[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 194 (Wednesday, December 14, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7166-S7170]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Tribute to Richard Burr

  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, it is hard to believe that my friend 
Richard Burr is leaving Congress. He is someone I have known since my 
days in the House of Representatives, and we have been friends from the 
very beginning. So it is difficult to imagine serving in the Senate 
here without him. We came to the Senate in the same year as well. Our 
wives are very close friends, and we have had many wonderful times with 
the Burrs.
  In fact, I have enjoyed hosting Richard in South Dakota on a number 
of occasions. Richard is an outdoors guy, as I am, and he fits right in 
in my home State of South Dakota--perhaps except for the fact that he 
is the only guy not wearing socks. Although I will say, I have found 
occasions which have required him to get the socks out of his suitcase. 
During one of our trips to South Dakota to hunt pheasants, we landed in 
Sioux Falls. We got off the plane and it was 7 degrees and I noticed at 
the next stop he had socks on. So there are limitations to his practice 
of not wearing socks.
  But anyway one of our favorite pastimes, of course, in South Dakota 
is pheasant hunting, and I have had Richard out there a number of times 
during pheasant season. He is a great shot, I will say.
  He has a favorite place to eat. It is Al's Oasis in Chamberlain, SD, 
which is known for, among many things, homemade pies.
  I discovered when Kimberly and I visited Richard and Brooke in North 
Carolina, he is also a great handyman. Apparently, he thinks his guests 
should be as well, since he put me right to work on a new door that he 
was installing. We hung a door at his house. I was the grunt labor. He 
was the architect, the designer, and just said: Hold this and that sort 
of thing. So that was my job. But I was well paid for my trouble 
because Richard also, in addition to his assets and his attributes of 
being a handyman, is also an excellent cook. Many of you probably 
perhaps here don't know that. But one of the privileges that I have 
enjoyed in visiting Richard is getting to enjoy his cooking, and he 
really can make just about anything--breakfast, lunch, dinner. I am not 
saying he ought to open a restaurant in his retirement, but if he did, 
I would certainly be the first in line at the opening.
  Richard has certainly left his mark on Washington. His car, a 1974 
Volkswagen Thing, often parked outside the Russell Building with the 
top down no matter the season and adorned with his colleagues' campaign 
stickers, I think everybody knows is a fixture here on Capitol Hill.
  Richard, who as well as being a handyman is a capable mechanic, could 
often be found working under the Thing's hood to keep it running, which 
has become a true labor of love, particularly here in the last few 
years.
  But I would say that in this Chamber, of course, Richard is best 
known and really known for being an outstanding legislator. And I have 
to say thank you as he did to his outstanding staff. I mean there isn't 
anybody here who works here who doesn't know that the heavy lifting in 
this place gets done by staff. And so we appreciate your many years of 
service to him and making him such an effective and accomplished 
legislator. He mentioned the Capitol staff, the Capitol Police, who are 
here on a daily basis protecting us, just saying how much we appreciate 
everything you have done.

[[Page S7167]]

