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Sen. Harry Reid

Mr. President, if I could just take a moment. I know my friend from Arkansas is here to speak.

This is the last day this group of pages, who have been here since September, will spend in the Senate. I believe I am going to speak at their graduation--I am quite sure that is true--tomorrow.

I think the pages render such terrific service to this body. They do a lot of things. They get very little credit for what they do, but we depend on them for some of the most menial tasks a lot of times. But they are always polite. I have never had one treat me impolitely in all of the years I have been in the Senate. I can only speak from personal experience, and I have said this before on the Senate floor, and I will say it again: My two oldest grandchildren--granddaughters--both served in the Senate as pages, and it really changed their lives. I say that without any reservation. They became more in tune with what is going on in our country, and it hasn't left them. They look back with great--I don't know if ``reverence'' is the right word, maybe that is the wrong choice, but they look back certainly fondly on their experience here in the Senate.

I hope these young men and women understand how much we appreciate what they do. I do hope from a personal perspective that they have benefited as much as my two granddaughters did during their time here.