- Senator Mike Enzi's political career spans decades and it all began when Senator Alan Simpson while encouraging him to run for office, told the then 30-year old Enzi to put his money where his mouth is.

And that is just what Enzi did first serving as Gillette's Mayor, then in the Wyoming legislature and finally, as a poor term United States Senator where he passed over 100 bills.

Senator Mike Enzi at home in Gillette.

Next on Wyoming Chronicle.

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- And as we begin this special Wyoming Chronicle, it's my honor to be joined by Senator Mike Enzi.

Senator, thank you for taking the time to visit with us today.

- I'm looking forward to the interview.

- So are we, and we're in your office here in Gillette.

I think the most appropriate question to begin with is how's retirement.

- It's absolutely delightful.

I didn't realize the amount of strain that a person's under when they're serving, just the trip back and forth from Washington to Wyoming plus the 500 miles a weekend around Wyoming is more of a strain than I realized.

It's very nice to have the extra time and not have to travel and to be around Wyoming people all the time.

- Well, we're certainly glad that you're here too and congratulations on such a wonderful life of service almost 50 years Senator.

(laughing) It seems like a long time.

- Yeah, I always think of it segments rather than as a whole.

It's much easier that way than a delightful adventure, I've gotten to meet so many tremendous people.

I've gotten a fantastic education.

Everything that I've ever worked on has been an education for me because I really didn't know as much as I should have to be able to handle the situation but I've also been lucky in that I've had some good people to work with.

I've never had anybody work for me.

I've only had them work with me and I was able to find tremendous groups of people to help me out through all of the different things that I've done whether it was being mayor, being in the legislature now in the United States Senate.

But of course the biggest help that I had was having somebody say yes to my request to marry.

(laughs) And she has been with me now for over 51 years, almost 52 years, and just been a tremendous help mate and actually does the bulk of the work and I get the bulk of the credit.

- And you're talking of course, about your wife, Diana.

- Yes, Diana.

- She's innovative in her own right.

And then the number of spectacular things helping out in other countries to remove landmines and showing people how homeless shelters can work better.

And just a whole variety of things that she's worked with as she's even adopted another community in DC that have nothing to do with Congress that she's been helping out with and getting to know and learning from.

- I wanna start by visiting about what Senator McConnell said about you.

As he was saying goodbye in the Senate, he said this he said, "The senior Senator from Wyoming "has accomplished enough in one career to fill two.

"He has seemingly glided from business success "to military service, to local government, "to state politics, to the United States Senate, "where he has built a remarkable, "productive legislative record."

Senator you've passed over 100 bills that in today's world, that seems almost incomprehensible.

It really does - Well, it is because things have changed so much.

We used to be able to work across the aisle a lot more and we did build a step at a time.

Now everything has to be comprehensive.

If you tackle a problem, you've got to cover the whole thing.

And so it's like 3000 pages in the bill.

Who can read 3000 pages comfortably.

And if you do find some things and you always find some things you'd like to correct, you can't correct them because the process is so cumbersome on doing it on the floor that it can't be done.

So you either have to accept it or not.

And most of the things don't get accepted, but if you bite it off a step at a time, you can actually scrutinize it, you can draw in other people and get ideas.

You can grow those ideas so that they will work and you can eliminate some things that are gonna cause a problem.

That's my 80% rule or 80% tool.

- And I wanna talk about that because you talk about that in the context of, it's not really compromised, it's common ground, as I understand it.

- Absolutely, yeah, compromise is where you give up half of what you believe in and I give up half of what I believe in and we wind up with something that nobody believes in, but there's, as you're going through issues you'll find that you can agree with 80% of the issues with the other person.

And if you pick out any one of those issues, you'll be able to agree on 80% of that issue, not the whole thing.

'Cause there's 10% on both sides that have been colliding for years.

I got to work particularly with Senator Kennedy on a lot of those issues that had been butting heads for years.

And what we did was figure out that you can take that piece out.

It doesn't destroy the bill.

It just doesn't do as much as what people might like to do in that one step, but it gets the rest of it done.

We'd worked on mental health parody.

He had worked on mental health parody with Senator Domenici for 14 years.

And hadn't been able to get it through.

And because of some other successes that I'd had with him, he came to me and said, would you take a look at this bill and see if there's something we can do to it.

And I showed him the parts that were killing it each time.

Now the interesting thing is those parts that were killing it were considered by the mental health community to be the most important pieces of the bill.

So we got the whole mental health community together.

And I said, so how long have you been working on this?

They said, about 14 years.

I said, how much have you gotten done?

They said, well, none of it.

So Senator Kennedy and I explained the different parts that we were gonna be getting done and the piece we were gonna be leaving out.

We said, wouldn't you like to get all of this done and just leave this out and the light bulb came on and instead of pushing against it on the floor, they started helping us.

And it went over the cliff and we got mental health parody.

- Senator some people today would look at what you've just talked about with working with Senator Kennedy, a Democrat.

And how could you ever do that from conservative Wyoming?

Yet you have a spirit of bipartisan support in your career that is almost unmatched.

What would you say to those folks?

- Well, what you try to do is find the common ground and you can do that with anybody if people will remain civil while they're doing it.

You can't be calling the other person names and expect them to cooperate with you.

You cannot stand totally.

I have some people that say, if you just stood toe to toe with them and yelled a little bit louder, you would get that done.

I'd say, I have tried that and I always wind up having to apologize.

And when you apologize, it puts you behind in the negotiations.

So it's much better to find out where the common ground is and try and work out some kinks and sometimes you can get from the 80% up to 90%, actually you can get to 100%.

The trick is define a whole new way of doing that 10%.

I've sent people off before that were that had a bill and said, get together with them and find some other way to do that.

And we'll be able to do it.

And they come back and they say, we found it, we found it.

And everybody on that little task forces, it was my idea.

And you know when they say it was my idea, they are passing it.

- That's right.

- And that's the way to get them done.

- I read this and I want you to tell me if it's accurate.

It was written in Politico.

Someone said that Enzi is among the least flashy personalities in the Capitol.

He often literally keeps his head down, immersed in either thought or reading, typically reading an e-reader device.

Is that you, that you were in Washington?

- Well, I primarily kind of avoided the media because you can't negotiate a bill through the media.

You have to negotiate it with the other negotiators.

And if you negotiate something by putting your idea out as being the prime thing in the media, you're stuck with it.

If somebody else wants to revise it, then everybody gets into this controversy of how come you were so wrong.

Well, I wasn't wrong.

It just needed to be done differently.

So I just never found any real advantage.

And I was working on so many things, I didn't have time to go seek out the media to see if I could get their approval or not.

Coy Knobel was my communications person for years.

And he agreed that the best listener you can get is earned publicity.

When you do something, then you can tell people about it.

If you're just working on it, that's no big deal.

Everybody's working on something.

- Coy was the first person you hired when you decided to run for the Senate.

- He was when I was just starting my campaign, I had no idea how to do a statewide campaign, I knew that the problem needed some kind of a person for press and Bob Beck was one of the people that talked me into running.

And so I went to him and said do you have any press person that you know, what should I do?

And he told me about this young kid.

That was really good.

He thought I could get, I interviewed him.

He called, Coy called back later and said, no I don't think I can do the job.

I call Bob Beck, Bob Beck talk to him.

