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.
“CONGRESSMAN JAMIE WHITTEN” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Senate section on pages S13883-S13885 on Sept. 20, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
CONGRESSMAN JAMIE WHITTEN
Mr. COCHRAN. Madam President, last week, I was very honored to be able to attend the funeral in my State of former Congressman Jamie Whitten. Congressman Whitten was my good friend and colleague in the House. I served in the House 6 years before coming to the Senate. During that time, I got to know him and be with him frequently. Even though I was not on the Appropriations Committee at that time when I was elected to the Senate, I soon became a member of the Appropriations Committee, and as irony caused it, I was immediately the chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee.
The day I went on the Agriculture Subcommittee, the Republicans had become the majority in the Senate and that was my first assignment. Interestingly enough, on the House side, Congressman Whitten had been the chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee since about 1949. He had been in the House only 8 years when he became chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Agriculture.
So that first year, I recall having the opportunity of going to conference with Congressman Whitten chairing the subcommittee on the House side and I chairing it on the Senate side, both being from the same State. I was very new to the job, and I remember he said to me that day as we began our negotiation on the House-passed and Senate-
passed appropriations bills funding the Department of Agriculture and related agencies, ``Thad, you had better be careful what you ask for now; you might get it.''
I have never forgotten that. It was an interesting lesson and a good thing to tell me because in that position you have to defend what you have recommended; you have to understand that there are going to be those who will look critically at the contents of the bill. And we worked very cordially together during those 6 years when I chaired that subcommittee.
As I was handling the bill in this Chamber for the last couple of days we have been considering the Agriculture appropriations bill, I thought several times about my good friend and former colleague in the House and the lessons that I learned, which have certainly been good lessons to learn.
He was a man who was very courteous, very knowledgeable about the subject. In his dealings with other Members of the House and Senate, he was always a gentleman. I respected that and appreciated that in Jamie Whitten.
When he retired from the House, we truly saw come to an end a legendary career in many ways, not because of length of service, which was longer than anyone had ever served in the House of Representatives, but because of the kind of person he was and the way he did his job. He took it seriously. He was conscientious, he did it well, and he did it well for a long period of time.
I was reading editorials just over the last few weeks in our State, and there have been many written talking about Congressman Whitten. There were two that I particularly appreciated, and I will put them in the Record. One is from the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal in Tupelo, and the other was written by Bill Minor, who has a syndicated political column in Mississippi, and this was printed in the Clarion-
Ledger in Jackson, MS.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that both of these editorials be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the editorials were ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
[From the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo, MS, Sept. 12,
1995]
Former Congressman Jamie Whitten
Jamie Whitten started his public service career when some Mississippians still had eye-witness memories of the Civil War and only dreamed of one day having electricity in their houses. He concluded his public service after a 53-year tenure in the U.S. Congress when many Americans routinely communicate from their homes via computers with people halfway around the world.
His journey ends in Charleston, the same small town that nurtured his early political career and always sustained him as the place he called home. It was the place where almost everyone knew him and called him Jamie, not Mr. Chairman or Congressman or any of the other honorifics by which he was addressed in his official capacities. He was, in the words of longtime staff leader Buddy Bishop, ``just one of the guys'' in Charleston. His town, the state, and the nation bid Whitten farewell in a service at Charleston Presbyterian Church, where he had been an active member for almost 70 years.
Whitten, 85, died Saturday in an Oxford hospital less than a year after retiring from the U.S. House of Representatives. His 53 years in the House is the record for longevity in that chamber. He is second only to the late Sen. Carl Hayden of Arizona, whose 56 years in the House and Senate combined is Capitol Hill's longest tenure.
Whitten was a low-profile giant who thrived on the serious and demanding business of making public policy. His legislative gifts were no place more evident than in federal policy, laws and programs related to improving and enhancing life in rural America. The depth and breadth of his influence and interest inevitably grew as he moved up the ladder of power and responsibility in Washington. The ladder finally took him to the pinnacle chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee.
Mississippi's senior senator, Republican Thad Cochran, considered Whitten a congressional mentor and close friend. Cochran said Monday that Whitten possessed the invaluable gift of remaining unhurried and courteous in a political atmosphere that was more often frenetic and sometimes discourteous.
