He has been called “the soul of the Senate”

Byrd was West Virginia’s senior senator and the longest-serving member of the U.S. Congress, serving continuously for 56 years. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1953-1958. He served in the Senate since 1959. 

In 2006 and with 64 percent of the vote (he never received less than 64 percent of the vote), Sen. Byrd won an unmatched ninth term in the Senate just months after exceeding South Carolinian Strom Thurmond’s record as its longest-serving member. Another record was his more than 18,500 roll-call votes. 

On Nov. 18, 2009, Byrd surpassed Sen. Carl Hayden, D-Ariz., to become the longest-serving member of Congress in U.S. history. The title now belongs to Sen. Daniel Inouye, 85, of Hawaii, now takes the role of Senate president pro tempore as the person with the most seniority. 

Byrd was president pro tempore of the Senate at the time of his death, which put him third in line to succeed the president and vice president should they have been killed or forced from office. That seat is the second-highest-ranking seat in the U.S. Senate (behind the vice president who serves as Senate president) and the highest-ranking senator. Byrd had been president pro tempore since January 2007.

Byrd’s 51 years in the Senate made him at the time, the longest-serving senator in history, while his white hair, impassioned, oratorical voice delivering colorful speeches citing Roman emperors gave him the presence of a man from a grander, distant time.

In an ever more technology-driven political world, Byrd was seen by some as a person from an earlier time. He often apologized for his early views on race and, in recent years, became one of the most reliably liberal votes in the Senate.  He used his mastery of Senate rules and a taste for tough hard-line tactics to become a passionate and often feared advocate for the state and the Senate he loved. 

Byrd always carried a pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution in his suit pocket.  Brandishing his copy, he resisted any attempt to diminish the role of the Senate. 

Robert Carlyle Byrd was born Nov. 20, 1917, in North Wilkesboro, N.C., as Cornelius Calvin Sale Jr., the youngest of five children. 

Before he was 1, his mother died and his father sent him to live with an aunt and uncle, Vlurma and Titus Byrd, who renamed him and moved to the coal-mining town of Stotesbury, W.Va. He didn’t learn his original name until he was 16 and his real birthday until he was 54. 

His parents inculcated Byrd in “the typical southern viewpoint of the time.” 

He belonged to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s and filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but he went on to endorse the nation’s first black president. An orphan child who rose from West Virginia poverty, he became a master of pork-barrel politics, and his name graces federal buildings throughout his home state. 

Byrd became popular for his fundamentalist Bible lectures and the Klan suggested he run for office. He first ran for the West Virginia state House of Delegates in 1946, and in his first campaign he lured voters to his speeches by singing and playing mountain bluegrass tunes on his fiddle. 

His fiddle became a fixture.

Byrd graduated valedictorian of his high school class in 1937 but could not afford college. In a measure of his persistence later in life, he took a decade of night courses to earn a law degree in 1963, and completed his undergraduate degree in 1994 with correspondence courses.

After taking night classes while in Congress, he graduated from American University’s Washington College of Law in 1963. This was the first time in history that a sitting member of either House of the Congress has accomplished both beginning and completing the courses of study leading to a law degree while serving in Congress.  Byrd was awarded his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, summa cum laude, by Marshall University in 1994.

Married in 1936 for nearly 69 years, to his high school sweetheart Erma Ora James, with whom he had two daughters, he pumped gas, cut meat and during World War II was a shipyard welder.

Sen. Byrd entered Congress as one of its most conservative Democrats. He was an early supporter of the Vietnam War, and his 14-hour plus filibuster against the 1964 civil rights bill remains one of the longest ever.

His views gradually restrained, mainly on economic issues, but he always sided with his state’s coal interests in confrontations with environmentalists.

Byrd’s love of Senate traditions inspired him to write a four-volume history of the chamber.

His latest cause was the abuse of filibuster and secret holds on legislation for personal agendas. 

“During this 111^th Congress in particular the minority has threatened to filibuster almost every matter proposed for Senate consideration.   I find this tactic contrary to each Senator’s duty to act in good faith.”

“Because this once highly respected institution has become overwhelmingly consumed by a fixation with money and media.”

“Now every Senator spends hours every day, throughout the year and every year, raising funds for re-election and appearing before cameras and microphones.  Now the Senate often works three-day weeks, with frequent and extended recess periods, so Senators can rush home to fundraisers scheduled months in advance.”

But Sen. Byrd’s driving purpose was protecting the Constitution. In 2004, he persuaded Congress to require schools and colleges to teach about the Constitution every Sept. 17, the day the document was adopted in 1787.

Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said “… he never forgot where he came from nor who he represented, and he never abused that power for his own gain.”