He called me back and said, okay, Bob says is this what I ought to be doing?

And he worked for me the rest of the time through the Senate and has been just a tremendous help and was great on press and then became communications and then actually became my chief of staff.

- And you ran that first campaign with three and a half people.

(laughs) How did you manage that?

What was it like going out to do a statewide campaign for the first time?

- It really helps not to know what you're doing.

- You say that with some seriousness.

- I do, I do.

And not having enough money to have the professionals who can tell you how you can start some controversy so that you can get press because that forces the other people to spend more money which forces you to spend more money, and it just goes back and forth that way.

The best thing is listening to people.

We did a lot of door to door and invited people to ice cream socials in the park.

We didn't go and say, would you vote for me?

We said, we're having this little get together.

We can come and have some ice cream and soda pop in the park at five o'clock, incidentally five o'clock is the best time to do it, people are on their way home.

If they get home, they have dinner, they're not coming back out for something political but they will come and visit with you at five o'clock.

And we just did a lot of the door to door that way.

And it compensated for not having a lot of money 'cause people like to be able to tell you what they're thinking.

I don't do town hall, I didn't do town halls.

I did listening sessions.

At a listening session, I had somebody prominent from the town do the introduction and set up the rules and I just sat at a table and took notes and we had a microphone and they could get in the line and come up to the microphone and tell me what they were thinking.

They could ask questions too but I wasn't necessarily answering their question.

I didn't answer any questions at that time.

I wrote down things and circled some that I thought were great ideas.

And then at the end, I got the last 15 minutes to do some answering questions and deploying out the great ideas that I had heard that people in Wyoming are phenomenal at ideas.

Of course, most of them are working that idea every day on their job.

And they're thinking about it all the time that they're on their job and they come up with these great ideas.

Now, when I first started all these ideas to Washington people would say too simple, never work.

That's just good common sense.

Well, common sense doesn't go very far back there but as time went by, they said, well, is this another one of those things that somebody that's working on the ground out there in Wyoming came up with?

He asked him, he said, okay, we'll do it.

- You've talked about not liking committee meetings but enjoying round tables in your legislative career.

What's the difference.

And why was that important to you?

- Well, at a committee meeting, the majority party picks all of the people that are gonna testify except for a small portion usually one and the other side picks that one.

And then everybody comes and beats up on the witnesses and the purpose of a hearing shouldn't be to beat up on anybody, not to make political speeches.

It should be to find out what the ideas are for that.

At a round table what we did, Senator Kennedy and I actually experimented in this early on is we'd agree on who ought to be invited because they had done something in that area.

And we would give them a set number of questions that we wanted them to answer.

And then they would tell what they did, why they did it, how they did it and what they would do if they were gonna do it over again.

And then the panelists would discuss, 'cause they'd all have similar things that they'd done.

And they'd make some suggestions for how maybe what that guy said might work a little bit better or wonder if it would.

And I remember after the first hearing we had Sandra Kennedy came to me and he said, you know it's really interesting to learn something about what we're doing before we write the bills.

(laughs) - Not (indistinct) yeah.

- Yeah, it's just a novel approach.

- Take us back in your history Senator, you grew up in Thermopolis and then moved to Sheridan.

So was your first job, selling worms Senator?

(laughs) - I don't think it was my first job 'cause I think I was already more in lawns and things, but yes, I had, I raised worms.

I captured nightcrawlers and sold them.

And that came into play later when I was in the legislature because Eli Bebout had the same kind of a background.

And so on one of the bills that we were discussing, we went into what our background was on money and how it applied to the bill.

It was a lot of fun but I learned a lot from everything that I've done.

Sometimes we do things and we don't realize how much we're learning from it.

- But you love fishing even at an early age.

- Yes, I did.

I had a grandpa took me fishing and he had a little heart problem.

So he had to have somebody with him.

And so I got sprung a lot to go with him and he taught me a lot.

And we went through the transition from the old casting rods to the spinning rods, to the fly rods.

- And you even tie your own flies today?

- I do.

And a guy named Sam has helped to teach me how to tie flies.

He's a famous person in Sheridan and tied.

I invented a fly in fourth grade.

I was trying to tie a ginger quill.

It looks nothing like a ginger quill, but it caught fish.

And there was a point when the only flies I ever carried with me was this Enzi specialist, capital, Z special.

And it pretty much will always catch fish but it doesn't look good.

So it'll never be in a magazine.

Nobody's gonna really try to duplicate this thing 'cause they like art in their flies.

- I know if it works.

- The fish like ones that looked like they might've been chewed on a little.

- You were in the JCs.

- Yes.

- Why did you join the JCs when you were younger?

(laughs) - Well, when we first got to Gillette, Diana and I were the only people working in the store and actually we had to build a store because it was a boom time.

- And this was a shoe store.

- A shoe store, yeah.

The town got big enough for a shoe store.

We had just gotten married.

So week after we got married we came to Gillette and started building a shoe store.

And we did the carpentry work on it with Diana holding up big walls and got it into operation.

But after a while, Diana, I said, you know, the only person that I get to talk to is you.

And the only person you get to talk to is me.

We ought to have some friends while we tried to figure out how in a community we'd make any friends.

And Diana had been in the junior miss pageant and Sheridan and knew about the JCs from that.

So I checked into the JCs which was a young men's leadership organization.

It had a comparable women's group called the JCS but you couldn't be a JCL unless your husband was in JC.

So I joined JCs so that she could have some other friends, some other people to talk to.

And I got involved in that and wound up being the local president kind of by accident.

And, but the chapter did real well that year.

And then I got to state appointment and then I ran for the state presidency because I didn't think anybody was really suggesting anything they ought to do, they just wanted the position.

And so we ran for that and did ice cream socials with it and didn't have any business probably doing it, we got it anyway and then I went all over the state talking about leadership.

- Including making a speech and Cody.

- Yes.

- That's a same Senator - State convention was in Cody and our keynote speaker was Senator Simpson and he did his normal really spectacular humorous job speaking.

I talked a little bit about leadership and afterwards he took me by the elbow led me off in the corner of the room and he said I don't know what party you're in but that town you're in needs of mayor.

And it's time you put your money where your mouth is on this leadership stuff.

So coming back from Cody, Diana was driving.

She does a lot of the driving for us.

I said, you know, maybe I ought to run for mayor.

And she drove down into the borrow pit and back up I could show you the spot.

And then we talked about what our community needed for the next three hours, getting back to Gillette.

- 'Cause Gillette was not booming yet.

Correct, it was on the cusp of it.

- Oh it was already having a little bit of an oil boom.

And it had a power point.

- And you're 30 years old at the time.

Is that right?

- 29 then, yeah.

(laughs) And, but we could see what was coming and we could hear a lot of complaints about what was coming due but it's all we talked about what the community was gonna need if all of these things happened.

And I ran on that.

I'm probably the only person that's ever been elected to office in Wyoming that ran on a planning platform.

Actually, though what I had on my brochure was that I was gonna have an agenda at the council meetings and the balanced budget.

- Sounds pretty simple, Senator.

- JC has taught you about having agendas so that you could get through meetings efficiently.

And the state already had a requirement that you had to have a balanced budget.

So, but I wanted the community to be a place that people would like for their kids to grow up.

