Word: byrds
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...ready to approve the plan proposed by President Carter last January, just after Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. The House had passed the necessary funding by a vote of 219 to 180. After two days of what turned out to be a six-day filibuster, Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd called for a vote to invoke cloture, limiting further debate to 100 hours. Byrd was surprised that it passed immediately...
...Byrd and Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn, a strong supporter of registration, then cleverly employed parliamentary maneuvers to exhaust Hatfield's delaying tactics. At one point, for example, Nunn proposed cutting the bill's funds by an insignificant $10,000, and his amendment passed. That technically changed the bill enough to render inoperative some 75 other amendments Hatfield had introduced in an effort to delay passage...
...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...
...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...