Departing senators have spent the past few weeks taking their turns at bidding farewell to speaking from the chamber floor.
“Look, I have seen a number of these exit speeches,” Sen. Jon Tester of Montana said last week on the Senate floor. “To be honest with you, they remind me of a bit of an obituary.”
Tester was one of three Senate Democrats — along with Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania — who did not intend to depart the Senate at the end of this Congress, but lost their reelection bids. Tester did say that when he first arrived, he only expected to serve 12 years, not the 18 that he will wrap up in January.