And evidently the people liked that idea and I got elected and then I found out what kind of job I had gotten into 'cause we didn't have any water.

We didn't have any snow removal equipment.

We had a bad winter that year.

We needed sewer and water and sidewalks and everything you could do.

In fact, they, I got a call from the person that provided electricity.

The City of Gillette who owned their own electrical systems said what are you gonna do when your only substation blows up?

And I said, what's a substation?

And they explained it was a giant transformer.

And when the heat of fall came that thing was gonna blow up.

I said, so what would the result of that be?

He said, well, the people would be without power for about six weeks.

I pictured myself being tarred and feathered when that happened and started immediately to buy a substation which was not in the budget.

And that made, that would have made that illegal.

But I came up with a financial technique that we were able to use that did that.

But then I had to go out and get easements too.

That was a whole nother experience for me buying easements.

And I had one that I couldn't get.

So we had to go to court on that to condemn.

And as part of the process, the engineer for the substation was said so why do you need this easement?

He said, well we don't get these when we can connect up to substation.

And the whole power system will go out.

And at that moment, the electricity went off in the courthouse and the other attorneys started yelling about the atrics closed his book.

And I ran over to the window and looked down where my substation was and there's this puff of smoke going up.

- True story, oh my Goodness.

- True story, true story.

But it was not the substation that blew up.

What had happened is that something had happened over in Buffalo and it affected our electrical system and blew a fuse and the fuse caught on fire and it was going up.

(laughs) We got a substation.

It just number of things, water.

We were already on water rationing and our water was color-coded, the hot water, the cold water came out kind of red from the iron in the water.

The hot water came out black from the goal evidently in the water, nobody drank the water.

People had a lot of medical problems from that.

So we knew we needed more water and needed more water storage, everything.

So I was able to do that over the course of the time that I was in as mayor.

- And for someone who didn't wanna be in politics to start with.

When my, I think that that would have been plenty but on your go to state off.

- Well, I learned that things as mayor and there were a lot of things that I thought ought to be done differently for municipalities and I ran and got on the corporations committee because that's who handles all these municipal things.

And one of the things I learned quickly was that they considered me biased since I'd been a mayor.

So after two years on that committee and not a lot of success, I said put me on something else, well they put me on education.

And since I'd never even served on a school board, I'd never done anything, I wasn't a teacher, I'd never done anything except go to school.

So I was an expert in that committee and got a lot done.

It was a better experience for me but I learned a lot about education which helped me when I got to the US Senate.

- Sure.

- 'Cause I got on the committee with health education, labor pensions but I'd done some safety work in the oil field.

And so there were some things that I wanted to clear up at the federal level that I thought I could do when I got there.

So that's why one of the reasons I picked that committee it also had more turnover because like I got on that committee down at the legislature and they said why are you getting on that committee?

We just give that to the people that don't have anything.

No, I want to get some things done here.

So I got on the health committee and a safety committee down there and got a bunch of things done so.

- A lot of experience that I could take to Washington.

- Give us some insight into when you started thinking that you might wanna serve in the United States Senate.

How did those come?

You said earlier Bob Peck encouraged you to run.

What else lead to that- - Well, I had a lot of people that were encouraging me to run because I remember when Al Simpson said that he wasn't going to be running.

I was with my family, we were watching on television when he made his announcement and my youngest daughter said, "So is that something you'd ever consider doing?"

I said, "Oh no, no, no, no.

There are a lot of people that have a lot more experience than I do that will want that job.

I'll pick one of them, I'll help them run.

I am not gonna be in the Senate."

Well.

- But you had to make that decision at a point.

- But I didn't really.

We went and had the legislative session and I had a lot of people that were encouraging me there.

Curt Meier said, "If you decide you wanna run for the Senate, I'll drop out."

And I said, "No, don't worry about that."

But at any rate, the legislature finished.

I was relieved but I had municipalities calling me, I had counties calling me and saying we could really use your expertise in Washington so run.

I said, "No, there there are other people that could do the job."

But then one day we were in church and this was about a month before the state convention and- - Springtime then.

- Yeah, oh yeah.

Yeah, this is April.

And I was lamenting how I hadn't gotten to hunt and fish like I would have liked to because I was in the state legislature and I was mayor that was pretty busy too.

And we were singing our last hymn and I'm thinking, I really ought to have some time to hunt and fish and I got this little nudge, it said, I didn't keep you alive to hunt and fish.

See, about six months before, I'd had open heart surgery, emergency open heart surgery.

I thought I had the flu in the morning and by night, I was having open heart surgery.

So I was just recovering from that and didn't keep you alive to hunt and fish.

So I took my family right then, we left church, I was in tears, went home.

I said, I'm supposed to run.

And I don't know that I'll win but I'm supposed to run.

And I got a call from the state party president as he heard that I was gonna run.

And he said, "You know, you've got no business running.

There's somebody that's already got half a million dollars they've collected for this.

They're well known around the state, the only place anybody knows you as in Gillette."

So he said, "Unless you've got $125,000 to get some name recognition out there, you have no business running in this."

And I said, "Well, I don't have $125,000 but I'm running anyway."

We didn't know anything about running for state office.

We had nothing for running for state office but there were a whole series of consequences or coincidences that happen.

A local lawyer, John Daley called and said, "If you'd run for the United States Senate, I've got some office space in my building that you can have."

And a person that Diana went to school with but hadn't seen since school called and said, "I have this office supply store and if, if Mike will run for US Senate, I'll give you a copy equipment and all that stuff."

So everything started falling into place.

I got on the telephone, I called all the delegates to the state convention which was less than a month away and we went to the state convention.

And Barbara Cubin said, "You know, you need a consultant."

I said, "What's a consultant?"

(both laughing) So she explained what a consultant does and the reason, she said, "Well, I'll let you visit with mine when he was at the convention."

So I my family and I visited with him and he told her what kinds of things need to be done and what it costs and all that sort of thing and when he left, my family went to get lunch and Brad, my son kinda hung around.

He said, Dad.

Oh, we'd been told that there's a straw, that we used to do a straw poll and the winner of the straw poll always won the primary.

And there was gonna be the straw poll and of course, we hadn't been in the race very long so we asked what the consequence of that was to this consultant.

He said, "Well, as long as you can come in second or third, you've got a chance."

So, my son was hanging around and I said, "What's the problem, Brad?"

He said, "Are we in this to win or are we in this to be a second or third?"

I said, "Definitely in it to win."

He said, "Okay, I'm still with you."

(both laughing) - Good thing.

- Yep.

So the family traveled with me and everything all over.

Of course, I needed to campaign a person and I did a retirement party for a guy named Dick Bratton who'd been with Black Hills Power and Light for his entire career.

And so I was kind of the emcee for this thing and when it was over, I said, "Dick, you know everybody.

Would you be my campaign chairman?"

And he said, "Sure."

And then he said, "Well, wait a minute, I probably ought to talked to my wife before I agreed.

So I promised that we would do a lot of travel as soon as I retired."

- Well, he got to travel a lot, right?

- Well, so called me and she said, "No, I don't think we have that in mind.

We were gonna travel."

I said, "Have I ever we got a deal for you, we will travel places in Wyoming you have never been before."

And she said, "Well I wasn't just thinking about Wyoming."

(both laughing) But they signed on and did that and they were a part of my team every time that I ran.

