Mr. President, when the 106th Congress adjourns, we will lose my colleague from Michigan, Senator Spencer Abraham. I want to pay tribute to Spence Abraham today.

Although we have divergent voting records on many national issues, when the interests of Michigan were at stake, we were usually able to work together on behalf of our constituents. We and our staffs have joined forces on efforts to bring federal resources to Michigan for our highways and transportation, to address agricultural emergencies, economic development, airport modernization, the need for infrastructure to protect the environment, particular issues affecting the health of the Great Lakes and a broad array of other projects.

Spence Abraham served on the Senate Judiciary, Commerce, and Budget Committees. In addition, we served together for the past six years on the Small Business Committee where we worked together to support increased funding for the Women's Business Centers program which helps entrepreneurs start and maintain successful businesses. There are three Centers in Michigan: the Center for Empowerment and Economic Development (CEED) which houses the Women's Initiative for Self-Employment (WISE) in Ann Arbor, the Grand Rapids Opportunities for Women (GROW) in Grand Rapids, and The Detroit Entrepreneurship Institute, Inc (DEO).

During this session of Congress, Spence and I worked together to get $2 million added to the Interior Appropriations bill to fund a settlement between Michigan Indian tribes, the State of Michigan and the federal government concerning fishing rights and, among other things, the removal of tribal gill nets from the Great Lakes. At our urging, the FY 2001 Interior Appropriations Bill also contained report language that directed the Bureau of Indian Affairs to include the "Great Lakes Fisheries Settlement agreement in its fiscal year 2002 budget request." This amount should be $6.25 million for FY 2002.

We also successfully worked to continuethe moratorium on unfair and ineffective increases in CAFE standards and worked out a compromise in the Senate to ensure that a National Academy of Sciences study of the effectiveness and impacts of CAFE standards will include the effect of those standards on motor vehicle safety as well as discriminatory impacts of those standards on the U.S. auto industry.

Also, since Spence served as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, we worked together on amending Section 110 (of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996) to ensure that Michiganders do not face major traffic delays at the Canadian border. The Immigration and Naturalization Service Data Management Improvement Act of 2000, which Spence Abraham introduced and I cosponsored, replaced the burdensome requirements of Section 110 with a more manageable approach of collecting data, one that would not result in border tie-ups or cause financial strain to Michigan jobs, exports, and tourism.

We worked together on behalf of Michigan veterans. Within the past year, our staffs met with local officials to forge a successful cooperative effort to secure additional funding in Fiscal Year 2001 for the planning and construction of a national cemetery in the Detroit Metropolitan area. Approximately 927,000 veterans live in Michigan, 605,000 of whom reside in the Detroit metropolitan area and a national cemetery here is long overdue.

In his six years in the Senate, Spence Abraham earned a reputation as a vigorous, perceptive and hard-working Member. He proudly holds the second longest record of consecutive votes cast among current Senators, having missed no votes in his term. He authored a number of pieces of legislation, but I suspect none more important to him that the Hillory J. Farias and Samantha Reid Date-Rape Drug Prohibition Act of 2000 named, in part, for Samantha Reid, a Rockwood, Michigan teenager who died after drinking a soft drink she didn't know had been lace with a substance called GHB (Gamma Hydroxybutyric Acid). The Abraham law amended the Controlled Substances Act 0f 1998 to add GHB, known as the "date rape drug" to the list of Schedule One controlled substances.

Mr. President, as we note the contribution of Spence Abraham to our work, my wife Barbara and I wish him, his wife Jane, their twin daugthers, Julie and Betsy, and their son Spencer Robert well as they begin the next chapter of their lives.