Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

by Al Franken

  Ron knew exactly what I was talking about. “Hmm. How much is that going to cost?” he asked with significantly less cheer.

  “I think about $135 million,” I answered brightly.

  There was the slightest pause, me grinning from ear to ear.

  Then Ron shook his head. “No.”

  Huh?

  “That’s too much,” he said.

  And then Schriock, Franni, and I went home.

  Welcome to the NFL.

  Chapter 24

  I Actually Become a Senator

  In addition to calling people for money, traveling to raise money, and complaining about how much money I had to raise, I spent some time during the election contest looking for a chief of staff.

  Stephanie Schriock asked a friend named Drew Littman, who had been Barbara Boxer’s chief of staff, to help me find someone suitable. Drew introduced me to a number of very impressive candidates. But none was as impressive as Drew himself. Eventually I pulled a reverse Cheney* and just offered him the job.

  One of the first, and smartest, things Drew did was to set up a meeting with Tamera Luzzatto, who had been Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff when Hillary served in the Senate.

  It had occurred to Drew that I might be facing some challenges similar to those that Hillary had faced: Republicans might be particularly wary of me, considering that I had spent so much time heaping scorn and ridicule upon them, while Democrats might be concerned that, as something of a celebrity, I might steal some of their camera time. Hillary had navigated those challenges with notable success, not just earning the respect of her colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but getting a whole lot done for the people of her state. “Wow,” I thought, “she should be president someday.”

  So we sat down with Tamera, who spelled out the “Hillary Model.”

  Simply put, it’s: Be a workhorse, not a showhorse. Go to all your hearings. Come early, stay late. Do your homework. Don’t do national press. Be accessible to your state media and to your constituents.

  That sounded smart to me. I’d be available to Minnesota press and Minnesota constituents. I’d be knowledgeable about Minnesota issues. I’d be Minnesota’s senator and nobody else’s.

  I finally actually became Minnesota’s senator on July 7, 2009.

  Normally, there are thirty-three or thirty-four senators being sworn in on the same day—the first day of the new Congress that is convened in January. Because there are so many, each one only gets three or four tickets for family and friends to sit in the gallery, where they can watch the new or reelected senators take the oath of office from the vice president, three at a time.

  In my case, though, waiting six months really paid off. Because I was the only senator being sworn in that day, the entire Senate gallery was filled with my family, my friends, my supporters, and, of course, my lawyers—who, in a touching nod to the historic moment, had agreed not to bill me for the 1.3 hours they would spend in the Capitol that day.

  Many of my new colleagues did me the honor of showing up on the floor for the occasion. Looking around, I saw a lot of my Democratic friends, of course, but also a good number of Republicans, who used the occasion to attach a rider to my swearing-in that would defund Planned Parenthood. Who says Republicans don’t have a sense of humor?

  My friend Vice President Walter Mondale had flown in from Minnesota. He and Senator Klobuchar walked me down the aisle to take the oath of office on Paul Wellstone’s family Bible. As soon as I finished, the gallery erupted in sustained applause.

  I looked up and blew a little kiss to Franni and the kids, then scanned the rows to see all my friends and supporters—even Mrs. Molin was there, grinning from ear to ear and clapping madly for her fourth-grade student. Pretty much everyone who had been a key player in my election was there cheering me on (with the exception, I suppose, of Norm Coleman).

  My new colleagues stopped by to offer congratulations. I was especially gratified that so many Republicans turned out: Orrin Hatch, Richard Lugar, Sam Brownback, and even Minority Leader Mitch McConnell himself. And whether it was out of respect for the institution or simply an acknowledgment of the ordeal I’d been through, their congratulations were sincere and heartfelt. I took it as a hopeful sign.

  I even engaged in some friendly banter with archconservative Jim DeMint. “How are things on the far left?” he asked me cheerily.

  “They’re great,” I responded. “How are things on the nutcase right?”

  We both laughed. And went on to build a cordial relationship based entirely on giving each other crap.

  That afternoon, I got on the Senate subway, the Disneyland-style tram that runs between the Capitol and the Senate office buildings, and happened to sit down across from Chuck Grassley, another old-school Republican.

  “You look just like you look on TV!” he greeted me.

  “There’s a reason for that,” I replied. “But, actually, people say I’m shorter than I look on TV.”

  “Ya,” Chuck said in his distinct midwestern twang. “Guess what they say about me?”

  “That you’re taller than you look on TV?”

  “Ya! How’d you know that?”

  “Well, you’re taller than you look on TV.”

  “Ya. Guess what else they say about me?”

  “That you’re friendlier than you seem on TV.”

  “Ya! How’d you know that?”

  “Because you’re friendlier than you seem on TV.” This was becoming a real meet-cute. “You know,” I said, taking a chance, “it wouldn’t hurt to smile every once in a while.”

  “Well,” Chuck said dubiously, “normally what I’m talkin’ about is pretty serious.”

  “Well, you could smile at the beginning. Then talk about the serious stuff. Then smile again at the end.”

  “Oh, ya!” Chuck grinned. “That’s a good idea!”

