to constituent mail, having responded to more than 256,000 emails in less than 3 years and, in doing so, created 350 unique letters for those responses. That means, on average, that Meredith has created nearly 150 letters per year and sent approximately 100,000 responses per year. That is a lot of communicating with folks back home.
America is very lucky that Meredith is taking her talents to the legal arena. She will be starting at Loyola University of New Orleans this fall, working toward her law degree. Knowing how much she has done without a law degree--probably more than most fully accredited lawyers--I know the world is going to benefit enormously as she pursues that degree and puts it to work in the fight for justice and equality. The world of justice and equality will benefit just as we experience the loss of her talents here in the Senate.
Meredith, we are tremendously grateful for your contributions and will deeply miss you on Team Merkley. We will absolutely miss you both. You leave a tremendous hole in our team. Your final assignment is to make sure that we have some very talented people to carry on the terrific work you have been doing. Thank you.
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