Word: byrds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...annual salary of U.S. Senators is $60,663. But some senatorial moonlighting for spare change is also allowed. Thus in financial disclosure statements filed last week, interesting sidelines showed up. Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, as deft at bluegrass fiddling as at politicking, earned $3,888 from an album (Mountain Fiddler) and $1,600 from fiddle playing on TV and radio. Republican William S. Cohen, took in less than $1,000 selling hay from his Maine farm, but an impressive $12,390 in royalties on his book of poems, Of Sons & Seasons. Vermont's Pat Leahy...
...midweek the Democrats had agreed on $11 billion in potential budget cuts, and there they got stuck. Liberals began arguing for tax increases-a surcharge on corporate profits, for example-to make up the remainder of the budget gap, but they were overruled. Byrd argued implacably that defense spending should be held to the 3% increase, adjusted for inflation, that would meet commitments to NATO. He won his point, but only over the strenuous objections of congressional hawks...
Some Senators and Congressmen grumbled that Administration officials, principally Treasury Secretary Miller, Chief Economic Adviser Charles Schultze, and Budget Director James Mclntyre, sought their ideas on what programs to cut rather than venturing proposals of their own. Administration officials, on the other hand, complained that Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia brought ever more Democratic Senators into the meetings, so that budgeteers had to go over the same ground again and again for the benefit of the newcomers...
...Byrd, however, ran the meetings with a firm hand. At one point, when a group of Democratic Congressmen were meeting with Miller, the Treasury Secretary was summoned for a consultation with Carter. Byrd politely insisted that Miller would have to conclude his talk with the Congressmen first, and Miller eventually sent word to Carter that the President would just have to wait. Said Connecticut Representative Robert Giaimo admiringly: "Byrd taught me how to wield a gavel...
...Administration also began meeting with congressional leaders. In a night session at the White House, Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia suggested that Senate and House Democrats form teams to work with the Administration's policymakers in drawing up a unified set of budget reductions-in Byrd's words to TIME Correspondent Neil MacNeil, "a package with which we can walk the plank"-and then take it to the Republicans for their ideas. Both Acting Senate Minority Leader Ted Stevens of Alaska and House Republican Leader John Rhodes of Arizona brought groups of their followers...