And he was an old Marine so we started every meeting off with "God Bless America" and the "Pledge of Allegiance" and even brought a little Marine, this metal one that would do "God Bless America" to sing along with us.

It was a great adventure.

They got to travel, we got to travel, We traveled every day of the of the campaign.

We had this old Dodge Caravan and it already had a couple of hundred thousand miles on it and we just kept praying that it would make it through the campaign.

Well, the campaign was over, I went out to get in the car the next morning to drive to Casper to do interviews, it wouldn't even turn over.

(Craig laughing) So be careful what you pray about.

- That's right, that's right.

It got you through the campaign.

- It did.

- You spent a total of $125,000, your wife said.

- On the primary.

- On your primary campaign.

Closely fought that you beat who became later Senator John Barrasso in that campaign.

- Yes, uh-huh.

Who later thanked me and said, "You know what?

If I had won that, I wouldn't have gotten to watch my kids grow up and it's turned out to be just a great, great relationship."

- This is from a person who didn't necessarily enjoy campaigning.

Am I right about that?

- Absolutely.

I'm a real introvert.

I'm an accountant.

- And you enjoyed less having to raise money.

- Yes, absolutely, yeah.

Never liked to ask people for money for me.

I didn't mind asking a little bit for some other things.

- You didn't enjoy raising money and in fact, there are times when you sent money back.

- Well, I did get a check from a tobacco company once and it was the biggest check I'd ever gotten.

It was just within the $5,000 limit that they had at the time but I said, "I don't believe in the tobacco industry so I don't think I oughta accept this."

And everybody said, "Oh yeah, they know you don't like tobacco so you can accept that.

They just want you to win."

And I talked to a whole bunch of people and I got the same message from all of them and I finally said, "You know, this is ridiculous, I've spent three days asking people whether this is right or not.

If it was right, I would have known right away.

It's wrong.

I sent the check back.

The company got ahold of me and said, "You know, that just one of many checks you would get if you accepted that."

I said, "I can't accept it."

So I don't know how much I turned down but it worked out anyway.

- You've talked about the mission statement that you had in your office that had these three tenets.

Do what's right, do what's best, treat others as they wish to be treated.

- Mm-hm, that's something my- - [Craig] Where did that come from?

- My mom drilled that into me my whole life.

And it turns out to be really, really good advice.

It's biblical, so she plagiarized.

(both laughing) No, it was it was really helpful all the time that I was growing up and it has been particularly and in every office that I've held and so we had that mounted on all the walls.

Everybody had that by their desk and any bill that came through had to meet that criteria.

We just didn't do it.

- Senator, you're one of just a handful of senators who have sat through two different impeachment trials with two different presidents.

First of all, your thoughts on what you experienced with both impeachment trials.

- An impeachment is an agonizing thing to go through.

You have to listen a lot, you cannot speak, you cannot ask questions even though sometimes, the outcome appears to be inevitable and it takes weeks to do it, which is weeks that something else could be done and the result at the end of it wouldn't be very favorable either way that it comes, has not been favorable either way that it comes out.

And so I hope that there'll be a lot more care with any request for impeachment that comes along.

- There are other things that can be done and we've kind of set it up so that whoever's in power can look at impeaching the other party.

It's not about parties, it's about whether they have sacrificed the security of the nation.

And anything short of that probably should be overlooked or maybe pardoned.

I know when this third one that came up and I had heard President Biden talking a lot about bipartisanship.

And I said, "You know, what would really work well is if he would pardon the president at this point, they not have the impeachment and then he can say, I just did something for your side, what are you gonna do for me?"

That would have created some bipartisanship.

And it would have gotten just as much done.

- Historical reference there is what President Ford did the President Nixon?

Are you suggesting that that maybe should have been the same tack to use there?

- Well, I hate to compare one trial with another.

I wasn't a part of the Nixon one.

I watched it on television just like I watched what led up to what could have been an impeachment process.

That was a little different lie than either president has done, so.

It's hard to judge those things and you're sitting there as a jurist but it's a special kind of jurist who can change the course of the history of the world.

And it's a tremendous burden to do.

I took a of notes during that, particularly the first trial, stayed up most of the night wrestling with myself over what to do and what I hoped they would ask and what I hope they would bring out and sometimes, worry is a waste of time.

So I hope they're very careful in anything they do.

It's not something you can do against any president just because you don't like him.

- I'm sitting in the chair that you use to, sit on your Senate desk on the Senate floor.

It has some history relative to President Bill Clinton's impeachment I've learned.

What is that?

- It does.

The chair in the Senate chamber, very special.

A new one is carved for each senator that comes.

The desks are there permanently but the chairs are for each senator and it travels from desk to desk as you move up in seniority.

But I started as senator number 100 and that's in the back corner and so during the Clinton trial, I'm having to lean around Gordon Smith who's quite a bit taller than me even though one notch.

And while I'm leaning, the left leg busts off of the chair and so I'm having to balance on three legs for about two hours while I'm listening.

And as soon as we had a recess, I said, "My chair busted."

And they said, "Well, would you like an a different chair or would you like that one repaired?"

I said, "Well I need a different chair to sit in briefly while that's being repaired."

So there's an iron bolt up the center of that leg that has preserved it so it's an historical chair, for sure.

- Senator, you've expressed serious concern in your tenure about national debt.

In fact, you've painted a bleak image of the federal budget process saying, and I'm quoting from something I've read that it's pretty hard to find anything positive with the funding situation that we're in.

The deficit or gap between what the federal government spends and the revenue it takes in is projected to exceed one trillion.

And of course, that was before COVID came along.

Why should Americans be so concerned when apparently, no one is about our national debt, senator?

- Well, someday, the bill was going to come due and primarily, that's going to come due and we don't have the same low interest rates that we've got right now.

If the interest rate were to jump from its current 1 1/2% to 5%, we'd be able to fund Social Security, maybe Medicare, that's it, besides the interest on the debt.

The interest on the debt would exceed those two and we wouldn't be able to either hear me or say anything about national defense or education or health or anything else.

So that would be a crisis point for our nation and what are the options of what can be done at that point in time?

I've had several suggestions for what could be done.

I worked on a thing called the Penny Plan and that's where everything would just be reduced by one penny on the dollar.

And that would have straightened it out.

I'm pretty sure that after we did that one year, they would have said, well, one penny wasn't too bad.

Let's try two.

And at three, we would have balanced the budget.

So I thought it was a great idea.

I even talked to President Trump about it.

Unfortunately, he said, "Great idea, Enzi, we'll do a nickel."

I said, "Don't do a nickel.

That's too big of a cut to start with.

Start with a penny."

Well, it never happened.

- Do you foresee Congress getting serious about our national debt anytime soon?

- As soon as they're forced to.

I don't see it happening before then, unfortunately.

And by then, it's kinda too late.

There were some things that could have been done with COVID.

When they were sending out the, whatever size, $1,200 checks or whatever, they could have requested that anybody receiving a check say that they would sign off on not receiving their Social Security until as many months later to make up that 1,200 and to be means tested.

Now the younger the person was, the more eager they'd be to sign those but it would solve that future problem that we're gonna have with debt and funding those and people would have said yes, I received the money, I just received it a long time ago.

But those kinds of ideas just don't go anywhere.