  Richard has always been someone who knows how to get something done. 
In addition to building a great team and staff around him, he knows how 
to build coalitions. He knows how to get legislation across the finish 
line, and that is evident in his record of accomplishment here in the 
Senate. He talked a little bit about that. Promoting medical research 
and innovation has been a passion of his; supporting veterans, changing 
the way student loan interest rates are set to save families money; 
working to ensure that childcare settings are safe and high quality; 
establishing ABLE accounts for individuals with disabilities to help 
better their lives, and the list goes on.
  Long before COVID, Richard was working to prepare our Nation to 
respond to the threat of a disaster or a pandemic; and since COVID, he 
has worked to ensure that our Nation's future pandemic response 
reflects the lessons that we have learned.
  Of course, as he mentioned, his longtime work on the Intelligence 
Committees of both the House and Senate and as chairman here of the 
Senate Intelligence Committee, the number of hours I know he sat in 
padded rooms in classified settings making sure that our country was 
prepared, working with our intelligence community, as he mentioned, to 
protect Americans from the threats that we face here at home and around 
the world.
  Richard has been a strong advocate for his home State of North 
Carolina, particularly for veterans. He has worked to bring new VA 
facilities to North Carolina to ensure that veterans and their families 
who were exposed to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune receive VA 
medical care.
  I think all of us get into this life in the hope that we can one day 
leave Congress knowing that we have done something to make life better 
for our fellow Americans. Richard can leave Congress with that 
assurance.
  I am going to miss him. It is a privilege and a blessing that you are 
able to serve with a friend for so long. I will miss our daily 
interactions. But I know that in Congress or not, our friendship will 
endure, and I look forward to seeing all that Richard is going to do in 
his next chapter in life.
  I want to thank, as he said, Brooke, his sons and daughters-in-law 
and now grandkids for the many sacrifices that they have made through 
the years. I think we all know that this doesn't work unless you have 
got a partner, and Brooke has been a partner for all these 28 years to 
Richard and a part of everything that he has been able to accomplish 
here.
  So I wish him and his family many more happy hours in the years ahead 
and congratulate him on his retirement and on a farewell speech that I 
think we all ought to take to heart.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, it is with a mixture of sorrow and pride 
that I rise today to pay tribute to my good friend the senior Senator 
from North Carolina.
  I was thinking about the fact that Senator Blunt, who is sitting in 
front of you, we were here for his farewell speech the other day, and 
our good friend Rob Portman, who is behind you, we will be here for 
his--we are losing a lot of great Members this Congress, and the folks 
who are going to follow them will not replace them. They have got big 
shoes to fill.
  I mean, we are celebrating Richard's 18 years in the Senate and 10 
years in the House--28 years of doing this stuff. Senator Burr and I 
first got to know each other actually through a mutual friend early on 
in my Senate career in kind of a strange set of circumstances. I had 
become really good friends with Saxby Chambliss, and Saxby and Richard 
were running buddies. I would run along with them sometimes.
  And John Thune, as you know, Richard is a pretty open-minded guy. But 
I got to acknowledge, and I shouldn't probably do this in front of 
everyone, but I am not sure he initially took to me that well. Now, my 
staff has occasionally called me slightly intense, and Richard has more 
than a few times asked whether I was getting my daily meds to stay on 
that equilibrium. So much for that.
  But in contrast, Richard Burr is a low-key kind of guy. As Senator 
Thune has already mentioned, and every Senator has made mention or 
noticed or made fun of his lack of socks. We have seen the migration of 
his Thing from outside the Russell Building to maybe its permanent 
resting place now in the garage at Hart. I park next to it almost every 
day, and I hope that you will leave it there in perpetuity.
  But despite where we started off, with us being a little bit of an 
odd couple, we have formed an enormously strong partnership, and for me 
it was, more importantly, a strong friendship.
  For 5 years, Richard preceded me as chairman of the Intelligence 
Committee. He had been on the Intelligence Committee since he came to 
Congress. I have learned so, so much from him, not only on the 
substance, which is terribly important, but there are a whole series of 
issues and extraordinarily important work where I never really got up 
to speed because I trusted his judgment.
  But really what he did is he set the tone for how the committee ought 
to operate--a committee that frankly doesn't get as much attention as 
most because so much of what we do is behind closed doors. The reason 
why the Senate Intelligence Committee has stayed bipartisan, the reason 
why it is so productive, the reason why we get year after year an 
intelligence authorization bill out virtually unanimously--never more 
than one or two votes against--has a lot to do with Richard Burr.
  My friend whom he served with in the House, the dean of the Virginia 
delegation, Congressman  Bobby Scott, has often referred to, around 
Virginia, that the Senate Intelligence Committee is an ``oasis of 
dignity.'' I think that is a pretty darn good description. And that 
dignity would not have come about without Richard Burr's leadership.
  He has made mention of his staff. I want to echo that, particularly 
those folks I have had the opportunity to work with on the Intelligence 
Committee staff. This does not have to be the case. This is not always 
the model, and I won't make more than a passing reference to HIPSCI in 
that comparison. If you don't have--you have to have not only Members 
agreeing, you have to have staff agreeing, and sometimes staff come 
with their notion that we have got to start with conflict. That was 
never the way that Richard chaired the committee. He knew my staff as 
well as he knew his own. Nowhere was that more evident than when he 
took on one of the greatest challenges and one where we kind of got 
battle-hardened together on the Russia investigation. And one of the 
things I know he had pride in and I had pride in, there were an awful 
lot of folks who had to be interviewed. And without exception, folks 
who interviewed didn't know whether the interviewees were Republicans 
or Democrats. It was that kind of professionalism and the notion that 
we were going to follow the truth, and I think that work product will 
clearly stand the test of time.
  The other thing that I think Richard taught me, and this was 
something that he has been just relentless about, is to recognize the 
courage and the patriotism of the men and women who work in the 
intelligence community. They are never going to get the recognition. 
Public officials get the recognition but not the men and women who 
serve in our military. But no matter where you travel with Senator 
Burr, there were generally two things that you could guarantee would 
take place. One is that at some moment during the trip he would find a 
way to get a couple hours at wherever the local bazaar was and go buy 
stuff until Brooke finally said: No more rugs ever again.
  But what was equally important that he taught me, and he taught all 
of us on the committee who has come in after, is that when you are out 
in the field, you make sure you go see the station and not just the 
station chief but make sure you see all the members of the station and 
personally meet them and thank them. And in every hearing that we have 
had--and I have tried to continue this tradition--and we may not get 
along and we may not agree with the briefers--but at the end of that 
hearing, no matter how tough it may have been, he thanks the briefers, 
he thanks the folks who are in the back row, oftentimes not getting to 
the

