It's all too true:
Out-of-power senator getting new title, digs to help soften the blow
By James Kuhnhenn
KNIGHT RIDDER TRIBUNE
WASHINGTON - Any day now, workmen will converge on a sunny dead-end corridor on the first floor of the U.S. Capitol and seal it off. They'll erect walls, install new wiring and build a replica of the ornate office of the Senate president pro tempore.
Then, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., will be able to call it his.
The cost of his replica office - estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars - is a secret.
It's not described in any appropriation document or internal Senate correspondence about the plan, congressional officials said on condition that they not be identified.
All this for a senator who, by all outward appearances, has lost power, not gained it.
Byrd used to be the president pro tempore of the Senate, a largely ceremonial job that places its occupant fourth in the presidential line of succession. He no longer is.
He used to be chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. He no longer is.
He also was a member of the Senate majority. But the November elections relegated him to the minority.
Still, Byrd, the self-taught son of a coal miner who became a senator 44 years ago, retains all the trappings of power. The Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday bestowed upon Byrd, 85, the title of president pro tempore emeritus and agreed to build him an office that will make him feel as if nothing has changed.
"Frankly, it's not worth the trouble he can create if you don't give him deference," said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, by way of explaining the extraordinary courtesies to Byrd.
Byrd is considered the master protector of the Senate's constitutional rights. He knows its procedures better than anyone and can slow down debate with long florid speeches that invoke Greek philosophers, Roman generals and the Founding Fathers. He also remains the Democrats' senior Appropriations Committee member, able to determine what states get in federal largesse - a power not lost on his colleagues. The attention he receives says a lot about how graciously the Senate operates.
"Both parties have always honored seniority," said assistant Senate historian Don Ritchie. "There is a sense of the Senate as an institution that prevails over partisanship."
The corridor to be closed off to the public for the new office is immediately adjacent to Byrd's current Capitol office. It is known as the Zodiac Corridor, a reference to the astrological signs painted on wall panels in 1860 by Italian artist Constantino Brumidi, whose frescoes adorn much of the Capitol.
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