[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.
____________________