[[Page S7168]]

front table, and he makes sure to say: Go back and tell the men and 
women you work with back at headquarters, back at station, how much we 
respect you and will have your back. He has shared with me a little bit 
in these last few weeks the kind of outpouring of support that he has 
had from intelligence community members both here and around the world, 
and we are going to have him back in January with the leadership in the 
intelligence community to celebrate that again.

  The other thing that is a little unusual about Senator Burr--and I 
will say this for a few of our friends in the press--is that most of us 
actually like to talk to the press--or at least do it. This has never 
been high on Senator Burr's list. I have never seen anybody manage with 
complete politeness to give more nonanswers to the questions in the 
hallway as the press pool follows after him on so many occasions, but 
it is because it is all about the work.
  Others have mentioned and he has mentioned that he was and has been 
the leading voice on disease preparedness. If we had listened more to 
him earlier on on things like COVID, I think part of this tragedy could 
have been even further averted.
  I mentioned already the Russia investigation. We both took incoming 
on that. Both of our sides wanted us to do it differently. He said: We 
are going after the truth. I can assure you, there is no one I would 
rather be in a foxhole with than Richard Burr because when the incoming 
kept coming in, he said: Let's buckle down, do the work. He empowered 
the staff to do that in a way that was remarkable, and, again, that 
product will stand the test of time.
  I am sad to lose a colleague. I think his admonitions to us were 
great. I think his recognition--again, this is so Richard Burr in that 
he has got so many staff here, and he put the staff not in a passing 
reference but as one of the major themes of his speech. We all would 
not be here without the kind of men and women who have supported you 
and who support each of us who have the honor of standing on this 
floor.
  I am going to be really sad to at least lose the daily back-and-forth 
as a friend. He is a little bit quirky. He is not shy about giving 
somebody grief.
  I am not sure there will ever be another Senator with the same tastes 
in footwear or sockwear or lack thereof. He clearly has been one of the 
Senate's true characters in the best sense of the word.
  I have had the occasion to get to know Brooke and his kids. I have 
seen lots and lots of pictures of the grandkids, and I am glad some of 
them live in Richmond. We will visit there and on the Outer Banks.
  He has a great next chapter in front of him. I think he is going to 
continue to contribute to this Nation in the business world. I look to 
see where that path leads, and I look to making sure this friendship 
that we have built will be maintained long into the future, into our 
each increasing dotages in going forward.
  With that, I yield the floor and salute my dear friend Richard Burr.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, my apologies to the distinguished senior 
Senator from Maine.
  Senator Burr knows the one thing he was also extraordinarily critical 
of was whenever members of the Intel Committee were late to an Intel 
meeting, and we have one at 2:30.
  So, Senator Burr, I hope I have your ability, and Senator Collins 
will give me a rundown on her comments today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, how heartwarming it has been today to 
witness Richard Burr's farewell speech to his colleagues, his staff, 
the Members of the Senate, his constituents, and, indeed, all 
Americans, and equally heartwarming it has been to listen to the 
heartfelt tributes that he is receiving from those of us who have been 
privileged to share with him.
  During his 28 years in Congress as both a Member of the House and of 
the Senate, Richard has been a strong voice for responsible government 
and bipartisanship.
  I join my colleagues in thanking him for his truly extraordinary 
service not just to the people of his beloved North Carolina but to all 
of our country. Throughout his service, Richard has consistently 
reached across the aisle to meet challenges and to move our Nation 
forward.
  As the leader of the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions 
Committee, he has supported innovations in our healthcare system that 
have made a real difference for his fellow Americans. These 
advancements include enhancing the ability of cutting-edge treatments 
and medications to reach patients as well as advocating for historic 
funding increases for biomedical research.
  Richard has also left a lasting mark on education policy for 
Americans of all ages. He has worked to ensure that the very youngest 
learners have the best possible opportunities in life by supporting 
early education through Head Start and quality childcare and by 
supporting afterschool programs through the child care and development 
block grant.
  He has sought to increase the affordability of higher education by 
authoring the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act, and he has helped 
Americans obtain good-paying jobs by strengthening workforce 
development programs.
  Richard was also a member of the bipartisan group that shepherded the 
Great American Outdoors Act through Congress. Two years ago, I was 
proud to join him when that bipartisan bill was signed into law. This 
historic legislation fully funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund 
that supports access to the great outdoors for all Americans. It is 
preserving and creating recreational opportunities from the Outer Banks 
to the Pacific coast.
  Perhaps less well-known but also important is the fact that Richard 
has been a champion of civil rights. He spearheaded the passage of the 
ABLE Act--one of the most important laws for individuals with 
disabilities since the Americans with Disabilities Act.
  He partnered with Congressman John Lewis, the late civil rights icon, 
to reauthorize the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act to 
right the wrongs committed against African Americans that were never 
investigated.
  When in 2010 former Senator Joe Lieberman and I led the fight to 
repeal the discriminatory don't ask, don't tell law that prohibited 
patriotic Americans from serving in the military due to their sexual 
orientation, Richard stepped forward to help ensure that successful 
repeal.
  As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard oversaw the 
Agencies that helped to keep our Nation safe and ensured that they had 
the tools needed to guard against foreign threats.
  In addition, as Senator Warner has mentioned, at a time of intense 
partisanship, he led the investigation into Russian attempts to meddle 
in U.S. elections. He deserves enormous credit for keeping our 
committee focused on the task at hand and for producing a fact-based 
account of the events surrounding the 2016 election.

