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Robert Byrd Announces He’s Not Stepping Down

by thursday on April 9th, 2008

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In general, announcements that a senator won’t be stepping down from a committee aren’t exactly news: we assume that sort of thing goes without saying. But Senator Robert Byrd’s office announced yesterday that he, in fact, won’t be stepping down from the Senate Appropriations Committee. That fact is news because there is plenty of gossip flying around Capitol Hill that senior Democrats want the 90-year-old senator to take a smaller role, especially in light of a fall he took recently.

Byrd is in his ninth consecutive term as a senator and is, hands down, the longest serving senator. His seniority landed him the important role as the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee — the committee responsible for all of the Senate’s discretionary spending. And right here is why Byrd’s role in the Senate is so crucial: he’s quite unabashedly known as the “King of Pork” for his constant steering of spending into the state of West Virginia and into the hands of his constituency. In his first two years on the committee (1989-1991), Byrd managed to send over $1 billion home to West Virginia. I think it’s fair to say that if Byrd was to leave the Senate Appropriations Committee, the West Virginia economy would take an incredible hit.

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POSTED IN: State Law and Politics