The passing of Sen. Byrd will not affect the balance of power in the Senate. West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, a Democrat, intends to appoint a replacement senator to serve out the remainder of Byrd’s term, which ends in 2012.  At issue with the state’s succession law, is whether the appointment will last through the end of this year (with a special election for the seat this year) or through 2012 (when Byrd’s term expires).

 Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s legacy is immense but what many don’t know is his musical background as an avid fiddle player.  He performed at the Kennedy Center, Grand Ole Opry and on the television show Hee Haw!  In 1978 he even recorded an album.

Just a few years ago he donated his favorite fiddle to the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.

 ”I ran the Senate like a stern parent,” Sen. Byrd wrote in his memoir, Child of the Appalachian Coalfields.

“There are four things people believe in in West Virginia,” Byrd once said. “God Almighty, Sears Roebuck, Carter’s Little Liver Pills and Robert C. Byrd.”

“Mountaineers are always free”

Note:  Robert Byrd is of no relation to Harry F. Byrd and Harry F. Byrd, Jr., both former U.S. Senators from Virginia.

They saw our two-house legislature as reflecting the will of the people, but with checks and balances to prevent “the tyranny of the majority” (James Madison). 

While the House with its 435 members representing the popular opinion of the nation’s voters, the Senate, with its two members per state, was visualized as a thoughtful and reflective body, like a modern think tank, where heated issues could cool somewhat and consequences could be considered before new laws were enacted. 

The Constitution provides for both houses to pass legislation with a simple majority vote of those present.  To prevent the “tyranny of the majority,” it also provides a method for the minority to delay a majority vote and gather support for its point of view.  That method is called the ‘filibuster.’ 

The Constitution allows each house to set its own rules.  Each piece of legislation allows a debate on the subject.  Senate rules allow a Senator, or series of Senators (each yielding the floor to the next), to speak for as long as they wish on any subject they choose.  The filibuster can be ended by a 3/5 or 60-Senator vote for cloture (end debate). 

The 60-Senator vote is known as a supermajority. 

It is also possible to end debate through a legal maneuver known as the Nuclear Option, where a Senator brings up a point of order, reminding the Senate that its rules are not being followed with the filibuster.  If the presiding officer makes a ruling to uphold the point of order, and if a simple majority of the Senators vote to uphold the ruling, the debate is ended and a vote on the issue is held immediately.   

Without the threat of filibuster, the Senate needs only a simple majority of 51 votes to pass legislation and uphold rulings.  But when filibuster is threatened on major bills and issues, 60 votes are needed to move past debate to the vote. 

The party-line divisiveness of the modern Senate has made almost all legislative issues require a supermajority to pass.  Although the supermajority vote to end debate is not a bad thing, its use as a weapon in the trench warfare between parties has left the voters as victims. 

An additional use of the 60-Senator vote is used to modify budgeting, authorization, as well as appropriation guidelines and restrictions. 

Each year by October 1, Congress must construct a budget it can stick to, considering government income as well as expenses.  It must authorize new and ongoing programs and agencies that come into being as the result of bill passage or already exist, with non-binding recommended spending levels to carry out the program’s policies.  And it must pass appropriation funding bills, providing the legal authority to use funds from the U.S. Treasury.  

The annual Congressional budget is simply an outline of anticipated federal spending for the coming year, setting limits on discretionary spending if everything works out according to plan.  It also allows procedural points of order for bills that exceed their spending caps.   

When a bill, chugging its way through the enactment process, generates a program or agency budget that will violate its Congressional appropriation, a Senator may raise a point of order.  That appropriation point can be waived by a 60-Senator vote. 

On the saving side of the government ledger, the Congressional budget resolution may include a “reconciliation” figure.  This is assigned to a congressional committee with directions to produce legislation that lowers spending by that amount. 

Passage of a reconciliation bill is an express train with a limit of 20 hours of debate and only a majority of Senate votes for enactment. 

We may learn more about reconciliation in the near future, with pressure building in Congress to pass a health reform bill and the recent upset in Massachusetts, where Republican Scott Brown was elected to serve out the remainder of Senator Ted Kennedy’s term, ending in 2012.  Although a proponent of health care reform, Brown has come out against President Obama’s health care plan in its present form as fiscally unsound. 

With the health care reform bill now in the merging process between House and Senate, we can be sure the 60-Senator rule will be in place, and the Democrats are now one Senator short of the necessary 60 votes for their plan.   

Options for passage of the health care reform bill in some form include

• convincing at least one Republican to vote their way
• scaling down or revising the plan to make it more agreeable to opponents
• requesting the House to pass the Senate bill intact
• using the reconciliation process to pass budget item portions of the bill (that will expire in either five or ten years)

As aggravating and as slow as the Senate process is using the 60-Senator hurdle, perhaps James Madison was right.  Perhaps it does protect us.