First State Times

Volume 167, No. 131, covering the 1st Session of the 117th Congress (2021 - 2022), was published by the Congressional Record.

The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.

“Remembering Mike Enzi (Executive Calendar)” mentioning Thomas R. Carper was published in the Senate section on page S5091 on July 27.

Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.

The publication is reproduced in full below:

Remembering Mike Enzi

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, like all of our colleagues, I was stunned to wake up this morning and find out that our friend and colleague Mike Enzi had been killed in a tragic accident, I think involving a bicycle, and I think we are still reeling from that.

I just want to share a couple thoughts, if I could. I see the Senator from Oklahoma is here to speak after me, and I will be brief.

I think maybe one of the last bills that Mike Enzi introduced, I was privileged to cosponsor with him. It was a postal naming bill. We do those from time to time, as the Presiding Officer knows. There is a post office in Wyoming that under the bill would be named after the late father of Bobbi Barrasso, Senator John Barrasso's wife. Her dad had served in the military--I believe in World War II and the Korean war, as I recall--with great honor and courage. He was awarded a number of military awards, I think including the Bronze Star, maybe the Purple Heart and others. I was privileged to cosponsor that bill, and it got passed in wrap-up in Congress last December.

One of my first memories of serving in the U.S. Senate also involved Mike Enzi. I was the Presiding Officer sitting right where you are sitting, Mr. Presiding Officer, and Mike Enzi took the floor and began to speak. He talked about something called the 80-20 rule, and I didn't know what he was talking about. I heard several iterations of an 80-20 rule. But I listened to him talk. He talked a bit about how he and Ted Kennedy, one of the most liberal Senators in the Senate, and Mike Enzi, one of the more conservative Members of the Senate, how they managed to work together and get a lot done as senior members of what would become the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, the HELP Committee, here in the Senate.

I didn't know Mike Enzi. I was brand new here, and he had been here a couple of years before that.

When he was finishing up, I asked one of the pages to give him a note. The note said: Dear Senator Enzi, before you leave the floor, would you come and chat with me?

I was sitting right there. It was a slow day, so he finished up, and he came up to chat with me while I was sitting--presiding as Presiding Officer.

I said: Mike, what is the 80-20 rule, and how does it apply here?

He talked about his relationship with Ted Kennedy. He said: Ted Kennedy is one of the most liberal Democrats in the Senate, and I am one of the more conservative Republicans. He said: We get a lot done.

And they really did. It was a very productive committee.

I said: How does the 80-20 rule work?

He said: Ted and I agree on about 80 percent of the issues that come before our committee, and we disagree maybe on another 20 percent. He said: What he and I have agreed to do is just--we focus on the 80 percent where we agree, and we just say the other 20 percent, we will set that aside and take it up another day.

I said: Is that what you do?

He said: Yes.

I said: Is this something you just started doing recently?

He said: No. We have done it for several years.

I said: No kidding?

He said: No kidding.

And, you know, when I think about that, I know we are going through a tough patch right now with infrastructure and trying to figure out how to put together a bipartisan package with water and water infrastructure, roads, highways, bridges, broadband, intercity passenger rail, transit, and it is not easy. It is not easy.

As I heard about Mike's death today, I thought about that spirit, the 80-20 rule. Maybe we can take a little bit of that and use that to get us across the finish line on the legislation that is being worked on. I hope so. It is an important bill, and it is important legislation. A lot of people in this country are counting on us to do that.

On a personal note, you can't think of Mike Enzi without thinking of his wife Diana. They were inseparable. They were here. They were in Wyoming and traveling all over the State together. As popular as he was, she might have been even more popular. I know that is the case in my State with my wife and me.

But I just want to say to her and to the Enzi family just a real thank-you for sharing not just with the people of Wyoming, but the people of this country, a very, very good man--a very good man. We are grateful for that gift that you shared with us and mourn his death, untimely; he died too soon. I feel thrilled and privileged to have served with him.

With that, I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 131