Remembering Robert Byrd

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Until last November, Byrd was the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the largest and one of the most powerful committees in the Senate. His role on this committee, which has jurisdiction over all discretionary spending in the Senate, gave Byrd extraordinary power to bring back pork to his home state. He got agencies such as the IRS, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI to relocate centers to West Virginia. The state can also lay claim to a Robert C. Byrd Bridge, a Robert C. Byrd High School and a Robert C. Byrd Institute for Flexible Manufacturing, among other things.

• Byrd Obit
• TIME's 1978 Cover Story on Byrd and Congress