Senator Richard J. Durbin prepares to leave Congress after serving five Senate terms and seven in the House. The 81-year-old lawmaker said, "I really miss when we were legislating." He fears the art of passing bills on the floor is lost as party leaders now control all the votes.
As a junior member of the House 40 years ago, Senator Richard J. Durbin learned a lot about the art of legislating when he improbably defeated the formidable tobacco lobby to win a ban on smoking on airplanes.
As he prepares to leave Congress after five terms in the Senate and seven in the House, Mr. Durbin fears it is becoming a lost art.
"I really miss when we were legislating," said Mr. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and old-school lawmaker who had conspicuous success pushing his priorities through amendment fights on the floor. It is a practice the Senate has all but abandoned as leaders of both parties maneuver to avoid politically risky votes for their members.
These days, leaders decide behind closed doors which proposals get a debate and vote, and "you're lucky" if yours makes the cut, Mr. Durbin lamented. "The reason I passed the most significant bills in my career was because I had a shot on the floor."
Mr. Durbin, 81, is on track to finish as the longest-serving senator in Illinois history and has been the No. 2 Senate Democrat -- the whip -- since 2005. He is among the prominent senior members of Congress winding down their careers at the end of the year, a transition that will significantly change the face of the House and Senate.
Joining him in departing are such notable figures as Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and a former leader, and Representatives Nancy Pelosi of California and Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic former speaker and majority leader, respectively.
As a top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and its chairman from 2021 to 2025, Mr. Durbin has been in the middle of the judicial confirmation wars that have consumed the Senate. He was also a member of the Senate and House appropriations committees, directing billions of dollars to his state.
It was as a member of the House Appropriations Committee that Mr. Durbin in 1986 began pursuing the airline smoking ban, motivated by the cancer death of his father and his experience being squeezed between two smokers on a plane ride -- almost unimaginable today.
The obstacles were significant in an institution where office ashtrays were still a fixture. Nearing committee approval, he found himself needing the vote of Representative Martin Sabo, Democrat of Minnesota and a more senior colleague who could kill his proposal. Mr. Sabo was not inclined to back him, relishing a calming smoke on his flights home.
"I go to him and I say, 'Marty, can I ask you a question?' He said, 'What?' And I said, 'How long can you go without a cigarette?' He said, 'Two hours.' I said: 'Good. This applies to flights of two hours or less.'"
The amendment passed and became landmark law, initiating a domino effect that led to sweeping nationwide restrictions on smoking.
"I had no idea that was the tipping point," Mr. Durbin said. "Probably changed the country more than I ever imagined."
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Mr. Durbin saw another opening in 2010 but ran into stiff opposition from Wall Street and the banking community when he pushed his proposal to cap the "swipe" fees banks charge merchants for accepting debit cards.
Backers of a major banking overhaul bill resisted Mr. Durbin's efforts to add his amendment, fearing it could complicate passage. He was forced to muster a supermajority when other proposals had sailed through with a simple majority.
"I was the 24th amendment on the floor," Mr. Durbin recounted. "I wasn't on the Banking Committee. They call the roll and I win."
He is still exulting in the outcome: "Cost Wall Street $8 billion a year."
Mr. Durbin also forged alliances across the aisle, working with Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, to pass a sweeping criminal justice overhaul signed into law by President Trump over conservative objections. He worked with Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, on multiple tobacco-related measures, including a move to strip a $50 billion tax break for the industry that was slipped into a bill in 1997.
"I was a brand-new senator, and he had a lot more experience than I did, and we worked together to repeal that," Ms. Collins recalled about their amendment, which ultimately passed on a 95-to-3 vote. "He's always been a great partner because he really cares about getting bills across the finish line."
Yet one major victory has eluded him for decades, and it stings. Mr. Durbin has been unable to pass legislation establishing permanent deportation protection and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought into the country as children -- the so-called Dreamers. He has introduced the Dream Act every Congress since 2001. Despite broad public and congressional support for the legislation, it has repeatedly gotten caught up in bigger immigration fights and never been able to pass on its own.
At Mr. Durbin's urging, President Barack Obama, his former Illinois colleague in the Senate, instituted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program through executive order in 2012. It led to tens of thousands of qualified immigrants being able to legally attend school and hold down jobs. Today, the program is under assault amid uncertainty in the courts and an immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, which has declared that DACA does not provide protection from deportation. That has resulted in hundreds of recipients being detained, and some deported.
Stymied legislatively, Mr. Durbin has instead taken the floor to recount the stories of individual Dreamers, their accomplishments and setbacks. His 153rd story, complete with the usual poster-size photograph, was delivered late last month.
It was the account of Karen Montes Gaga, a DACA recipient who received bachelor's and master's degrees in education and was an elementary schoolteacher for almost a decade. But the Trump administration was slow to renew her work permit, he said, and she had to leave her classroom in the middle of the school year.
Mr. Durbin challenged the wisdom of penalizing a "teacher who is committed to instilling strong values and work ethic into her students."
"To my Republican colleagues, I ask you: If you went out looking for the 'worst of the worst,' would you choose Karen?" Mr. Durbin said on the Senate floor. "If you want to remove from the United States rapists, murders, terrorists, child predators, would you identify Karen as one of those people? Of course not."
Mr. Durbin said he takes some comfort from the way spectators in the gallery and Senate pages pay rapt attention as he unspools the backgrounds of DACA recipients.
"All I can do to pass this bill in the closing months is keep telling their stories," Mr. Durbin said. "If there is anything that emotionally affects me, it is because I've come to know these kids, now adults, and what their lives are like."