Remembering Senator Robert C. Byrd

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to our departed Senate Dean, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. Senator Byrd served in this Chamber longer than any Senator in history, 50 1/2 years. Combined with 6 prior years in the House of Representatives, Senator Byrd's service spanned nearly a quarter of the history of the Republic, from the Truman administration to the Obama one, longer than the span of my life.

To serve with Senator Byrd, as was my privilege for too short a time, was to serve with a giant of the Senate, an apotheosis of a long-ago age when oratory was an art. How fortunate I was to sit on the Budget Committee several chairs away from the man who wrote the Budget Act. I will never forget a Budget Committee hearing last year at which, with 35 years of hindsight, Senator Byrd reviewed the very budget process that he had designed. On that February morning, Senator Byrd delighted in describing his crafting of the budget process and its implementation and evolution over three and a half decades.

Tomorrow, for the first time since 1959 when Robert C. Byrd was a 40-year-old first-year Senator, a departed Member of this body will lie in repose in its Chamber. The tribute will surely be fitting, as the Senate's most senior Member occupies the floor one final time.

The man will be missed, but his legacy will continue to guide this institution for generations to come, and the institution to whose principles and welfare he dedicated his life, the U.S. Senate, will endure with his lasting imprint upon it.

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