  I was already making friends! And in fact, Chuck would go on to cosponsor more of my legislation than any of my other Republican colleagues.

  Later that day, I cast my first vote, for which I was strongly rebuked by John McCain (widely considered one of the Senate’s strongest rebukers), because it had been a vote to defeat an amendment of his that would have stripped antiterrorist funding for commercial bus lines.

  But, hey, it was a start.

  Chapter 25

  My First Big Win*

  It can take new senators months or even years to pass their first piece of legislation. It took me two weeks. Although, to be fair, I’d had a long time to work on it before I got there.

  I first met retired Army captain Luis Montalvan at an event for the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America at the Obama inaugural. I also met Tuesday, his beautiful golden retriever. Luis told me he wouldn’t have been able to come to the event if it weren’t for Tuesday.

  Luis had served as an intelligence officer in Iraq, and was seriously wounded in Al Anbar Province. He returned with two Bronze Stars, a Purple Heart, and severe PTSD, which manifested itself in panic attacks, nightmares, and acute agoraphobia (the fear of leaving your home), all of which he self-medicated with alcohol.

  Then a nonprofit organization contacted Luis and offered to partner him with a service dog. Desperate for any possible solution to his mounting problems, he went to a training facility in upstate New York, where he met Tuesday.

  I asked Luis how Tuesday had changed his life.

  “Well, Tuesday can anticipate my panic attacks by observing changes in my breathing or smelling my perspiration. So he’ll nuzzle me and prevent me from having a panic attack.”

  Wow.

  “If I’m having a nightmare and start thrashing around, Tuesday will jump on the bed and wake me up. And he broke my isolation. You know, you have to take a dog out a couple times a day. And I learned something. People don’t like going up to scruffy-looking wounded vets. But they do like coming up to a scruffy-looking vet who has a beautiful dog.”

  Luis told me that, thanks in large part to Tuesday’s
help, he had turned his life around, enrolling in journalism school. After graduating, he went on to write a number of bestselling books about his experiences, including a couple of children’s books about him and Tuesday, and became an advocate for other veterans. My grandson, Joe, just loves his book, Tuesday Takes Me There.

  In the period between the inauguration and my swearing-in, I learned as much as I could about service dogs. I spoke with a couple who now could go to the mall with their autistic son, who loved taking care of his service dog, even as his service dog was taking care of him. I met a veteran who told me his dog kept track of when he was supposed to take his medication and would tug him by his sleeve to remind him if he hadn’t taken it as scheduled. I visited a training facility in Minnesota where I saw a German shepherd pick up a nickel with her teeth.

  Wow.

  As soon as I got to the Senate, I had my staff draw up a bill that would fund a three-year Department of Veterans Affairs study pairing two hundred dogs with veterans suffering from invisible wounds, and measure the benefits to each veteran against the costs of training each service dog, which were not insubstantial, even when offset by all the stray nickels they could pick up. If it worked, we’d have the evidence to argue for expanding the program more widely.

  A few days later, Drew and a couple of other staffers walked into my office with a sheaf of paper. There it was, my first piece of legislation! It was kind of a Moment. Everyone was beaming.

  I sat down with the pages and began to scan them, making a few notes in the margins where I thought the amendment could read a little snappier.

  “Al,” someone said. “What are you doing?”

  “Just punching it up a bit.” Blank stares from the team. “Making it sing a little bit. You know. So it’ll be more fun to read.”

  There was an awkward silence until Drew said, “Um, no, Al. You don’t do that.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’ll save me a lot of work,” I said, putting down my pen.

  In fact, as it turns out, not only do senators not do punch-up, they don’t write legislation at all. And neither do their staffs. You may have seen a filmstrip in sixth grade on how a bill becomes a law, but the way a bill becomes a bill is via the Office of the Legislative Counsel. Senate staff (from both parties) bring in their bosses’ ideas, and then a team of nonpartisan lawyers carefully translates them into unintelligible legalese in order to make sure that bills actually do what their authors want them to do.

  Can you even begin to imagine how depraved their holiday party must get?

  Anyway, I needed a Republican cosponsor, so I called Johnny Isakson from Georgia, who serves on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. Johnny immediately said he loved the idea. Later, he told me why.

  Johnny’s mother had always hated dogs. When he was growing up, the family dogs were never allowed in the house. But Johnny and his wife, Dianne, had a mutt named Sox (mostly black Lab, but with four white paws—hence the name). Sox was an inside dog who loved to jump up on the couch. And when Johnny’s mom would come over to visit, that would always make her furious.

  But after Johnny’s mom developed Alzheimer’s, her mental state deteriorated to the point where she was in a near-constant state of agitation. And when she would stay with Johnny and Dianne, there was just one thing that could calm her down: sitting on their couch, snuggling with Sox.

  So Johnny signed on, and the bill sailed through as an amendment to a defense authorization bill.

  A week after we broke for August recess, senators gathered in Boston to honor an actual giant of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, who had died after a long fight with brain cancer. Johnny approached me at the memorial. “Al,” he said, “I’ve been getting a great reaction back home for that dog bill of yours. Even from nonveterans. If you ever have another bill you want cosponsored, you let me know.”

