MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Also on Capitol Hill today, some comings and goings. Democrats Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Ken Salazar are leaving for top positions in the Obama administration.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Vice president-elect Biden represented Delaware for 36 years. Today he recalled his first visit to the Senate as a 21-year-old tourist.
V: I walked into the chamber and the lights were still on and I was awestruck, literally awestruck, and what in God's name made me do it but I walked up and I sat in the presiding officer's chair. (laughter) and I was mesmerized and next thing I know I feel this hand on my shoulder and a guy, I think a Capitol policeman picked me up and squeezed me and said, what are you doing? And just nine years later, 10 years later, I walked through those same doors as a United States senator. A Capitol Hill policeman stopped me walking in, and he said, do you remember me, sir? I said, no sir. He said, I welcome you back to the Senate. He was retiring two weeks later and he said, welcome to the floor legally.
BLOCK: And that's soon to be vice president, and of course president of the Senate, Joe Biden.
NORRIS: Hillary Clinton has been the junior senator from New York for eight years. Today, she reminds her colleagues that she was new in the Senate when the U.S. came under attack on September 11th, 2001.
NORRIS: The toll was devastating and New York bore the heaviest burden. I well remember the rallying of support and sense of common purpose that all of my colleagues and the citizens of all the states represented here showed toward me personally and toward New York.
BLOCK: That's former first lady and soon-to-be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remembering her first year as a senator.
NORRIS: Also the Senate is bidding farewell to Ken Salazar of Colorado who served just one term. If confirmed, he will be the secretary of the Interior. And so Michele, three goodbyes and also one hello today.
BLOCK: That's right. Nine days after being refused his seat, Roland Burris was sworn in as the junior senator from Illinois. Outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney administered the oath.
V: Do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same...
BLOCK: Now Senator Roland Burris is replacing President-elect Obama.
V: And that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you're about to enter, so help you god?
NORRIS: I do.
V: Congratulations.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
NORRIS: Thank you.
BLOCK: The scene on the U.S. Senate floor today.
NORRIS: This is NPR, National Public Radio.