McConnell Congratulates Senator Grassley on 12,000th Vote
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor today marking the 12,000th vote of Senator Grassley:
“Last week, the Senate marked two milestones.
“First, our colleague from Vermont cast vote number 15,000.
“We all noted it at the time.
“Then, our colleague from Iowa cast vote number 12,000.
“That’s what we’d like to note now.
“It’s true that Senator Grassley still has some catching up to do if he wants to overtake the Senator from Vermont.
“But there’s more to his story than the topline number.
“Out of those 12,000 votes, our colleague has taken the last 7,474 of them consecutively.
“He hasn’t missed a single vote since 1993.
“He has the 2nd longest consecutive voting record in Senate history. Second-place out of 1,963 Senators. That’s pretty impressive.
“Even so, we know our colleague never likes to settle for second.
“Good for him, then, that he will soon grab gold in a different way.
“He’s just a few months out from becoming the longest-serving Senator in Iowa history.
“And yet, he’s one of the most energetic guys around here. A runner in every sense of the term. He’s got a lot of fans in Iowa too.
“I don’t think it’s any great mystery why the people of Iowa keep sending him here.
“This is a Senator with a deep love for his state and a simple philosophy.
“When he’s here in Washington, he’s voting.
“When he’s back in Iowa, he’s out meeting Iowans.
“He makes a point to hold town hall-type events in each of Iowa’s 99 counties every year.
“He hasn’t missed a single county in over three decades.
“No wonder he began his ascent into Twitter legendom with four simple words: ‘Attending events in Iowa.’
“That tweet is hardly as infamous as ‘assume deer dead’ or ‘staff has now informed me of what a Kardashian is, I'm only left with more questions,’ but it captures our colleague perfectly in less than 140 characters.
“Here’s something that captures him in at least that many calories.
“At the end of every annual 99-county swing, Senator Grassley has a ritual.
“He gets a Blizzard from Dairy Queen.
“Sometimes chocolate, sometimes vanilla, but always swirled with Snickers.
“This year, he got to DQ so early he had to wait in the parking lot for it to open.
“And of course, since this is the Senior Senator from Iowa, he tweeted about it.
“‘I'm at the Jefferson Iowa DairyQueen,’ he wrote, doing ‘you know what!!!’
“That’s some Tweet. But in this Dairy Queen story, you have the perfect metaphor for our colleague from Iowa.
“Early riser.
“Driven.
“Devoted to tradition.
“Open to change.
“Never afraid to mix it up.
“For this lover of dairy and devotee of his home-state, it makes perfect sense.
“The people of Iowa are lucky to have him here fighting on their behalf.
“Here’s to another 99 counties.
“Here’s to the 12,000-vote milestone he crossed last week.”
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