Byrd Reaches 17,000 Vote Milestone [View All]

[James T. Kirk]

http://byrd.senate.gov/byrd_newsroom/byrd_news_april/byrd_2004_aprillist/byrd_2004_aprillist_0.html

Excerpt
U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., who already holds the distinction of having cast more roll call votes than any other Senator in history, cast his 17,000th roll call vote Thursday.

"Seventeen thousand votes ago, I achieved a dream. I stood on the floor of the United States Senate and prepared to cast my first vote as a Senator from the Mountain State, West Virginia. Seventeen thousand votes later, I still feel much the same. It is a great privilege to serve the people of West Virginia in the United States Senate," Byrd said.

Byrd has achieved a 98.7 percent voting record during his tenure in the Senate, earning him the record for the greatest number of roll call votes in Senate history.

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"For me, Bob Byrd personifies what our Founding Fathers were thinking about when they were thinking about a United States Senate. He brings the kind of qualities that the Founding Fathers believed were so important for service to a state and service to the nation," said Senator Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.

"It has often been said that the man and the moment come together. I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great senator at any moment. Some were right for the time. Robert C. Byrd, in my view, would have been right at any time," said Senator Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.