Roy Blunt stresses the importance of bipartisanship in farewell speech to U.S. Senate

U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt gave his farewell speech to the Senate on Tuesday, stressing the importance of bipartisanship while looking back at a career in public service that spanned more than four decades and 10 presidents.

“When I gave my first speech on the Senate floor 12 years ago, or when I cast my first vote in the House 26 years ago, I really had no way to anticipate the challenges and opportunities that were ahead of us,” Blunt said. “I come to the floor today grateful to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and on both sides of the Capitol. When we agree and when we don’t, we are bound by the Constitution to seek a more perfect union.”

Blunt is retiring at the end of the month. The former history teacher touched on the history of his institution, saying the Senate was intended to be an inefficient chamber where, in order to produce lasting results, a senator has to work with someone from an opposing party.

He then rattled off some of the bipartisan accomplishments he was proud of, like working to help change research at the National Institutes of Health, his work rewriting the workplace harassment standards for the Senate and his work expanding certified community behavioral health centers. He added laws he still wanted to see passed, like the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, which would help states get assistance to help threatened and endangered species.

“We don’t have to agree on everything to work together,” Blunt said, reading from a speech he had handwritten. “We just have to find one thing.”

Blunt’s career in politics began in the Greene County Courthouse in Springfield, after he was appointed County Clerk by Missouri Gov. Kit Bond in 1973. To earn the role, Blunt wrote a letter and met with every member of the Greene County Republican Central Committee, because they were tasked with advising Bond on who to nominate. He eventually won their nomination after the committee had taken a series of votes, according to an oral history his father, Leroy Blunt, gave to the State Historical Society of Missouri.

It was a political skill Blunt developed over the course of his career, after he was reelected three times as county clerk, elected as the first Republican secretary of state in Missouri in 52 years, elected to the House in 1996 and elected to the Senate in 2010.

After several of his colleagues went over to shake his hand — including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who said “we’ll miss him” after Blunt wrapped up his speech, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who waited as Blunt was hugged by Democratic colleagues like Sen. Debbie Stabenow and Sen. Amy Klobuchar before embracing Blunt himself — they sung his praises.

“This country is so much better off because of the legislative skills and the legislative accomplishments of Roy Blunt,” said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi.

Blunt’s fellow Missourian, Sen. Josh Hawley, said he didn’t know if he would have become a senator if it weren’t for Blunt.

Blunt’s son Matt, a former governor of Missouri, watched from the Senate balcony, along with a number of former staff members.

Both Democrats and Republicans called him a friend.

“I don’t think Missouri yet understands their loss by not having Roy Blunt here,” said Sen. Richard Burr, R-North Carolina. “But I do understand this: that there are 99 other members of the Senate that understand what the Senate will lose with Roy Blunt’s decision to retire.”

Blunt thanked those Missourians for electing him to office before sharing a story about a bust of a man he had found in one of his offices that was made before the 1830s. When he asked his staff to find out who the bust was of, they told him they couldn’t find an answer.

For years after, he took the bust of the unknown cleric with him as a reminder that someone who was deemed important enough that his likeness was created and put in the U.S. Capitol was forgotten in less than 100 years.

“What we do here is more important than who we are,” Blunt said. “Thanks for letting me do it with you.”