[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 189 (Tuesday, December 6, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6986-S6987]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Tribute to Roy Blunt

  Mr. President, I also want to thank and extoll for just several 
minutes Senator Roy Blunt.
  I think anybody who has worked with Senator Blunt would state that he 
is

[[Page S6987]]

incredibly intelligent. He is one of those people you realize how smart 
he is not because of how much he says but actually sometimes how little 
he says, meaning he can express thoughts and concepts so cogently, and 
that takes a very sharp mind to actually say something profound with a 
minimum number of words and not in a long and rambling speech. He has 
common sense that sometimes you don't realize until you work with him a 
little bit and just listen to him a little bit.
  He has played a prominent role as a member of our leadership team. I 
worked with him on Appropriations as well, on the Appropriations 
Committee with our able chairman, as I mentioned earlier. But 
invariably what I found is that when you talk to Senator Roy Blunt, if 
what you are talking about makes common sense--common sense--he is 
almost always there.
  He is one of the most pragmatic, well-reasoned, thoughtful Senators 
we have. Again, in a way, he is a master of the understatement, where, 
like I say, in just a few words or a cogent thought, he can get to the 
heart of the issues.
  I want to go through just one story about him before I yield the 
floor. When I first came in as a Senator in 2011, after having worked 
as Governor for our State of North Dakota, for the prior decade, one of 
the things that immediately came up when I met Roy Blunt and talked to 
him about issues is the Missouri River. North Dakota is on the north 
end and, obviously, Missouri is on the south end and we have some 
different ideas about how the waters of the Missouri River should be 
managed and utilized for the great people of our respective States and 
all the people in between.
  As they used to say in the West and probably still do: Whiskey is for 
drinking, and water is for fighting.
  And we battled on every imaginable issue that you can think of on the 
Missouri River. Senator Kit Bond, a former Senator from Missouri, and 
our Senators were at loggerheads all the time on water issues relative 
to the great Missouri River.
  So right off the bat, actually, Senator Blunt sought me out and said: 
You know, our predecessors did nothing but fight on the Missouri River. 
Let's see if we can't figure out a way where we can work together.
  And I said: Gee, that sounds good to me.
  So the first thing we did is we set up a trip. We started at the 
north end. We actually started at Fort Peck in Montana and went all the 
way, starting at the north end all the way down--from the northwest all 
the way down to the southeast end of the river and ended up in St. 
Louis, MO. We stopped all along the way at all the dams and reservoirs 
and every place of significance and talked about the issues, tried to 
understand what everybody needed.
  I have to say, over the last 12 years, I am not sure we agreed on 
every aspect of managing the Missouri River but the vast, vast 
majority--I think both of our States and the States in between have 
benefited from that. We have been able to do, I think, some remarkable 
things with the Corps of Engineers because we took that approach to see 
if we couldn't figure out how to work together on something of 
tremendous consequence not only for both of our respective States but 
for the country. That is the kind of leadership and that is the kind of 
common sense and wisdom that Roy Blunt brought to this job every day.
  So to Roy and to Abby, friends of Mikey and I, we will truly miss--
our conference will truly miss and our institution will miss Senator 
Jim Inhofe and Senator Roy Blunt, and we are going to miss the 
chairman, too, but I will talk about him on another occasion.
  I yield the floor.