  There is a final story that I want to end with about Richard, and it 
is repeating in many ways what our chairman, Mark Warner, has said.
  I, too, have accompanied Richard Burr as he has visited with our men 
and women of the intelligence community at stations around the world. 
He doesn't just receive the intelligence briefings, as you would 
expect. No. He goes beyond that. He makes the effort to thank each and 
every one of our intelligence community's staff, who are serving in 
stations, sometimes in dangerous conditions, often being separated from 
their families or enduring hardship. He thanks each and every one of 
them. That tells you a lot about who Richard Burr is.
  Richard, thank you for your countless contributions to the U.S. 
Congress and to our Nation. I join your friends and colleagues in 
wishing you and Brooke all the best in the years to come.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, in calculating, it may be possible that I 
have served on the Intel Committee longer than anybody besides Richard 
Burr currently on the committee, with some time in the House--but not 
all of the time in the House--and in the Senate. It is truly amazing 
the depth of understanding he has of programs, of

[[Page S7169]]

capacity, of the places we are all over the world.
  I think he and Senator Warner have done a great job of maintaining 
that committee as a bipartisan committee, working together, 
understanding that most of what we do and that most of what we talk 
about is only seen by us and the staff of that committee. It is an 
important responsibility to ask questions and hear answers that others 
Members can't. Richard's leadership has been incredible.
  I want to spend a few minutes talking about the other portfolio he 
has that I am also involved in as the appropriating chairman on the 
Health and Education and Labor Committee.
  In so many ways, particularly after COVID, Richard, we became the 
team--the authorizing and the appropriating--so we could make this all 
work together.
  Efforts are extraordinary as well. We heard the long list of things 
he did to create an understanding of what we needed to do--the whole 
idea of rapid response, of BARDA, of having a stockpile. All of this 
is--not only is so much of it Richard's idea, but also Richard has kept 
the idea alive.
  I will just tell you this is from absolute personal and occasional 
knowledge in the press--they are wondering: Now, why are you still 
spending that money on the stockpile? We didn't use it last year, and 
we didn't use it the year before. Why do you think we need to have 
things in that stockpile that are usable and have efficacy now?
  Richard has been there. Often, the only people advocating for the 
stockpile, advocating for being ready for things we hope don't happen, 
are the manufacturers who are willing to manufacture this and Richard 
Burr and others--that very small group of people who say: We have got 
to be ready.
  Now we are talking about, with Richard's leadership again, being 
ready in other ways, where we are ready to manufacture and have a rapid 
response like we did with COVID, where we now, maybe, have the capacity 
to figure out very quickly what we need and produce that, but you have 
to have the kind of relationship to have that rapid production.
  You know, when something like this happens, everybody is willing to 
do everything, and, frankly, everybody is willing to spend everything, 
but that is likely too late. You have to be willing to plan everything 
and be prepared to execute a plan rather than ``Now we have a problem; 
let's do whatever it takes.'' Richard Burr has been there in thinking 
about how we plan, how we prepare, what kind of relationships we need 
to have.
  On top of that, the biomedical research and the new interest in 
synthetic biology--so much of that leaves this building and this floor 
when Richard leaves. I think there are so many ways he can be and will 
be available to the country and will be a service to the country, but 
showing up every day, in every Congress, in every session, and to every 
meeting with the knowledge he has brought to those issues is incredibly 
important.
  We see the possibility of health used in a warlike way. We see the 
interest and the need to look into this to see what has happened or 
what could happen. Let me just say that, from the Health, Education, 
and Labor job that I have had, I have been able to see, maybe like 
nobody else has, the Health, Education, and Labor commitment and 
understanding he has. I am grateful for that. I am grateful for his 
friendship.
  I look forward to things he and I could continue to find to do 
together, but I am grateful for the fact that he has been here when he 
was so needed and stepped up in such a significant way.
