Farewell to the Senate

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to pay tribute to this great Wyoming leader. For nearly a quarter of a century, Mike Enzi has represented the people of Wyoming in Washington, and he has done it with intelligence, with intensity, and with integrity.

The Cowboy State and the Capitol are going to sorely miss Mike Enzi. He has truly supplemented his legacy as the trusted trail boss of the Wyoming congressional delegation, and it has been an incredible honor and a great privilege for my wife Bobbi and me to serve the people of Wyoming alongside Mike and his wife, Diana, who is with us today.

Mike is truly a devoted family man, as well as a man of great and deep faith. In fact, Mike taught Sunday school over the decades. Many in the Wyoming faith community know that Mike's first Sunday schoolteacher in Thermopolis, WY, was my wife Bobbi's mother Jerry Brown.

Jerry and her husband Bob, a World War II and Korean war veteran, both passed away this past year, and they had been married 70 years. She taught Sunday school in Thermopolis, WY, and her star pupil was Mike Enzi, to the point that she actually gave Mike Enzi his first Bible, and he still has that today.

Here in the Senate, Mike has been not just a close friend to me and a mentor to me, but he has been that to many Members of this body.

Mike was sworn in 1997. Throughout four terms in the U.S. Senate, he has never wavered in his commitment to God, to family, to country, and, of course, to Wyoming. He is known by many as the Senate's moral compass.

He is a remarkable spiritual leader of our bipartisan Prayer Breakfast. I am a member of that group and a number of Senators are as well. We met today, and Mike led us in prayer.

I have seen firsthand just how much Republican and Democrat Members depend on Mike for his moral and ethical guidance. He really is a bipartisan not just policymaker but also a peacemaker, and we have all seen it within this body.

His legislation--he talked about the 80-20 rule. It has a long history of garnering overwhelming bipartisan support. Over 100 Enzi bills have become law. I have been proud to sponsor and cosponsor many of them with him in my time in the Senate. The thing he didn't point out is that most of the bills passed with over 80 votes. It is rare for an Enzi bill to get to the floor and pass with any more than 15 to 18 ``no'' votes. It is a remarkable accomplishment.

It is important to note that these bills have been signed by Republican and Democrat Presidents. When you go into his office, his whole conference room walls are filled with bills and pens--signed into law with the pens being used by Bill Clinton, by George W. Bush, by Barack Obama, and by President Donald Trump.

Behind all of these, as he just talked about, is that very successful 80-20 rule--a rule that he learned while in the Wyoming State Legislature, and it has worked extremely well for him here in Washington as well.

But such is the practical Western wisdom in Mike Enzi. Born in 1944 in Bremerton, WA, his father was there serving in the naval shipyards during World War II. He moved his family to Wyoming shortly thereafter, and that is when he started elementary school in Thermopolis, WY. They moved to Sheridan, where he graduated from high school.

Mike didn't talk about this today, but there Mike earned his Eagle Scout award. He is a proud Eagle Scout, as is his son Brad. His grandson is working on it as well. Mike has been named a ``Distinguished Eagle'' by the Scouts.

He has a bachelor's degree in accounting from George Washington University and an MBA in retail marketing from the University of Denver in Colorado.

Mike and Diana moved to Gillette in 1969, where they started their own small business. It is wonderful to listen to Mike talk about small businesses. It is called NZ Shoes, not as he spells his last name, E-N- Z-I, but the letter ``N'' and the letter ``Z'' so people could remember NZ Shoes. They later expanded their successful family business to Miles City, MT, and to Sheridan, WY.

But Gillette, WY, is Mike's true home and where his heart is. He served 2 terms as Gillette's mayor. During his 8 years as mayor, Mike led Gillette to their first economic boom. He served 10 years in the Wyoming State Legislature as a State rep, as well as a State senator. Wyoming is Mike's world.

Family means the world to Mike. They are the proud parents of three: Amy, Emily, and Brad; and even prouder grandparents of four: Megan, Allison, Trey, and Lilly.

Now, anyone who knows Mike knows that he loves to fish. Even during Prayer Breakfast today, when you watched on the Zoom call, behind Mike you could see on the wall the fishing rod and all the lures he uses in fishing on display. He is an accomplished and avid fly-fisherman. In August 2015, he achieved every fly-fisherman's dream, completing his Wyoming Cutt-Slam. This Wyoming Game and Fish Department program increases appreciation for our native cutthroat trout.