- We're gonna talk in just a moment, senator, about the legislation that you assisted with that you're most proud of but I wanna ask you first.

What bothers you the most that you couldn't finish?

Is it budget issues that give you the most trouble?

Is it healthcare?

Are there other things?

What kind of weighs on your mind now that you reflect back?

- Well, the budgets, the biggest thing probably.

And I had a bipartisan plan to solve the budget situation so that it would become a bipartisan budget, which would make it possible.

And Senator Schumer said, "No, we're not gonna do that."

And Senator Whitehouse was just as disappointed as I was.

He was the person on the other side that had helped come up with this.

He'd even been on some task forces that came up with some of the ideas on it.

But it'll always be a disappointment that we didn't do that.

That's for my kids and grandkids 'cause I've always said that someday, my kids or grandkids are gonna say, "Weren't you in the Senate?

Couldn't you have solved this?"

And I'd say, "Well, I tried."

But it was unsuccessful.

- Before we go on.

Is the filibuster a good thing?

- The filibuster is absolutely essential, yes.

- Are you worried that it will be eroded here?

- Oh, yes.

It's a nightmare that I have for both sides because either side can take care of it and go with their most extreme instead of staying in the middle and finding a path down the middle that has some common ground which is what America's built on.

And the Senate has always been the cooling saucer of the hot cup of coffee.

And without the filibuster, it's not gonna be a cooling system anymore.

It's gonna be a runaway.

And right now, the Senate provides some security and some safety in some sense.

But I hope it continues.

- We're sitting in your office and right behind you are a few of the many, many bills that you had success with.

What are you most proud of?

- I've been proud of each one as I finished them because these all have pens with them and if you draft a bill and it makes it through the Senate and the house and the president says, "Wow, that's important enough.

We're gonna have a public signing for it."

Then you might get the pen.

So these have pens mounted below the bills and I'm proud of each one that I did.

I did an early one for property owners that had coalbed methane who are gonna have to pay back the royalties they've gotten on the coalbed methane because the federal government- - Is that's your first bill?

- That was my very first bill, yeah, and I did it within the first two years that I was there, which I'm told is the earliest that any senator has ever done an actual bill.

They've done resolutions but not bills.

And I did that kind of by accident.

I went to Governor Geringer's town hall meeting that he was holding at the library here.

I happened to be in town that same weekend and I thought I ought to see what these things are like.

I went to it, the crowd was really angry, found out that it was because their royalties were gonna have to be paid back and they wanted the governor to fix it and the governor said, "Well, I think that's a federal issue.

Senator Enzi, what are you gonna do?"

I said, "Well, I'll put in a bill."

And somebody was astute enough to say, "Well, let's see, you're a freshman, that's not gonna be a possibility and there's only 30 days left in the session so that's not a possibility."

I said, "Well, only thing I know I can do is put in a bill and lobby it."

And I did it one-on-one which has been my style in the legislature as well as in the Senate.

I just talk to every senator individually and get their approval.

And I got that through the house and the Senate in less than 30 days.

And the president said, President Clinton said that was good enough for public signing, so.

- Do you think you could have done that in 30 days today with the political?

- Not a chance.

- Yeah.

- And I was just really, everything fell into place and I'd been a part of the energy council which is the 14 states that do most of the energy in the United States.

And since I'd been part of that council, I activated that council, they worked on states and it was just a great team effort to be able to get that bill done in that amount of time.

- Talked earlier about your staff.

And Philip McConnaughay served as your chief of staff for 20 years.

Senator McConnell said he was your secret weapon.

He's also a great friend.

- He definitely was.

He had just had a great way of managing people and talking to people and getting them to come up with their own solutions as well as guiding the whole staff, both the committee staff and my personal staff and making all of that come together.

He was just a phenomenal manager and a really good friend 'cause he and I worked together at the City of Gillette and then I talked him into coming to Washington to be a part of my team and that worked out really well and then he passed away.

But he really headed up the team and got things done.

- Senator, you were out of office on January 6th.

But I need to ask you, what was going through your mind when you learned of what happened at the Capitol?

- I was appalled that Americans would do that.

I don't care what incentive there is for them to do it.

To attack their Capitol is just unheard of.

We've always had a peaceful change of operation and there's no reason to change that.

It wasn't the outcome that millions of people wanted but that shouldn't happen in America and- - Were you in Wyoming then?

- Oh yes.

On my final day was the day that Sandra Lummis was sworn into office.

I escorted her down to be sworn in, I escorted her back.

I said, "Now, you are the sitting senator.

This chair is yours."

And incidentally, they had already changed out the chairs.

(both laughing) And I left and we came back to Wyoming.

So just ahead of all the problem.

- Senator, you've traveled the world.

Where have you've been?

- Well, we've gotten to see a lot of the world.

We've been there on special missions to accomplish certain things.

The biggest one, of course, has been a ministry to Africa, which President Bush started when he said, "We're gonna spend $15 billion on ending the AIDS epidemic."

And I got to be a part of that and after we got it passed without amendment through both houses, then I got sent to Africa to see what the problem was.

- [Craig] Devastating problem.

- And it was an eye-opener.

I had no idea.

I had heard of poverty, I had heard people complained about poverty but I hadn't seen poverty and a lack of things that, over there, a mother can't get an aspirin or a Band-Aid and water is a precious commodity.

We saw this new well that had been put in and so some of us were pumping it.

It was like one of the old handcarts where up and down on both sides.

And the kids had their five gallon can there and they had an old gallon milk bottle that had the bottom cut out of it and they were using that as a funnel.

And we were pumping and the water starts flowing out of it and they started yelling at us.

And somebody grabs the bottle and puts their hand over it so that none of the water can come out of it and we're finding out that that water is so precious.

They do not want it drop it running on the ground.

And they passed that gallon jug around and drank the water that was in it rather than pour it out.

I've never seen water that precious.

But before that well was dug, they had to go five miles to get there water.

- And you were telling me that the hope was everyone would be within five miles.

- Yes, yes.

- Within five miles of the water.

- Right, right.

If you're in about fourth grade and strong enough to carry two five-gallon cans of water, you might have to drop out of school and that would be your daily family job.

Go to the pond where your water was where animals bathe and drink and people do the laundry and bathe and that's your drinking water and you'd carry your two five gallon cans back and that would be your family's water for a day.

I love to ask kids in America, how far do you have to go to get some water?

It's usually a few steps to the tap.

And it's clean water.

- Sure.

Spend an awful lot of time in Europe.

- Gotten to meet with a lot of heads of state and have been impressed with the impact that we could have there.

I got sent to Russia to do a treaty because there are items that can be used in civilian ways but they can also be militarily used and some of those could be very dangerous to have in the wrong hands and you're prohibited from sending those to certain countries.

Well, it wouldn't help if we didn't send them there but the Russians did.

So I got sent to negotiate a contract with the Russians to prohibit that.

I was also doing, it's because I was doing a bill in the United States Senate that would streamline the process but keep the bad stuff out of the bad guy's hands.

And I actually got that through the Senate.

And then I got to negotiate this contract and it was quite an experience.

I took two interpreters with me.

One was my interpreter, the other one acted as though he didn't know what was going on but he was listening to the counter conversations that would be going on among the other people.

I learned more from that than I did from the person I was negotiating with.

It's a technique I've used in my office all the time if another country comes.

