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 Session)” mentioning John Thune was published in the Senate section on pages S5078-S5079 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. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to pay tribute to our friend and former colleague, Senator Mike Enzi.
Senator Lummis and I are here, and we are very grateful for the kind comments of the minority leader, Senator McConnell; majority leader, Senator Schumer; and the President pro tempore of the Senate, Senator Leahy.
Mike Enzi was my colleague. He was my mentor. He was my friend. Today, my wife Bobbi and I, along with all of the people in the State of Wyoming and all of his friends and admirers here in the U.S. Senate--we are joined on the floor by many of his former staffers, many of whom still work here--all of us mourn his passing.
For nearly a quarter of a century, Mike Enzi represented the people of Wyoming in this very body in the U.S. Senate. In so many ways, as we served as a team when Cynthia Lummis was in the House and Mike and I were in the Senate, he was our trusted trail boss for our entire congressional delegation.
He served with intelligence, with dignity, and with grace. He never wavered. His commitment was to God, to his family, to country, to Wyoming.
It was an incredible honor and a great privilege for my wife Bobbi and for me to serve the people of Wyoming alongside Mike Enzi and his wife Diana.
Mike was born in the middle of World War II. He was in Washington State at the time because that is where his father was stationed. After the war, the family moved back to Thermopolis, WY--my wife's hometown--
and to Sheridan, WY.
As all of us know, Mike was an Eagle Scout, so were his son Brad and his grandson Trey. They followed in his footsteps. Later in life, he was awarded the Distinguished Eagle Scout.
He went on and studied accounting. He earned a business degree, and he focused on marketing. He was pretty good at it. He served in the Wyoming Air National Guard, and he was 6 years a tech sergeant.
In 1969, Mike and Diana were married. One week later, they moved to Gillette and opened a small business known as NZ Shoes--Enzi, like his name, but the letter ``N'' and letter ``Z'' Shoes. The little business wasn't that little for long. He opened a second store in Sheridan, then Miles City, MT.
Mike ran for mayor of Gillette, served two 4-year terms. He often called being mayor the toughest job in politics, and Mike performed flawlessly. With the help of his business skills, Gillette went into an economic boom. He served 10 years in the Wyoming Legislature as both a State representative and a State senator.
When he came here to the Senate, Mike became a leading voice--a leading voice on budgets, on taxes, and on healthcare issues. In 2015, he became the first accountant to ever chair the Budget Committee. He brought to Washington the valuable lessons that he had learned in the Wyoming Legislature, and he put them to use right here
He would say: Like American families, Wyoming has to balance its budget every year, live within our means, and so should America.
Under Mike's leadership, Congress passed three consecutive balanced budget regulations. During his time as chairman, Congress also passed the largest tax cuts and reforms in a generation. And those tax cuts gave us the best economy of our lifetimes.
Mike also chaired the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Senate. As chairman, he spearheaded the most significant pension reform in 30 years. Mike's legacy in the U.S. Senate also included improving mine safety, helping in the AIDS epidemic in Africa, passing mental health parity.
His highest priority, of course, was always helping the people of Wyoming. Over his 24 years in office, Mike and his capable staff helped the people of Wyoming through more than 15,000 pieces of casework. They helped veterans get the benefits that they had earned. They helped seniors get Social Security. They helped people become naturalized citizens.
When he announced his retirement, he said:
I am an advocate for Gillette and Campbell County and Wyoming.
He said:
Everyone lives at the local level. No one lives at the Federal level, or even the State level.
He said:
Diana and I are your Chamber of Commerce and your economic development people for every town and county in Wyoming all the time.
Mike started several annual events in Wyoming to boost Wyoming. One was the Inventors Conference; another, the Procurement Conference; and then Wyoming Works tour.
In 2009, Mike and I started Wyoming Wednesdays. This is when people from around Wyoming come to Washington, and we get together--our delegation--for coffee, for donuts, and for fellowship. We are proud to continue the tradition today.
Above all, Mike was a moral leader in the Senate. He taught Sunday school for decades and he learned from the best. Mike's first Sunday school teacher was in Thermopolis, WY, and his teacher was my wife Bobbi's mother, Jerry Brown. Mike Enzi was her star pupil. She actually gave Mike his first Bible.