If you want to talk to Mike about anything, talk to him about fishing. His passion comes through with his love of nature for spending so much time in nature's cathedral of the great outdoors. He fishes in majestic spots throughout Wyoming and all over the world.

Well, here in Washington, Mike has been a leading voice on budget, on tax, and on healthcare issues. He serves on the Senate Budget Committee and has been chairman since 2015. As the first accountant to chair the Budget Committee, Mike is committed to making government more accountable to hard-working American taxpayers. He has been a tremendous Budget chairman. That is because he learned valuable lessons in the Wyoming Legislature where, like all American families, you need to balance your budget every year and live within your means.

Under Mike's leadership, Congress passed balanced budget resolutions for fiscal years 2016 and 2017 and 2018. He worked tirelessly to pass these budgets--even working through the night all week for the marathon floor debates called vote-aramas. His budget blueprints offered a better fiscal path by reducing wasteful spending, by lightening tax burdens, and by boosting economic growth.

Mike's fiscal year 2018 budget not only provided a path to balance; it paved the way for pro-growth, pro-jobs tax relief legislation, the most comprehensive reform in the Tax Code in over a generation. As a reconciliation bill, this historic 2017 tax reform bill, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, went through Mike's Budget Committee.

As Budget chairman, Mike has also focused on the soaring national debt, budget process reform, and oversight of Federal programs.

Mike also served as a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee since his arrival in the Senate. And as a former chairman and ranking member, he championed the efforts to ensure a quality education for all. He expanded access to affordable, quality healthcare, and he spearheaded the most significant pension reform in 30 years, securing millions of Americans' retirement.

He is also a member of the Senate Finance Committee, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Other policy successes include improving mine safety, helping end the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and passing mental health parity.

Mike's highest priority, of course, has always been helping the people of Wyoming. As he said in announcing his retirement, ``I am an advocate for Gillette and Campbell County and Wyoming.'' He went on to say, ``I point out that everyone lives at the local level. No one lives at the Federal level--or even the state level.'' He said, ``So Diana and I are your Chamber of Commerce and economic development people for every town and county in Wyoming all the time.''

Mike started several annual events to boost our State--the Inventors Conference, the Procurement Conference, and Wyoming Works Tours.

In 2009, Mike and I started Wyoming Wednesdays, and it quickly became a big hit. This is a great tradition. When people of Wyoming come to Washington, we greet them every week and get together for coffee and host a time of doughnuts and friendship, and people love to attend.

But Mike, as well as Diana, are a force in the Senate. Diana did it again just recently. Mike has called Diana ``the most thoughtful person'' in the world, and that is no exaggeration. Here in the Senate, every year Diana hosts a Christmas cookie party to thank, as they describe, the ``real workers'' who keep the Senate running--the janitors, cleaning crews, electricians, police officers, and food service workers. Every year, Diana and her friends work hundreds of hours and bake hundreds of dozens of cookies. All the Senate workers look forward to Diana's 200-dozen cookie thank-you event. That is not 200 cookies. It is 200 dozen cookies. It is not unusual for people to come up to Diana in the hallway and ask when the party is. Mike is the wonderful cohost.

This year, because of coronavirus, she couldn't do all the baking, but they have the cookie festival with baked cookies. Those who couldn't get to receive them in locations, Mike and Diana walked the halls of this building and the Senate office buildings to make sure that the guards and the custodians and janitors and others got their Christmas cookies.

Mike is usually a man of few words, but in a recent Prayer Breakfast, he reminded everyone about the importance of thinking before we speak. He titled his presentation ``Me and My Big Mouth.'' He reminded us that our mouths cannot be trained--as you said, Mike--only guarded.

Mike is a true Wyoming gentleman, someone who will always be a great friend and a mentor to me, to younger people in Wyoming, and to everyone here in the Senate.

In my office, there is a picture on the wall of my first day in the Senate, right here in 2007, being sworn in by then-Vice President Cheney, with Senator Enzi, along with former Senator Malcolm Wallop, standing behind. It has been a tremendous privilege to serve with Mike from the very first day in the U.S. Senate.

The people of Wyoming owe him an incredible debt of gratitude for his tireless and faithful service. Mike's character, his courage, and his credibility have cemented his legacy as a highly respected leader of the Senate.

So today many Senators are here gathering to listen to, to honor, and to thank Mike Enzi for his decades of distinguished service to the Nation.

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