  Our good friend Lamar Alexander on that committee, in the height of 
COVID, also very close to both of us, was very dedicated to this work. 
When Lamar left, I said one of the things I am most grateful for is 
that I got to serve in the Senate that included Lamar Alexander. I am 
also grateful that I got to serve in the Senate that included Richard 
Burr.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I am here on the floor to congratulate 
my friend from North Carolina, the Tar Heel State.
  We go back a few years. He is from Winston-Salem, where my wife is 
from. Our spouses actually waitressed together back in Winston-Salem 
during high school, and they are still buddies. Brooke and Richard are 
dear friends.
  More importantly for today, Richard has been a terrific 
representative of the State of North Carolina--first, in the House of 
Representatives, where I served with him when I was a Member there from 
Ohio; and then he snuck over to the Senate, a little bit ahead of me, 
and kind of laid the groundwork.
  We have had the opportunity to work on so much together, Richard.
  I think of every major bipartisan achievement in this place, and you 
will see Richard's fingerprints on it.
  So to his staff who are here, I know those are your fingerprints as 
much as his; so congratulations.
  They haven't always been easy issues. Sometimes they have put Richard 
in a difficult political position, but he did what he thought was right 
for his beloved State of North Carolina and for the country.
  Today, I have heard a lot about healthcare. I like healthcare. That 
is great to talk about it, but I want to talk about something else. But 
first, on healthcare, I must say, on Operation Warp Speed, it was 
remarkably successful. I think everyone has to acknowledge that now. No 
one in this Chamber was more responsible for laying the groundwork for 
that than Richard Burr. I am not sure people understand that. But on 
all the discussion about Richard's innovation and your work on 
healthcare, I think that is one that perhaps needs to be emphasized.
  You have also done a good job in other areas, as we talked about 
today, and the Intelligence Committee, in particular. I will tell you 
that Richard and I have traveled the world a little bit together. We 
will go to some hot spot, and I will be dutifully going to the 
meetings, you know, with the political leadership of the country, and 
Richard will disappear, and he will show up a few days--no, a few 
hours--later. We will have a good conversation about things he is not 
allowed to tell me about. So he doesn't tell me everything. But the 
bottom line is, he is in touch with intelligence people not just here 
in Washington but around the world and expressing our support for them 
and our encouragement for them for the difficult jobs that they do on 
behalf of our country and, really, you know, keeping the world a less 
dangerous and less volatile place.
  Richard, I have seen you in action on that, but I want to talk about 
something else, which is his love of the outdoors and his work on 
conservation.
  We are cochairs of what is called the International Conservation 
Caucus. This is a group of Members, two Democrats and two Republicans--
Senator Whitehouse and Senator Coons for the Democrats, Senator Burr 
and I for the Republicans--who talk about international conservation 
issues around the world. These are issues that are directly related to 
economic development, directly related to security, to terrorism.
  When you think about it, the wildlife trafficking that goes on in 
places like Africa, where people are trafficking in ivory or rhino 
horns and so on, so much of that is related to providing funding for 
terrorist groups over there and causing a lot of insecurity in those 
areas.
  It is the same thing in terms of economic development. Many of these 
natural areas, once destroyed, don't provide the ability for clean 
water, for food, for ecotourism, which brings in money for these 
countries. So it is all related.
  But, ultimately, I think Richard got involved because of his love of 
nature and the outdoors. And the biodiversity that he has helped to 
maintain around the world, not just here in this country, has been one 
of the beneficiaries.
  There is a piece of this that I think also hasn't gotten enough 
notice today--that is my job to sort of clean up here--and that is not 
just his work on what is called the Great American Outdoors Act, and 
there were a number of provisions in there. One of mine was on the 
national parks, which Richard helped me with, restoring our national 
parks. But there is one piece in there that I believe would not have 
been successful without Richard's advocacy over many years.
  He really wanted to make sure that we put our money where our mouth

