Robert Byrd

Posted September 22, 2008, 5:18 pm


Robert Byrd
Born: November 20, 1917

Robert Byrd, Senior senator from West Virginia and a vociferous critic of President Bush and the Iraq war. As president pro tempore of the Senate, Byrd, a Democrat, is third in the line of presidential succession.  In this role, Sen. Byrd signs every Bill passed by Congress before it is sent to the president to be signed into law or vetoed.

After The Age of Seventy

• At age 89 (2006), Byrd was elected to an unprecedented ninth consecutive term in the Senate
  
• At age 89 (2007), has cast a total of 18,000 votes, the most of any senator in history
  
• At age 90 (2008), named PETA's 2007 Person of the Year 
• At age 91 (2009), will have been in office for 50 years next January
  

Quotes

• “One's family is the most important thing in life. I look at it this way: One of these days I'll be over in a hospital somewhere with four walls around me. And the only people who'll be with me will be my family.”
• “A happy family is but an earlier heaven.”
• It is money, money, money! Not ideas, not principles, but money that reigns supreme in American politics.
• The money the president wants to borrow for Iraq will come directly out of the American taxpayer wallets in the form of Medicare and Social Security receipts. That's your money.
  

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