Richard Burr: “I think divine intervention has played a part here with this exchange and the comments of my colleagues because I am…”

“I think divine intervention has played a part here with this exchange and the comments of my colleagues because I am here to pay tribute to my good friend Tom Coburn, who, on March 28, passed away--our colleague and, more importantly, a dear friend. I almost sat in the cloakroom and then came out here, thinking this could be a conversation that Dr. Coburn could be having on the Senate floor about the need to accomplish things, to think outside the box. Yet, as my good friend from Illinois said, don't destroy the gold standard that is there; find a way to work within it. Dr. Coburn had a lifetime of doing that. To pay tribute to a friend and a colleague, I actually have to rewind 26 years, when both Tom Coburn and I came to the House of Representatives in a large class. It was alphabetical, so you can see how ``B'' and ``C'' would be close and how Chambliss would be a friend and Latham. We were a cadre of folks who really sized up very quickly whom it could trust. To understand Tom Coburn is to understand that this was a guy with an incredibly diverse background in that he ran a medical device company, in that he was an OB/GYN, in that he experienced things in life and, in my case, was a little bit older. To understand Tom Coburn is to remember the commercial wherein the bull went into the china store, and no matter which way it turned, it was always going to break something.…”