The imminent departure of former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney from his seat in the U.S. Senate drew tributes from many of his colleagues, including Maine U.S. Susan Collins.

Republican U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah Associated Press

“I rise to praise his intelligence, his imagination, and most of all his integrity,” the five-term GOP senator said Wednesday on the floor of the Senate.

She called it “a day of sadness” to see the 77-year-old Romney with his colleagues on Capitol Hill for the last time.

In his farewell address, Romney said his biggest surprise in serving as a senator was “how much I enjoy the other senators on both sides of the aisle” as he reiterated his plea for Americans to stymie those “who would tear at our unity, who would replace love with hate, who deride our foundation of virtues, and who debase the values upon which the blessings of heaven depend.”

Romney decided not to run for a second term after angering many grassroots Republicans by twice voting to impeach former President Donald Trump and repeatedly calling for more compromise and civility in Washington.

Collins said she “had the pleasure of teaming up with Mitt on so many important issues” over the years, including a crucial 2021 infrastructure measure.

“He meets every challenge with determination and a talent for bringing opposing sides together to forge solutions,” Collins said. “He is always focused on getting to yes, on using common sense, and on achieving a result.”

She said that perhaps the most impressive accomplishment by Romney was his effort to push through the Respect for Marriage Act that “demonstrated his fundamental fairness by helping to ensure that millions of loving couples in same-sex marriages will continue to enjoy the freedoms, rights, and responsibilities afforded to all other marriages, while strongly protecting religious liberty.”

Collins said the Utah senator, who lost a presidential race in 2012, deserves credit “for forging the religious liberty protections that, combined with the protections for same-sex marriages, enabled the enactment of the Respect for Marriage Act.”

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, speaks Wednesday on the Senate floor, praising U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, who is stepping down this month. Screenshot from video

Maine’s senior senator also praised Romney’s foreign policy acumen, from “identifying the threat posed by Russia more than a decade ago to pushing Congress and the administration to develop a strategy to better counter the challenge presented by China.”

She also hailed him as “a champion for Ukraine and a strong supporter of supplying aid to that brave country in its time of peril.”

Collins said Romney deserves credit, too, for reminding the nation “over and over again of our $36 trillion debt and the need to put our trust funds on solid ground.”

Romney declared during his speech that “the scourge of partisan politics has frustrated repeated efforts to stabilize our national debt.”

“Without the burden of the interest on that debt, we would be able to spend three times as much as we do on military procurement — three times as many aircraft, three times as many ships, three times as many drones, spacecraft, and cyber defenses,” Romney said. “Alternatively, we could spend double the amount we spend on Social Security benefits every month.”

“Our national credit card is almost maxed out, and America risks becoming debt poor,” Romney said.

Collins proposed creating a commission to look into the trust funds, including the one that Social Security relies on, and putting Romney in charge of it.

“I can’t think of a better person to head that commission,” Collins said.