Well, that benefited all of us because, decades later, Mike Enzi became a leader of our bipartisan Senate prayer breakfast. As a member of that group, I saw firsthand how Republican and Democrat Senators looked to Mike Enzi for moral and ethical guidance. He was a guiding light.
On my first day in the Senate, Mike gave me this book. It is called
``One Quiet Moment,'' and it is a daily prayer devotion. This is how he inscribed it in 2007. He said:
John, here's a book that has helped me through 11 years of the Senate. It's amazing how often the message of the day relates to what's going on in my life.
He said:
These messages provide strength.
Mike Enzi--June 26, 2007.
So the message of the day provides strength. Let us turn to July 27, today. The message is from Philippians. The message is three words: ``I press on.'' The message of today: ``I press on.''
It goes down to the bottom, and it says:
My steps forward today may be small, but at least they are steps off dead center. Keep me moving, Lord!
It is Mike's message through this book for us to press on. As I said, Mike Enzi was a moral compass for many of us, and he always pointed True North.
He was a friend and a mentor to me, to so many Senators on both sides of the aisle over 24 years. He knew how to find common ground and bring people together better than any.
It was rare for an Enzi bill to receive fewer than 80 votes. This was by design. Mike called it his 80-20 rule. He learned in the Wyoming State Legislature. At the beginning of each year, each member of his committee made a list of their priorities. Most years there was bipartisan agreement on 80 percent of the priorities. Mike Enzi would then focus on that 80 percent on which they agreed, and he would leave out the 20 percent on which they disagreed. As a result of this approach, Mike Enzi wrote more than 80 bills which were signed into law by four different Presidents in the United States, two Republicans and two Democrats. I was proud to cosponsor many of those bills with him here in the Senate.
Yet for all of Mike's achievements in business and in government, we will miss him most as a friend. Following his retirement, Mike did an interview with Wyoming Public Broadcasting. He said there wasn't much he would miss about Washington, DC. He said it was the people whom he would miss the most.
Mike had a dedicated, hard-working, and loyal staff. Some of them returned to Wyoming, others still serve in this body today, and a number have joined us on the floor. Mike gave much of the credit for his success to these folks. I know they are all feeling a huge loss today.
Mike used to say there aren't many things better than being a Senator from Wyoming, but he used to joke that two of them are fly fishing and being a grandfather. Mike had a great love of nature, which is easy when you live in Wyoming. Mike was an accomplished and avid fly fisherman. In fact, in August of 2015, he achieved every fly fisherman's dream. He completed something known as Wyoming's Cutt-Slam. This is a Wyoming Game and Fish Department program, which increases appreciation for our native cutthroat trout.
Yet Mike would tell you the achievement that he was most proud of, of course, is family. He is survived by his wife Diana; his children Amy, Emily, and Brad; and his grandchildren Megan, Allison, Trey, and Lilly.
When he retired earlier this year, Mike said: ``None of this would have happened without Diana. The best thing that ever happened to me,'' he said, is when she said she would marry him.
Diana is a wonderful person. She used to host an annual Christmas cookie party here in the Senate. She did it to say thank you to all of those whom she called the real workers: the janitors, the cleaning crew, the electricians, the police officers, the food service workers, and her staff. Every year, Diana and her friends baked hundreds of dozens of cookies. My wife Bobbi often joined in the cooking of literally thousands of cookies of all varieties and all made with loving care. It was so popular around here that people used to walk up to Diana and Mike in the hallway and ask: When is the party?
It had been a tremendous privilege for my wife Bobbi and me to serve for 13 years with Mike and Diana, representing Wyoming in the U.S. Senate. The people of Wyoming will always be extremely grateful--
grateful for his decades of faithful, tireless service.
May God bless the memory of Mike Enzi. May God comfort his family during this extremely trying time. And may God continue to bless the State of Wyoming.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. President, today, Wyoming mourns the loss of a gentle giant, Mike Enzi.
Mike spent his life working to make Wyoming a better place while creating opportunities for our people. As the mayor of Gillette, a State legislator, or as a U.S. Senator and senior statesman, Wyoming had no greater champion than Mike Enzi. He always put Wyoming first and worked harder than anyone to serve his constituents.
Growing up, Mike's dad would say: I don't care if he is a doctor or a lawyer or a ditchdigger; I just want him to be proud of what he does. If he is a ditchdigger, I want any darned fool to be able to look at that ditch and say: That is a Mike Enzi ditch.
