[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 2 (Wednesday, January 7, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S161-S162]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTE TO SENATOR ROBERT BYRD

  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I want to join my colleagues today in 
honoring the extraordinary service and accomplishments of the senior 
Senator from West Virginia, the Honorable Robert C. Byrd. It was 
exactly 50 years ago today, on January 7, 1958, that he was first sworn 
into the Senate. Senator Byrd is the longest serving Senator in U.S. 
history, and he truly is a living legend in this institution that he 
loves so dearly and defends so fiercely.
  The Almanac of American Politics says: Robert Byrd ``may come closer 
to the kind of Senator the Founding Fathers had in mind than any 
other.''
  I couldn't agree more. He is a person of wise and mature judgment, a 
patriot with a deep love of his country. He is passionately loyal to 
the Constitution and a fierce defender of the role and prerogatives of 
Congress and the Senate in particular.
  Senator Byrd was once asked how many Presidents he had served under. 
He answered that he had not served under any President, that he had 
served with 10 Presidents as a proud member of a separate and coequal 
branch of Government. During his five decades in this body, Senator 
Byrd has witnessed many changes our country has gone through. Think 
about it. Our population since 1958 has grown by 125 million people. 
There have been new technologies.
  I was thinking about this. In 1958, I graduated from high school in 
Des Moines, IA. The year before the Russians had launched Sputnik, and 
we were trying to catch up. We had not established ourselves in space. 
I was out of high school that summer, getting ready to go to college. I 
found a job working on this new construction project called the 
interstate highway system which was just beginning at that time. Jet 
air travel was just starting. I remember my first flight. The airplane 
was propeller driven. We didn't have jet aircraft. There were some in 
the military, but it hadn't started for commercial air travel at that 
time. We had no computers, no cell phones, and nine out of ten TV sets 
were black and white. That was 1958, the year Robert Byrd came to the 
Senate. There have been many changes that have happened over the last 
50 years.
  Across this half century of rapid change, there has been one 
constant--Senator Byrd's tireless service to this country, his passion 
for helping bring new opportunities to the people of West Virginia, and 
his dedication to this institution, the Senate of the United States.
  Senator Byrd is a person of many accomplishments and a rich legacy. 
But above all, I will mention his commitment to improving public 
education and expanding access to higher education, especially for kids 
from poorer families. As many of my colleagues know, Robert C. Byrd was 
raised in the hardscrabble coalfields of southern West Virginia. That 
is one thing he and I have always talked about. My father was a coal 
miner also in the State of Iowa. His family was poor but rich in values 
and faith. His parents nurtured in Robert Byrd a lifelong passion for 
education and learning. He was valedictorian of his high school class 
but too poor to go to college right away. Those were the days before 
Pell grants and Byrd scholarships. So he worked as a welder in a 
shipyard, later as a butcher in a coal company town. It took him 12 
years to save enough money to start college. He was a U.S. Senator when 
he earned his law degree.
  No other Member of Congress before or since has started and completed 
law school while serving in the Congress. But degrees don't begin to 
tell the story of the education of Robert C. Byrd. He is the ultimate 
lifetime learner. It is as though for the last 50 years he has been 
enrolled in the Robert C. Byrd school of continuing education. You 
won't get a better, more thorough education at any school, Harvard, 
Yale, or anywhere else.
  Senator Byrd's erudition has borne fruit in no less than nine books 
he has written and published over the last two decades. He literally 
wrote the book on the Senate, a masterful four-volume history of the 
institution that has become a classic. What my colleagues may not know 
is that he also authored a highly respected history of the Roman 
Senate. For those of us who have been here--in my case 24 years--we 
have listened, either here on the floor or later when we got 
television, on closed circuit in our offices, to the many speeches 
Robert Byrd gave about the Roman Senate, wonderful descriptions of the 
Roman Senate and how it operated. We could hear how he weaved in the 
operations of our own Senate. There are some who think Robert C. Byrd 
actually served in the Roman Senate. But that part of the Byrd legend I 
can absolutely say is not true.
  I have talked at length about Senator Byrd's education because it 
explains why he is so passionate about ensuring that every American has 
access to quality public education, both K-12 and higher. The one thing 
Senator Byrd and I have in common is our fathers were coal miners with 
very little formal education. Coming from a poor background, Senator 
Byrd believes, as do I, that a cardinal responsibility of Government is 
to provide a ladder of opportunity so that everyone, no matter how 
humble their background, has a shot at the American dream. I said 
ladder of opportunity; I didn't say an escalator. On an escalator, you 
get a free ride. You get on and you get a free ride. But with a ladder 
of opportunity, you still have to exert energy and effort and 
responsibility to get to the top. But with that ladder there have to be 
rungs so you can actually climb.
  The most important rungs on that ladder of opportunity involve 
education, early childhood education, Head Start programs, quality K-12 
public schools, access to college and other forms of higher education. 
During my 24 years in the Senate, no one has fought harder for public 
education than Senator Robert Byrd. As chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee, he has been the champion of education at every turn, 
fighting to reduce class size, improving teacher training, bringing new 
technologies into the classroom, boosting access to higher education.
  In 1985, my first year in the Senate, he created the only national 
merit based college scholarship program funded through the U.S. 
Department of Education. Congress later named them in his honor. 
Originally, the Byrd scholarships consisted of a 1-year $1,500 award to 
outstanding students. Today, Byrd scholarships provide grants of up to 
$6,000 over 4 years. How many kids

[[Page S162]]

of meager means, coming from low-income families but very bright, very 
capable, have received these Byrd scholarships which got them through 
college.
  Senator Byrd has also been outspoken in challenging the current 
administration for failing to keep its commitments under the No Child 
Left Behind Act. To the last fiscal year, No Child Left Behind has been 
underfunded since 2002, when it first came into existence. It has been 
underfunded by over $70 billion.
  Think what that would mean for our local school systems in America 
had we kept our commitment to funding No Child Left Behind. But I will 
tell you this: It would have been a lot worse if Senator Byrd had not 
been here on our Appropriations Committee, either as chairman or 
ranking member, sponsoring the key amendments to boost the funding 
above what the Bush administration had proposed.
  Senator Byrd is a great student of literature, and I am sure he knows 
``The Canterbury Tales''--probably a lot of it by heart, as he knows a 
lot of things by heart, by memory. Describing the Clerk of Oxford, 
Chaucer might just as well have been describing Robert C. Byrd. Here is 
what Chaucer said about the Clerk of Oxford:

       Filled with moral virtue was his speech; And gladly would 
     he learn and gladly teach.

  Madam President, Senator Byrd is a great Senator, a great American, a 
great friend. He has both written our Nation's history and left his 
mark on it.
  It has been an honor to serve both in the Senate and on his Committee 
of Appropriations with Senator Byrd for the last 24 years. The good 
people of Iowa have now reelected me, so I will be here for another 
term. I look forward to serving with Senator Byrd in this body and on 
the Appropriations Committee for many years to come.
  So today on this historic anniversary, we honor his service, we 
express our respect and our love for this very remarkable Senator, 
Robert C. Byrd, from the great State of West Virginia.
  Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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