DETROIT (AP) - Carl Levin has given a farewell speech in the U.S. Senate, appealing for bipartisanship and compromise in an era of political polarization.
The 80-year-old Michigan Democrat declined to seek re-election after 36 years in Washington. As colleagues watched, he spoke Friday on the Senate floor about his staff, his family and decades of work on issues as diverse as defense spending and Wall Street regulation.
Levin says he loves the Senate and isn’t retiring “out of frustration with gridlock.” But he says the Senate can do better, and bipartisanship “is not extinct.”
Levin praised many Republicans, including Arizona Sen. John McCain, his colleague on the Armed Services Committee. He says he hopes the Senate next year reverses rules that restrict ways to block certain nominations by a president.
Levin says “excessive use of the filibuster” to obstruct President Barack Obama damaged the Senate. But at the same time, he says a party in the minority in the Senate needs protection.
Levin says: “When compromise is thwarted by ideological rigidity … the Senate can become paralyzed, unable to achieve the lofty task the Founders set before us.”
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