That creed became commonplace in Mike's Senate office.
I will echo Mike's former chief of staff, Coy Knobel, by saying: I think it is a pretty good ditch.
Mike was a soft-spoken leader, but the many legislative wins he delivered attest to the impact of his service. At a time of increasing political incivility, Mike Enzi managed to tactfully and graciously navigate the upper Chamber, producing results that will be felt for generations to come. His retirement left a hole in the Senate, and his death to this world leaves a hole in our State and in our hearts.
Throughout Mike's career in the Senate, he came up with multiple plans to address our debt and deficit. As an accountant by training and trade, he knew how to balance a budget and make it through the lean times. He wanted to set our great Nation up for success for his children and his grandchildren.
My prayers are with his wife Diana; his children Amy, Emily, and Brad; and his four grandchildren at this very difficult time. I know they are proud of the powerful legacy he leaves behind. We all are, and we have every right to be.
To me, personally, he was more than just our senior Senator. I have known Mike since the early 1980s, and over the last 40 years, he has been my personal friend and, as John Barrasso said, mentor. We first worked together when we were both in the Wyoming State Legislature. Then we served together in the Wyoming State Senate. Finally, when he came to the U.S. Senate, I followed him a few years later to the House of Representatives. I always joked that I was just following him around like a puppy dog my whole life.
Mike taught me about legislating, but he also taught me about life. He had a rock-solid faith. His faith was his guiding light. It is something that my late husband had, too, and I take comfort in knowing that Mike is peacefully at home in Heaven with his Lord and Savior. I am Lutheran, and in Martin ``Luther's Small Catechism,'' it says that Christians like Mike and me and John are redeemed so that I may be His own and live under Him in His Kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.
I note that because Mike was such a servant leader. He gave his earthly life to public service, and as Heaven is an everlasting service of the Lord, I know that no one is more prepared for that than Mike. He was a servant leader on Earth, and I know he will be a servant leader in Heaven.
I will say one last thing. Mike's unexpected death is a reminder that you can never say thank you to the ones you care about and appreciate too soon or too often. I, along with John, was blessed to be able to pay tribute to Mike's lasting accomplishments and impact on Wyoming just last week when John Barrasso and I recorded a tribute to him and his service to Wyoming's mining community. At this event honoring Mike Enzi, at which he was in attendance in his hometown of Gillette, he joked, he had fun, and he got to enjoy the camaraderie of the people in the State he loved so very much.
I am grateful, John, that you and I got to say thank you to him one last time like that.
I am heartbroken that Mike has passed away from this life. For selfish reasons, I will miss him terribly. He was a beloved, kind Member of the U.S. Senate. He was an accomplished, quiet leader. He was Wyoming's friend. He was my friend.
God bless you, Mike. We will see you down the road. Happy trails.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican whip
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, before I begin, I want to join with my colleagues from Wyoming and my other colleagues here in the Senate and express my sorrow at the news received this morning that our former colleague Senator Mike Enzi had passed away.
Mike was a cherished colleague and one of the finest human beings you will ever meet. A former Budget Committee chairman, he was, in many ways, the conscience of the Senate on spending issues, always reminding Members that Federal dollars are not unlimited and that every dollar we add to the debt is a burden we are placing on our children and grandchildren.
One of my favorite memories of Mike happened a few years ago when he was a neighbor next door in the State of Wyoming. He was someone, as I said, for whom I had tremendous respect. He was always a gentleman. He had something that, I think, in politics is really rare, and that is, he would deal with big policy issues here in Washington, DC, but he always retained his common touch. He had a terrific way of connecting with people on a very personal level.
I remember I was experiencing heel pain from overrunning, which, it turns out, was plantar fasciitis, and I happened to mention it to Mike, who at one time was a shoe salesman and a shoe store owner. Well, it isn't more than a day later or so when he comes up to me and he has a solution. He had some heel inserts for my shoes, which turned out to be just exactly one of the solutions that I needed to deal with that. That was very typical of Senator Enzi. He was thoughtful. He was practical, incredibly hard-working, and very, very smart and very, very principled.
To his family--to his wife Diana, his wife of more than 50 years, and to his children and grandchildren--I want to say how much we will deeply miss him and how much we are sending our thoughts and prayers to them during this very, very difficult time.
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