Obama praises late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Wednesday there never will be another senator like the late Edward M. Kennedy, whose voice the president said has been missed during congressional deliberations over remaking the nation’s health care system.

“He has been so sorely missed in this debate, especially now that we’re closer than we’ve ever been to passing health care reform,” Obama said.

Before his death in August from brain cancer, Kennedy had said the effort to make affordable health care available to everyone was “the cause of my life.” On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee approved health care overhaul legislation, the last of five panels to act on competing measures in Congress. The full Senate is expected to begin debating the issue later this month.

Obama spoke Wednesday night at an event for an institute named for the Massachusetts Democrat. Kennedy established the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate with a goal of educating the public about the institution he served for nearly 47 of his 77 years.

It is to be based at the University of Massachusetts in Boston near the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

In his remarks to the gathering at a downtown hotel, Obama spoke of Kennedy’s legacy and the late senator’s love for the “history and vibrancy of a uniquely American institution.”

He said there could be no greater tribute to Kennedy than to make the institute a reality.

The Senate Appropriations Committee recently approved $20 million to help develop the institute. That money was in addition to nearly $6 million approved earlier in the year to help plan and design a building for it.

Officials in Boston last year announced they were seeking up to $100 million to build the institute, and contributions have come in from drug companies, insurance companies and hospitals.

A proposal to create a Senate institute named after Kennedy had been discussed since 2003, but planning accelerated after Kennedy received his cancer diagnosis in 2008.

Obama said Kennedy, who built a legislative career as an advocate for the rights of workers and minorities and health care for all, was “indisputably one of the finest senators of this or any age.”

“There will never be another like Ted Kennedy,” Obama said.