  “Oh, I’ve got one, Johnny. It’s a bill for gay marriage and abortion on demand.”

  Johnny nodded politely and said, “I’ll get back to you.”

  And you know what? He hasn’t.

  I know that’s kind of a fun ending to the story. But that’s not the actual ending to the story.

  Even after Johnny and I got the amendment into the defense authorization bill, and even after the defense authorization bill passed the Senate, I had to find a member of the House to make sure the provision stayed in the final version of the bill.

  And even then, an authorization bill doesn’t actually fund anything. It just authorizes stuff. Hence the name. The actual funding has to come from an appropriations bill. So we had to then make sure that the defense appropriations bill had money for the study that had been authorized by the authorization bill.

  That’s a much less fun ending to the story. And even that’s not the actual ending.

  Did you notice the asterisk at the end of the title of this chapter? You see, it’s been more than seven years since my amendment passed. And that three-year study still isn’t finished yet.

  How is that possible? Well, first the study had to be designed. And since it involved both human beings and animals, it took a lot of extra time to clear both sets of compliance hurdles.

  And then once the study finally began in Tampa, it almost immediately hit some speed bumps. First of all, they can’t do anything right in Tampa.* It turned out that one of the service dog providers picked for the study shouldn’t have been accredited. After a couple of false starts, the Tampa study eventually wound up being scrapped.

  I continue to meet periodically with the three-person team from the VA in charge of the study. As frustrated as I was when things went wrong, they were more so. After they learned about the flawed accreditation system for service dogs, they redesigned the study, and as I write this, they’ve matched nearly two hundred veterans with service dogs in three cities across the country—except this time the dogs are being trained by VA trainers.

  Meanwhile, Purdue University has conducted a similar study. And their preliminary results are promising: Veterans who have been matched with service dogs have experienced less depression, less anxiety, a greater sense of satisfaction, and a reduced feeling of isolation.

  We’re losing twenty veterans a day to suicide. I think my service dogs idea could help. I hope I’m right. And I hope that the VA’s three-year study will bear that out—when it’s finally finished in 2018, nine years after I got it approved.

  The story of my first bill is, in some ways, a story about politics at its best: I met a heroic American who gave me a good idea, I reached out to experts to craft legislation, I found bipartisan support, and we got it done. Nobody filibustered my bill, or lied about it, or sank it with a poison pill, or hired sleazy lobbyists to stop it from becoming law.

  But this is also a story about how, even when everything goes right, politics can be full of setbacks and frustrations.

  And sometimes, it’s even full of heartbreak: As I was putting this chapter to bed, I got the unfathomable news that Luis Montalvan had taken his own life in a hotel room in Texas.

  I guess I should say something here about how, despite this tragedy, I still believe in the potential of the idea he and Tuesday (who wasn’t with Luis at the time and is doing fine) inspired—or maybe about how it’s a reminder of just how imposing this challenge is, even if we all work together and do our best to address it.

  And that’s all true. But mostly, I’m just sad. As we worked together on this issue, Luis became more than just a symbol, more than just an ally in an important cause. He became my friend. And even as I work to carry on the fight we shared, I’m going to miss him.

  Chapter 26

  What Gets Me out of Bed in the Morning

  Not long after getting to Washington, I started noticing the overuse of certain clichés. Which I suppose is why they’re clichés.

  For example, how often have you heard a politician say, “Growing up in [STATE WHERE I GREW UP], I learned the value of hard work”? As if kids in the
other forty-nine states grew up learning to slack off. By the way, I use this one all the time, but only because, growing up in Minnesota, I really did learn the value of hard work.

  Here’s another one that drove me crazy. It’s just the word “robust.” As in “robust funding.” Which just means “a lot of funding.” Or as in “a robust response.” Which just means “a strong response.” No human being uses this word in casual conversation. But everyone in Washington uses it all the time.

  That’s why I issued a fatwa against it in my office. No “robust” in speeches, no “robust” in press releases, no “robust” in robust letters calling for robust funding to ensure (another cliché) a robust response to a pressing (ugh) problem.

  This policy held until I was trying to get a Republican colleague to sign on to a letter I’d written to get stronger funding for Section 8 housing. My colleague reviewed the letter and agreed to sign on, with one condition: that I change the word “strong” to “robust.” That’s when I gave up the ghost. So if you ever happen to see me giving a speech and I use that word, just know that I deeply hate myself in that moment.

  Speaking of existential angst, another thing I noticed was that a lot of people in government kept saying things like, “What gets me out of bed in the morning is making sure our veterans have good jobs,” or “What gets me out of bed in the morning is seeing to it that every child in America has a world-class education,” or “What gets me out of bed in the morning is doing everything I can to see that our electric grid is secure.”

  I thought to myself, “Why is everyone in this town so depressed?”*

  What gets me out of bed in the morning is having to pee. Sometimes that’s also what gets me out of bed in the middle of the night. In either case, I always go right back to bed. The next thing that gets me out of bed in the morning is Franni saying, “It’s morning and it’s time to get out of bed.”