Byrd Returns to Senate To Vote, Defying Talk
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the longest-serving senator in history, defied a whisper campaign about his declining health by showing up yesterday, very much alive and able to vote, for a marathon session on the federal budget. The 90-year-old chairman of the Appropriations Committee has been in and out of the hospital since a fall last month in his Virginia home. That was enough to set off talk that he might soon step down from the post or relinquish his position as third in the line of presidential succession. Mr. Byrd has been in the Senate since 1959.
