By Ray Smock

For Constitution Day I was asked by the editors of the Washington Times to contribute an article on Senator Byrd and the Constitution. This was included along with other articles as a feature on the Washington Times new Pocket Constitution App, which debuted on Sept. 17.  It will be available soon at the App Store or it can be downloaded right now from your browser at: constitution.washingtontimes.com for $4.99.  Here is my contribution to the new app.
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The power in Robert Byrd’s shirt pocket

The staff of the Byrd Center held a farewell party on September 5 for our Director of Archives Marc Levitt who will be leaving this month to take up a new position as Archivist of the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola, FL.  I was pleased to present him with the Center’s distinguished service award for his outstanding leadership and contributions to the creation of the Robert C. Byrd Archive and for his path-breaking work on issues related to the access to electronic files of former members of Congress. Marc’s work at the Byrd Center over the past 4 and-a-half years has been outstanding in every respect.

We will continue to work with Marc in various professional capacities as he will remain an active member of the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress and in his ongoing work with the Congressional Papers Roundtable, a part of the Society of American Archivists.
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On behalf of the entire staff, the student interns, and the board of directors of the Congressional Education Foundation that operates the Byrd Center for Legislative Studies, we wish Marc and his wife Pam, and their two young children Valerie and William the very best in their new adventure in Pensacola.

Note: This post was previously listed under our "News from the Grey Box" blog series ​

By Jody Brumage

In 2010, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This landmark legislation brought over a century of health care reform debate in the United States to a new incarnation. In 1973, an attempt to pass legislation similar in nature to the ACA was introduced in the House of Representatives, sponsored by Congressman Harley O. Staggers, Sr., of West Virginia.

The first efforts to create national health care programs were rooted in the Progressive Era beginning in the early 20th century with attempts to pass legislation beginning in the 1910s and achieving some success with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935.[1]
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Eight years before Staggers’ health care bill, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Social Security Act of 1965, creating Medicare and Medicaid. These programs represented the most significant effort up to that time to implement a national health care system in the United States, building upon the foundation of the 1935 act. However, proponents of a more robust program felt that Medicare and Medicaid did not go far enough to provide health care for American citizens.