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Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, it is hard to believe that my friend Richard Burr is leaving Congress. He is someone I have known since my days in the House of Representatives, and we have been friends from the very beginning. So it is difficult to imagine serving in the Senate here without him. We came to the Senate in the same year as well. Our wives are very close friends, and we have had many wonderful times with the Burrs.

In fact, I have enjoyed hosting Richard in South Dakota on a number of occasions. Richard is an outdoors guy, as I am, and he fits right in in my home State of South Dakota--perhaps except for the fact that he is the only guy not wearing socks. Although I will say, I have found occasions which have required him to get the socks out of his suitcase. During one of our trips to South Dakota to hunt pheasants, we landed in Sioux Falls. We got off the plane and it was 7 degrees and I noticed at the next stop he had socks on. So there are limitations to his practice of not wearing socks.

But anyway one of our favorite pastimes, of course, in South Dakota is pheasant hunting, and I have had Richard out there a number of times during pheasant season. He is a great shot, I will say.

He has a favorite place to eat. It is Al's Oasis in Chamberlain, SD, which is known for, among many things, homemade pies.

I discovered when Kimberly and I visited Richard and Brooke in North Carolina, he is also a great handyman. Apparently, he thinks his guests should be as well, since he put me right to work on a new door that he was installing. We hung a door at his house. I was the grunt labor. He was the architect, the designer, and just said: Hold this and that sort of thing. So that was my job. But I was well paid for my trouble because Richard also, in addition to his assets and his attributes of being a handyman, is also an excellent cook. Many of you probably perhaps here don't know that. But one of the privileges that I have enjoyed in visiting Richard is getting to enjoy his cooking, and he really can make just about anything--breakfast, lunch, dinner. I am not saying he ought to open a restaurant in his retirement, but if he did, I would certainly be the first in line at the opening.

Richard has certainly left his mark on Washington. His car, a 1974 Volkswagen Thing, often parked outside the Russell Building with the top down no matter the season and adorned with his colleagues' campaign stickers, I think everybody knows is a fixture here on Capitol Hill.

Richard, who as well as being a handyman is a capable mechanic, could often be found working under the Thing's hood to keep it running, which has become a true labor of love, particularly here in the last few years.

But I would say that in this Chamber, of course, Richard is best known and really known for being an outstanding legislator. And I have to say thank you as he did to his outstanding staff. I mean there isn't anybody here who works here who doesn't know that the heavy lifting in this place gets done by staff. And so we appreciate your many years of service to him and making him such an effective and accomplished legislator. He mentioned the Capitol staff, the Capitol Police, who are here on a daily basis protecting us, just saying how much we appreciate everything you have done.

Richard has always been someone who knows how to get something done. In addition to building a great team and staff around him, he knows how to build coalitions. He knows how to get legislation across the finish line, and that is evident in his record of accomplishment here in the Senate. He talked a little bit about that. Promoting medical research and innovation has been a passion of his; supporting veterans, changing the way student loan interest rates are set to save families money; working to ensure that childcare settings are safe and high quality; establishing ABLE accounts for individuals with disabilities to help better their lives, and the list goes on.

Long before COVID, Richard was working to prepare our Nation to respond to the threat of a disaster or a pandemic; and since COVID, he has worked to ensure that our Nation's future pandemic response reflects the lessons that we have learned.

Of course, as he mentioned, his longtime work on the Intelligence Committees of both the House and Senate and as chairman here of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the number of hours I know he sat in padded rooms in classified settings making sure that our country was prepared, working with our intelligence community, as he mentioned, to protect Americans from the threats that we face here at home and around the world.

Richard has been a strong advocate for his home State of North Carolina, particularly for veterans. He has worked to bring new VA facilities to North Carolina to ensure that veterans and their families who were exposed to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune receive VA medical care.

I think all of us get into this life in the hope that we can one day leave Congress knowing that we have done something to make life better for our fellow Americans. Richard can leave Congress with that assurance.

I am going to miss him. It is a privilege and a blessing that you are able to serve with a friend for so long. I will miss our daily interactions. But I know that in Congress or not, our friendship will endure, and I look forward to seeing all that Richard is going to do in his next chapter in life.

I want to thank, as he said, Brooke, his sons and daughters-in-law and now grandkids for the many sacrifices that they have made through the years. I think we all know that this doesn't work unless you have got a partner, and Brooke has been a partner for all these 28 years to Richard and a part of everything that he has been able to accomplish here.

So I wish him and his family many more happy hours in the years ahead and congratulate him on his retirement and on a farewell speech that I think we all ought to take to heart.

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