I have two interpreters from the state department and one of them does the interpreting for me, the other one's a listener.

But at any rate we got this contract done and they said, "Well, we need to do a press conference."

Well, I'm ready for it but I understand this is a big deal internationally so yes, we'll do it.

So we leave the room, we go into the press room.

Now, in Washington, there'd be 30 cameras, TV cameras, there'd be all kinds of press people, there'd be radio people.

We walk into this room and there's a press person, a TV person and a radio person.

- [Craig] That's it.

- And they ask us exactly the questions that they evidently want asked and we answered the questions.

And the next day, every single media in Russia had the same story without an error.

It tells you a little bit about their country.

But they went on and followed the stuff, did the stuff that we'd been asking for in the treaty.

Now, my bill that had made it through the Senate.

The language in the house because 9/11 happened.

And they said, "Well, this this won't work."

I said, "No, we've already reviewed it.

And we didn't foresee it but we took care of some things that happened as a result of 9/11 so it would work," but it didn't pass, so- - Where else did you get to travel that you'd like to share with us?

- I got to go to Israel.

And Netanyahu is one of the smartest people that I have ever met with.

Now, one of the things that frustrated me at military bases, we visited military bases every place that we went, is they always liked to do PowerPoint presentations.

And that's mostly so that you'll know who's in command so who you wanna promote although we don't have anything to do with the promotion process and it is such a waste of time.

While I was doing that, Diana would get to see the real stuff on the base and I'd say, "I could have watched that video in my office.

I wanna see the real thing."

She saw ammunition sorting and MASH hospitals and all kinds of things that would have been helpful for us to know but we didn't get to see that.

But Netanyahu would slip a PowerPoint in so beautifully.

I don't know how he did it but when we'd ask a question, he'd have a couple of slides that he could bring up to show what his country's situation was on that.

It was amazing and helpful.

And we visited in Syria and got to meet with the king there and we could carry some messages between places when countries that weren't necessarily talking.

In Europe, a lot of it was geared around our medical facilities and how we were handling those but it was just such a unique experience to get to talk to heads of state.

We went into a number, Afghanistan, visited some of the prisons there, saw some of the bad guys.

Saw some of the security problems, got to see some of the good things that Americans were doing in Afghanistan.

The Nebraska National Guard when they were there, showed them how to put in drip irrigation systems.

Well, they weren't quite finished when the Wyoming guys came in but they were able to finish the project up.

That makes more friends than anything else.

In the prisons, everybody had glasses 'cause that was assigned to prestige if you could get glasses so they all claim bad eyesight.

- Needed them or not.

(laughs) - Yeah.

Just again, a lot of lot of friends in other countries.

All the times I went to Africa and I think we made 14 different trips to Africa.

On the 14th trip, we said, "You know, we've never gotten to see a game animal here yet.

Could we just go through one of them?"

And so we spent a morning getting the scene.

- In a game reserve.

- Yeah, elephants.

- Nice.

- Yeah.

- You spent some time in the Oval Office.

- Yes.

- what did you think the first time you went into the Oval Office?

- It's just an overwhelming place, really, to go in.

There's so much history and power represented there.

And of course, you're talking to the number one person in the world as the president of the United States.

And sometimes, they're even asking your opinion.

One of the things that amazed me on Trump was President Trump actually listened.

And a lot of them are there just to give their opinion but President Bush and President Trump were very good at asking questions then listening to the answer.

And then sometimes, wanting those things done.

- You worked with the Gang of Eight and your role was to try to help solve the nation's healthcare issues.

What did you think when Obamacare ended up being the solution?

- Well, I'd been used to finding common ground.

And in that one, every suggestion that we turned in was turned down.

And some of those would have been good additions or changes.

And in fact, we went to a special joint session where president Obama outlined what he said needed to be in the bill.

And I always take notes and I took notes and when I went to the Gang of Eight the next day, I said, now, he mentioned several things.

There were eight things that he mentioned in his speech that aren't in our bill.

We need to put those in there.

No, we're done, so.

There were some things that could have made a difference but if it came from a Republican, it wasn't gonna be in there.

- Is America's healthcare system sustainable as we know it today?

Are you concerned about it?

- Well, I'm concerned about it and there isn't anything that can't be corrected or fixed or improved.

There are always improvements that can be made but they're not gonna be made through comprehensive bills.

They're gonna be made a step at a time.

After I was through being the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions chairman, Lamar Alexander was.

He's a firm believer in the step-by-step process and was able to get a lot done.

He added a new tack to that which is do some step-by-steps and then combine them all in one bill and see if you can't force them through but at least there had been more scrutiny on the step-by-step that way than there is in the normal comprehensive bill.

So there's some great people back there working the problems.

- And you developed some great friendships on the floor of the United States Senate.

I'm gonna ask you about electronics here in just a minute.

But which senators, which senators were you closest to?

- Well, I hate to go into the list because I'm gonna leave out some that were really special to me but on the Republican side, of course, I spent an awful lot of time with them but I have some real friends on the other side of the aisle too that I was able to work with on bills.

Ted Kennedy, of course, being the most prominent and the most worked with person.

But Harry Reid and I did some special things and he was one of the first people to congratulate me after I retired.

Senator Whitehouse was outstanding at working on budget issues.

I worked a lot of coin issues while I was there.

I actually got Sacagawea on the coin because she, of course, was buried in Wyoming and they were trying to replace the dollar coin and we're thinking of the Statue of Liberty and I said, "No, it ought to be a real woman and it ought to be Sacagawea."

And I got a lot of help from Wyoming kids on promoting that.

In fact it was so much help from Wyoming that just outside of Jackson, there's a little town that doesn't even have a bank and that's where the first of the coins were introduced.

And incidentally, that's the only coin in the world that has a baby on it.

- [Craig] Interesting.

- And in the first year that coin was out, we made $1 billion off of the coin that's because you make them for 12 cents and you sell them for a dollar.

Nobody gets that kind of a market.

So I got involved with a lot of different coins.

The Buffalo Bill Cody Museum and the Bison Association and the tribes asked me if I couldn't get the buffalo back on the nickel.

So I had the Bison Association bring a buffalo to Washington and to park outside my office building and voted to coin committee and we made the request.

And they not only approved it, they said, "Well we're gonna introduce it in that same place that you did the meeting with us but can you bring your buffalo back?"

Well, I wasn't able to bring the same one but I had a buffalo back there.

- And you didn't touch its horns.

- No, I didn't.

(both laughing) Yeah, that's one of the keys.

Like he kept saying, "Don't the horn, don't touch it."

I said, "Why not touch the horns?

I wasn't gonna touch 'em."

He said, "Well, that's the strongest part of the neck is the strongest part of the bison and if you touch the horns, that's the most sensitive part of the bison and then they will nod their head and throw you 30 feet."

So, I don't- - Tourists in Yellowstone should be so educated.

- Now, later, Senator Kennedy came to me and he said, "You know, the Humane Society wants us to do a fundraiser."

And I told him that I'd bring my pets and I thought I'd see if he would co-sponsor with me because we found that the cultural caucus and that was part of it.

And he said, "So would you bring your pet?"

I said, "Well, I don't know if I can get my bison back here."

Oh, no, don't bring your bison, my dogs went nuts.