[[Page S7170]]

was in terms of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, or LWCF. If you 
don't know what that is, then ask any of your county commissioners or 
Governors or others who take advantage of it, township trustees, 
community leaders, and, certainly, conservation groups, because this is 
funding that helps with matching funding--typically, local, State, 
sometimes other Federal funding--to ensure that areas are protected, 
that parks can be built, and so on.
  Congress is very good about saying: We are all for that. We are going 
to--what we call around here--authorize the legislation to do that, but 
then we didn't provide the money.
  What Richard said over the years was: Well, if this is such a good 
idea, why don't we fund it like we are supposed to?
  That was actually falling on deaf ears for quite a while, I think it 
is fair to say, but Richard was persistent.
  I recall being at the White House signing ceremony for that larger 
legislation, the Great American Outdoors Act, knowing that one of the 
most significant elements of that was full funding of the Land and 
Water Conservation Fund. That was because of one Senator, and that is 
Richard Burr.
  So, Richard, it has been a pleasure to serve alongside of you. I wish 
you and Brooke, William, and Tyler the very best going forward.
  I suspect if you want to see Richard, you are going to have to go to 
his beloved North Carolina shore, particularly, the Outer Banks, where 
you might see him fishing for tuna or doing something else very 
productive.
  So Godspeed, my friend.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, we have heard a lot of great comments. 
First, we heard great words from Senator Burr. I hope that people yield 
and learn from the lessons.
  We have also learned a lot about his body of work over the 28 years 
that he has been in the House and the Senate.
  He mentioned Speaker Boehner earlier, who was probably crying as he 
listened to Richard's comments. I have a tendency, when I see a friend 
leaving, to get a little sappy too. So to make sure that we keep 
Speaker Boehner on the leaderboard for the one who cries the most, I 
want to talk a little bit about our relationship.
  We knew each other before I came here. I was speaker of the house 
when I first met him. But I learned a lot from him over the last 8 
years, and I have seen him work in a way that is unique among many 
Members.
  I feel like you sum up Richard Burr by his patience, his 
practicality, and his persistence.
  He is a very patient person. He doesn't think in terms of, we have 
got to get this done this Congress. He looks at the reality of the 
situation, and he just continues to build support until he gets it 
done.
  He is practical. He looks at something, the face of the policy, and 
he decides whether it makes sense. And he is willing to take the 
political hits to get good policy done--policy, to use Richard's words, 
that has purpose and meaning.
  And, man, is he persistent. We have had a lot of people talk about 
the Land and Water Conservation Fund. I watched him work this, and he 
worked it for quite some time. And when it was finally set up to get 
passed, he was making a few people and his own conference a little bit 
uncomfortable because of his encyclopedic knowledge of procedure.
  I can remember one scene when he was walking down this aisle, when we 
were working to get agreement, that it reminded of me of a scene in a 
western comedy from many years ago.
  People down there were saying: Don't shoot him; it will just make him 
mad.
  He knows how to get things done. I have learned a lot from him, and I 
am going to miss him. But with all due respect to John Boehner, I am 
going to have your friendship for the rest of my life.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.