Whitten believed in federal investment in America, a practice some people derisively and mistakenly call pork-barrel spending. Whitten often stated his belief in spending federal dollars to generate a return from the productivity of American citizens. That idea always is unpopular with congressmen who don't have the intelligence or the influence to steer a share of the investment to their states and districts. Whitten understood, as he networked with colleagues from coast to coast, that a good investment provides a good return, no matter where it's made.
He also understood that the vast resources of the federal government, as a moral imperative, must be applied to people in crisis and people in need.
Many other members of Congress in this century have been more widely known, more colorful and more ambitious. A bare handful stand in company with Whitten's impact and influence because, for him, effectiveness was vastly more important than fame.
Winston Churchill said that ``singleness of purpose and simplicity of conduct'' are powerful attributes of public servanthood.
Those same qualities distinguish Congressman Jamie L. Whitten's long record as the people's representative in Washington.
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Jamie Whitten Knew Real Power Was in the Purse Strings
(By Bill Minor)
Mississippi's 53-year congressional veteran served his state well.
What Jamie Whitten's half-century in the House of Representatives did for the state of Mississippi is incalculable, because it is beyond comparison to any other person who has represented this state or almost any state in the Congress of the United States.
Certainly Whitten gave this relatively small state in the whole scheme of things for greater influence--you can call it clout--than it had reason to expect. He made the strongest case for longevity as opposed to the current demand for term limits.
In his incredible 53-year service in the U.S. House, Whitten wisely concentrated on the area where the real power lies in Congress, the power of the purse. He long ago staked out a seat on Appropriations, working his way up to the chairmanship in 1980. But for many years before that, he headed the agriculture subcommittee of Appropriations, the spot that earned him the sobriquet as ``the permanent Secretary of Agriculture.'' It was true that Whitten held the purse strings for farm programs as well as a broad spectrum of other programs that were tucked under his wing and the huge agricultural industry of this country knew it. His first concern always was to see that the farm interests of Mississippi were well-served.
Whitten, said his onetime Mississippi colleague, former U.S. Rep. David Bowen, ``could digest an appropriation bill faster than anyone'' in Congress. His legendary reading of the fine print in an appropriation bill is what rescued the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway from the public works graveyard in 1967.
Whitten's reputation as the ``mumbler'' when he was handling amendments to complicated appropriations bills, was actually strategy and was done intentionally, says Bowen.
``His speaking style may have seemed obfuscating, says Bowen,
``but he was a very bright man.'' Perhaps he was not outwardly articulate as an orator in comparison to some of his colleagues, but Whitten got the job done.
One important thing in light of what has recently come out of the Bob Packwood diaries about the inordinate influence of Washington lobbyists, is that Whitten, with all his power in spending, never had much time for lobbyists.
The career of Jamie Whitten is a remarkable story of a small-town Mississippian who started out in Congress as a New Dealer with Franklin Roosevelt a half-century ago. Then be became a Dixiecrat in the 1950s when the Citizens' Council and Ross Barnett were in their heyday. In fact, he was one of the leaders in the anti-civil rights Southern Manifesto in Congress.
Back in those days he hardly let it be known back in Mississippi that he was a member of the Democratic Party. But by the late 1960s, Whitten began his transformation to a loyal team player for Democratic programs and eventually became a key cog in pushing liberal programs of the Democratic leadership.
While most political figures become more conservative as they grow older, Whitten on the other hand, grew more liberal, or as some close observers believe, he returned to his New Deal populist roots.
Yes, Jamie Whitten could be said to have been a pragmatic politician. However, he used the political system to not for his own glory, but in a very real sense for his own state. Essentially, Whitten believed in the fundamental value of the federal government as an instrument for the good of the people.
Fortunately, Whitten's best years were in the days before the austerity era became vogue in Congress, and when there was more money available to fund projects such as the Tenn-Tom.
It was never his style to dabble in someone else's politics or build a political organization beyond his own small, loose-knit cadre of followers. The furthest he ever ventured into statewide politics was once, in 1976, when came down to Jackson to endorse Jimmy Carter for president. That occasion was also his rare (maybe only) exposure to sharp questioning by the state press of Mississippi in a full-fledged news conference. I recall that it was quite an unsettling experience for him.
Jamie probably overstayed his time in Congress when his failing health made him no longer productive. Yet, with his passing last week at age 85, everyone in this state must be grateful that he served them so long and so well. It's unthinkable we'll ever see another like him.
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