Yeah, but I got Dick Bratton on the coin committee and then he was followed by another Wyoming person on the coin committee and they got to do different backings on the nickels and different backings on the dollars and so a lot of those decisions came out of Wyoming.

But, of course, one of the first woman that headed up the mint was a Wyoming woman.

- Senator, we just mentioned just a moment ago about electronics.

And you've advocated advocated for a long time that simple laptops should be allowed on the Senate floor, yet, they aren't today.

- No, I started doing that when I first got to Washington because I was used to using it on the Senate floor at the state legislature and they worked really well and we were already connected well enough.

We could move from the Senate floor to the committee room and back again and still be connected.

And there were a lot of things we could be doing while we were listening.

And that's one of the problems there is in Washington.

Nobody's on the floor and listening.

Now, they might be in their office listening but it's much better to play to an audience and have people that can look up from their work and see what you're doing.

So I was trying to get the, have them to have electronics on the floor.

Now, I was willing to put it in a brown cover so that it wasn't that noticeable on the desk but, and they couldn't use it unless they were sitting at their desk.

If you watch though, you'll see people picking up their cell phones and using them.

That's illegal.

That's an electronic on the floor of the United States Senate but I wasn't able to get that change.

- Why the pushback?

Why isn't that just a common sense thing to do?

- Well, I don't think many senators had done it.

And I had one senator that came to me, I think he was probably the only honest one and he said, "I don't know how to type and if you're there doing it, my constituents will expect me to and I would be embarrassed so I can't vote for it."

Now on the other hand, Mitch McConnell, I got in "Time Magazine" because of this story they picked up on it.

And Mitch McConnell with New York City on trip and he got in a cab and the guy said, "You're a United States senator, aren't you?"

And he said he was pleased that somebody recognized him.

He said, "Yes, I am."

And the guy said, "So when are you gonna let the guy from Wyoming have his computer on the floor?"

(Craig laughing) Senator McConnell came back and said, "You know, if you've got this lobbied gun to cab drivers, I think I'm with you."

(Craig laughing) Still didn't work, yeah.

And somebody gave me a cool pen and an inkwell, which I keep on my desk in Washington and now, here because I said, "Well if you're not modernizing to electronics, why aren't we still back on the quill pens?"

(Craig laughing) - You are literally, here we are, we're having this interview in late April and you are still going through a lot of the boxes that are still unpacked down in the basement.

You're coming across things like that probably every day.

- I am and I actually getting to savor them now.

I didn't get to savor them I got them because I was busy working on a whole bunch of different bills and trying to get them through.

And now, I can take the time to remember the agony or the joy of every step of that process.

And that's a lot of fun.

But I do have a lot of boxes downstairs that I could go through but they're also digital now.

Electronics.

And I knew the university would, they had asked for my records but when I got ready to give them to them, they said, "We'd really like them digitally."

And my staff said, here and they gave him a little tiny box.

- Size your phone, probably.

- Yeah, just slightly thicker than my phone.

- And I said, "Well, gee, that's where I'd like them to."

And they said, "Well here's your copy."

(Craig laughing) But I can go through and see the original.

Sometimes, that's more fun too.

- [Craig] Sure.

- Plus the notes that I will have written on the margins.

- We were visiting this morning off-camera, senator, about whether there might be a book in your future and I think the answer you told me is, yeah, I don't know.

Is that what you've been thinking?

- Well I've been writing down a lot of my memories and I did that through the years.

There is a book already my staff put together, a phenomenal book that showed what I did each year from their standpoint and of course, that reminds me of a lot of stories of how we actually got to that point but.

So I've been writing down the memories and I thought about doing something more extensive on my 80% tool.

And then I thought, well, senators aren't very good at reading and- - That's a scary thought, senator, by the way.

- Well, looking at the advice from other senators because they know as much as the other senators.

- [Craig] Sure.

- So then I kind of changed and thought, well, I'll write it as a secret book for chiefs of staff.

And maybe it'll find some use that way 'cause I think they might be looking for some secrets and perhaps, their senator will say, "So where'd you come up with that idea?"

And they'll mention it and the senator say, "Get me one of those books."

I don't know what I'm gonna do yet so far.

Just been trying to put things together and have some time with my wife and getting these things ready and being normal people talking to people that I haven't had a chance to talk to for more than 15 minutes for 24 years.

15 minutes at a time for 24 years.

- I just chuckle.

When I first sent you an email requesting this interview, the auto reply I got back said we checked this about every other week or so or every week or so and you might hear from us soon.

We got things to do.

(Craig and Mike laughing) - Oh, we did come up with another email address so that people wanted us to do something could go to let us know, hopefully, well in advance so that we could see if we'd be able to work that in with family activities and community activities and things like that.

And also to stay unscheduled to some degree because after 24 years of being scheduled, seven days a week, people don't realize that you're scheduled every minute that you're in Washington and then when you come to Wyoming, you're scheduled every minute as well.

We'd get up on Friday morning, we'd catch a ride to the airport at 5:30 in the morning and fly out here and then we'd finish up at 10:30 or 11 at night.

Now, the five 30 out there's actually 3:30 out here.

And so, it made a pretty long day.

And then we'd get up the next morning and do it all over again and then Sunday had come and the afternoon, we'd catch a plane back to Washington again or maybe Monday morning, we'd catch a plane back.

But we're scheduled seven days a week.

People don't know that.

Another thing that was kind of a surprise to me is that your biggest job is not legislation.

It's casework.

There are thousands of people in Wyoming who have had a, well, they're over 12,000 that I've worked with that had a problem with the federal government.

And senators can often cut through a bunch of the red tape.

One of the biggest things was Vietnam medals.

When people got their metals after Vietnam, they were actually a little embarrassed because of the national emphasis at the time.

And so they didn't worry about their medals.

Now, their kids and grandkids are wondering what they did and they said, "Well, I got some medals but," well, when they go back to get them, the first response they get is that burned up in a fire in St. Louis.

Well, I know that there are duplicate records of everything so we put a lot more pressure on them.

That what it turns out is that everything from the later wars is digitized so it's easy to look it up.

But Vietnam is all in dusty boxes in big warehouses and it takes a lot of effort to go back and go through them and we made them go back and go through them and we found a lot of medals for a lot of people and it's great to be the one who can finally hand them the award that they sacrificed for, the hard work that they put in.

But there's just all kinds of problems that people have with the federal government that we get to solve and I didn't know it was nearly that big of the case load.

We also did a thing called Wyoming Works and that's where we went around and visited businesses 'cause we know that people think that all there is to run a shoe store is putting the shoes and taking the money.

But there's a whole lot more to having the employees, training the employees, ordering new shoes six months in advance, paying for them before you ever sell any of them.

At any rate, every business is a lot more complicated.

- Meeting payrolls, all of those things.

- Yeah, even the Senate's a different business and most people think we just go there and vote but there's a whole lot extra that has to be done.

So he said, "We ought to take a look at some of the businesses in Wyoming and see what their special problems are."

And that really helped, because in Washington, when somebody was proposing a bill, I'd say, "Well, I know this person in Dubois that's gonna have a heck of a problem if you do the bill that way."

And so having actual examples helped quite a bit but it was also really inspiring to see how these people had worked through different problems that they have because every business has different problems because they're working with different customers.

