SHOW: 60 Minutes 7:00 AM EST CBS

December 12, 2004 Sunday

HEADLINE: Senator Fritz Hollings leaves Senate after 38 years

ANCHORS: MIKE WALLACE

A FEISTY FAREWELL

MIKE WALLACE, co-host:

He's long been known as the tartest tongue of the Senate. But feisty
Fritz Hollings, Democrat, South Carolina, is giving up his seat. He
didn't lose it, he wasn't defeated by a younger Republican, but after
38 years he just decided enough's enough. `The Senate has changed, and
not for the better,' he says. `I'm sick of raising money to get
re-elected so I'm going home to Charleston.' And that's where we sat
down with him to let him fire a few final barbs about what's wrong with
Congress. Insights from an insider who knows better than anyone the
unhappy differences between then and now, especially when it comes to
money.

Senator FRITZ HOLLINGS: Whoo. When I got up, there was hardly a
breakfast or an evening reception. Now, there are three breakfasts,
three receptions. Now, on Fridays, we don't work. We're back home on
fund-raisers. Got to collect money.

WALLACE: You mean...

Sen. HOLLINGS: We--we--we cam...

WALLACE: ...all of this is about money?

Sen. HOLLINGS: Yeah. This is all about money. There isn't any question.

WALLACE: Give me some numbers.

Sen. HOLLINGS: Well, in my last campaign six years ago, it was eight
and a half million. That factors out to about 30,000 a week each week,
every week for six years. So if I miss right at this time, Christmas
week or New Year's week or something, I'm 60,000 in the hole. I got to
hurry up and start playing catch-up ball.

(In Senate) The cancer on the party politics, Mr. President, is money.
Money, money, money,
...