[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 189 (Tuesday, December 6, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6988-S6989]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        VOTE ON HODGE NOMINATION

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question is, 
Will the Senate advise and consent to the Hodge nomination?
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. 
Hickenlooper), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly), the Senator from 
Connecticut (Mr. Murphy), and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Warnock) 
are necessarily absent.
  The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 44, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 377 Ex.]

                                YEAS--52

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Lujan
     Manchin
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Ossoff
     Padilla
     Peters
     Reed
     Rosen
     Rounds
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Sinema
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--44

     Barrasso
     Blackburn
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Braun
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Grassley
     Hagerty
     Hawley
     Hoeven
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Lummis
     Marshall
     McConnell
     Moran
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Romney
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tuberville
     Wicker
     Young

                             NOT VOTING--4

     Hickenlooper
     Kelly
     Murphy
     Warnock
  The nomination was confirmed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hirono). Under the previous order, the 
motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table and the 
President will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
  The Senator from Illinois.


                          Tribute to Roy Blunt

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I know that Senator Roy Blunt has 
already delivered his farewell remarks a short time ago. Regrettably, I 
was tied up in a longstanding appointment and couldn't be on the floor 
to hear them, but I want to say a few words about my friend from 
Missouri and thank him for his service to the Senate and to our Nation.
  I grew up in East St. Louis, IL, just across the Mississippi River 
from St. Louis, MO. My hometown now is Springfield, IL, and Roy Blunt's 
hometown is Springfield, MO. We often joke about catching the wrong 
plane to St. Louis and ending up in one another's homes.
  Senator Blunt and I came from different parties, obviously. We have 
different ideas about a lot of things. But over the 12 years he served 
his State of Missouri in the Senate, he has become a friend and ally.
  Managing the Mississippi River is an issue that we share. Many of the 
locks and dams that keep the river navigable are nearly 100 years old. 
For many years now, Senator Blunt has worked with me and with the Army 
Corps of Engineers to come up with a plan that we call the Navigation 
Ecosystem Sustainability Program--shorthand, NESP. It will expand and 
modernize seven locks at the most congested locations on the upper 
Mississippi and Illinois Rivers to make sure the waterways can continue 
to serve as major navigation channels moving crops and other goods.
  I am really grateful to Roy Blunt for his leadership supporting 
biomedical research. There is a good story here. My partnership with 
Senator Blunt started almost 10 years ago. I went up to the National 
Institutes of Health for a tour and sat down with legendary Dr. Francis 
Collins, who headed up the Institutes of Health. For years, NIH had 
limped along with flat funding and sequestration budget cuts. 
Inadequate funding had really hurt research at NIH. It discouraged a 
lot of young scientists who just couldn't count on regular funding from 
Congress, or they chose to maybe move back to other nations where they 
were born and the research funding was more predictable.
  I asked Dr. Collins: What does NIH need?
  He said: Just give me 5 percent real growth in our budget every year, 
consistently, and we will light up the scoreboard with our discoveries 
and cures.
  So I came back and looked for Roy Blunt. He was the leading 
Republican on the Appropriations Committee for the National Institutes 
of Health. He chaired the Labor and HHS Appropriations Subcommittee. We 
decided to put

[[Page S6989]]

together a team. The natural ally on that team was Senator Patty 
Murray, a Democrat for the State of Washington and the lead Democrat on 
the HELP Committee and on the Appropriations Committee. We rounded out 
with two Democrats and two Republicans, the now-retired Senator Lamar 
Alexander who led the HELP Committee when Patty Murray was ranking 
member, and vice versa.
  We agreed on a common goal, the four of us: 5 percent real growth 
every year in the National Institutes of Health. In the first year 
working together, Senator Blunt overdid it. He helped steer $2 billion, 
or 7 percent, to the NIH.
  I remember getting a phone call from Roy. It was a few weeks before 
Christmas. We were on break with our families, and it is uncommon for 
Senators to call one another under those circumstances. But he called 
me, and he said he had just spoken with the leaders from Barnes-Jewish 
Hospital, which is a major health and research institution in St. 
Louis. They were ecstatic about the care they were able to give their 
patients and research they were going to undertake because of this new 
level of funding.
  Senator Blunt said it was unlike any call he had ever received in his 
congressional career.
  Then he said to me, ``Durbin, we can't be one-hit wonders.'' And from 
there, we were off.
  Since 2015, with the help of Senator Murray and others, through 
changes in the Presidency and through pretty divisive times, we 
succeeded on a bipartisan basis to keep steady, predictable funding for 
the National Institutes of Health as a bipartisan priority.
  Over 7 years, we saw NIH funding increase by more than $14 billion, a 
nearly 50-percent increase from where we started. These new investments 
are supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs nationwide in research 
institutions large and small. They are saving lives, and they will 
continue to do so for decades to come.
  So I want to personally thank Roy Blunt, the Senator from Missouri, 
for his leadership in funding this breakthrough medical research.
  I also want to thank his staff for their wisdom and professionalism 
and calm demeanor. They consistently look for ways to work together for 
the common good.
  Senator Blunt honored his commitment to medical research and made a 
difference in America.
  I said to him today as we were gathering for a tribute to the Capitol 
Police for defending us on January 6, I said, ``Roy, the reason we all 
come here is to make a difference in this great nation that we live in. 
You have made that difference in medical research, and you will be 
remembered for it.''
  He has pursued our shared goal with decency, genuine curiosity, and a 
vision for the promise of medical discovery. There are people here in 
America today and around the world who are going to have better lives 
because of Roy Blunt's commitment. That is a legacy which he can 
certainly be proud of.
  Loretta and I wish him, his wife Abby, and his family all the best as 
they start this new chapter in life. I am sorry to see him go. I am 
losing a great friend and a great Senator.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.

                          ____________________