[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 212 (Tuesday, December 15, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Page S7484]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Tribute to Cory Gardner

  Madam President, as for Cory Gardner, of Colorado, when he leaves the 
Senate, it will become a little bit dimmer of a place because Cory 
Gardner has such cheerfulness. Everyone recognizes that. He wakes up 
happy, and he goes to bed happy insofar as any of us here knows, and he 
came to the Senate with the same amount of enthusiasm.
  He came to me early on and wanted to be and agreed to be the head of 
the America COMPETES effort. That legislation passed in 2005 and 2006--
before he got here--to try to make our country more competitive in the 
world, but Cory took the leadership of that and led the reauthorization 
of it.
  He spent 2 years heading the Republican Senatorial Committee and did 
a tremendously effective job.
  Then, this year, he became a leader in the Great American Outdoors 
Act. Everyone agrees--there are not many times you can say that here, 
but everyone agrees, from the left to the right and up and down, that 
the Great American Outdoors Act is the most significant piece of 
environmental and outdoor recreation legislation in at least the last 
half century--since the Eisenhower years, really. It was a bipartisan 
parade of Senators, the President, and House Members, which is the way 
you get things done here. Yet, if it were a parade, you would have to 
say Cory, along with Steve Daines, was the drum major in the parade. He 
deserves great credit for that, and generations will be grateful to 
him.