And that was really helpful in working with pharmaceutical problems because I had some pharmacists that really could show me what the ins and outs of the problems were and how they couldn't even tell how they were doing because of the middlemen that were in that wouldn't assess them until the end of the year.

Some other things like that.

So it was real helpful to get into them, not to mention you just don't think about how these businesses operate.

We stayed in motels for the 24 years when we came back, primarily, except for the every other month, we got to come to Gillette.

But I really hadn't stopped to say how do you run a hotel?

And there are a lot of intricacies to that.

It's not just signing people in and taking their money.

- [Craig] No.

- Not even if you serve breakfast.

(Craig and Mike laughing) - How was it being a grandpa?

- It's one of the great gifts that anybody could have.

And I've enjoyed watching my grandkids grow up, I hope to be able to watch it a little bit more detailed now.

And Diana has been a phenomenal grandmother during all of this time.

She gets right in and from the time they were a little, played with them and has their confidence and they trust her.

That's a privilege too, so.

But be fishing with them a lot more now.

(Craig laughs) As Senator McConnell said, "He hopes your lines are tight."

(Craig and Mike laughing) - Yeah.

Yes, well I'm learning about Euro nymphing now which is a new method of fishing.

- Sounds high-tech.

- Well, they found some ways to sell some new rods and new lines and new leaders, new reels but I've been watching some videos on it.

It looks very promising, particularly for Wyoming rivers.

The big ones are all down further than the little ones and so the tricks to get past the little ones to get to the big ones.

We'll see how that works.

- Best wishes there.

- Thanks.

- So here we are.

What's next for Senator Enzi and Diana?

- Well, I don't know.

We'll be praying about it a lot and see what the Lord has in mind.

I'm taking a little bit of time with no schedule and a lot of fishing, I hope.

I did check with people that over the years that said, oh yeah, come out to my place anytime and fish.

I've been checking with them to see if that still held when I was no longer the senator and I've been pleased with the results on that.

But I'm willing to answer any questions anybody has.

I'm not gonna call and suggest to what people ought to do but if they have questions and they think I might have an answer, I'm plenty willing to visit with them about that possibility but it's time for a new generation.

And I'm willing to encourage that generation.

Maybe there'll be some young person that I can take by the elbow and say I don't know what party you're in but it's time that you ran for mayor or legislature or whatever to put your money where your mouth is and show a little leadership.

- Are you bullish on Wyoming's future, senator?

- Oh, I am.

The people of Wyoming are phenomenal people.

There's so much that nobody knows in Wyoming about Wyoming.

We have inventors.

I've done an adventures conference every year that I was in office and have been amazed at some of the things that people have come up with that they patented that make a difference.

I've done a GRO-Biz Conference.

I found out that the federal government would come to some states to see if there was a product that they could either get that was better or less expensive.

And I said, "Hey, come to Wyoming."

They said, "Oh, you don't have enough people.

We can't do that."

Well, I heard they were gonna come to Montana and I said, "Well, if you're coming to Montana, you can just drop down into Wyoming and do the same thing."

And they said, "Well, okay but unless you'll have at least 125 people, they will never be back."

I said, "Okay."

So we held it at Cody and we had more than 125 preregistered and then in typical Wyoming fashion, we had others who showed up afterwards.

Now, kind of the humorous part of this whole thing is Montana didn't have 125 so they have never had another one, we've had one every year except for during COVID where they come to Wyoming and they enter into contracts or they help people fill out the forms that are necessary to bid on federal projects.

And we've had some really successful people bid on federal projects.

There's a couple of young men in Casper that know how to bend metal to make almost anything and they saw a bid by the Marines for eight by eight by eight tanks, stainless steel tanks with rounded corners and they put in a bid and they got a call from the Marines who said, "We really like your bid but we wanna see your product.

So within six weeks we want you to deliver one to Georgia."

And so these guys put their tank together, load on a trailer and drove it to Georgia down there the Marines.

We've never had anybody deliver their own product.

But I was still working with them for quite a while after that because they said, "The Marines always want six of these.

Eight of them will fit on a truck for the same price."

We never could get it up to eight.

- Even that when Wyoming is looking beyond its reliance on the mineral industry, where do you see Wyoming's future evolving when that may become, perhaps, especially here in Campbell County, a little less of being important to Wyoming.

- Well, I hope they don't give up on minerals because there are some minerals out there that are gonna be really critical to the security of this nation.

We have the largest deposit of rare earth.

Now, the Chinese have been buying up rare earth in countries that we've been to and in some of the countries, it's been an easy process.

They might say you really don't have a good soccer stadium here.

How about if we build a soccer stadium for you in exchange for your rare earth?

Well, we don't use any rare earth so good deal.

Well, they've been getting all of the world's supply of rare earth.

Well, one of the biggest discoveries is not very far from Gillette.

It's over in the Sundance and Hulett area.

And it's one of the biggest deposits of its kind and they were going through the permitting process and we were helping with the permitting process and they stopped.

I said, "Why did you stop?"

They said, well, we discovered and actually kind of knew but it hadn't thought about it That it would have to be refined in China.

There's no refinery in the United States.

They said, "Well, let's get a refinery."

So we started putting some pressure on that and we put enough pressure on that.

The Army put out a, it wasn't really a bid because it only went to certain people and I got upset over that and asked for a delay on it because our people didn't even know about it.

And so it got delayed but they wound up giving it to the Chinese.

I said, "That's not progress."

They already have all of it, now, we're just gonna have to do it in the United States and then have their equipment breakdown and we still won't have it.

- And to put this in perspective, if you have a cell phone or a big screen TV or you're concerned about lasers or national security with fighter jets, you're concerned about rare earth.

- Oh, absolutely, yeah.

Even electric cars.

Yeah, and there's a lot of different chemicals in the rare earth.

And we could be producing that ourselves and where it ought to be produced is right here near the mine.

So somewhere here in Northeast Wyoming, there ought to be a refinery and we're probably one of the only states that would approve a refinery just because of the name refinery which sounds like something really bad.

But it would still have to meet all the environmental criteria.

- Senator, just a few more issues or things I'd like to discuss before we leave today.

Where were you on September 11th, senator?

- I was in my office in the Russell Building at the Capitol and I was talking to a person that I worked a lot of safety issues with who was in Alabama.

And I turned on the TV so that I could see if Mrs. Bush was going to be testifying in the same room that I was planning on going to.

And when I turned on the TV, the World Trade Center was on fire and I talked to the guy and said something's happening in New York.

He said, "Yeah, I know but I got to talk to you about the safety stuff."

And just then the second plane went in and I said, "I've got to go."

And I walked out the door and got shoved into the same entourage with the first lady and they started loading us in a car and I said, "No, no, no, I can't get in the car.

I gotta find my wife."

And they said, "Well, then you can't come with us."

So I found my wife who was at home at the time and we spent the day in fear together and it was a strange time in Washington.

Really strange.

Some of my staff coming in saw the plane go into the Pentagon and turned around and went home.

The streets were jammed, the phone lines were over capacity so you couldn't make any calls.

Nobody knew what was happening or when.

The automobile dealers were in town at that time and nothing flew for quite a while after that.

So they actually bought a suburban and drove it back to Wyoming and then resold it.

- How did that influence you, senator?

- Well, they were, it touched off a whole chain of events because we knew they were terrorists.

And I had gotten appointed to the finance committee because Jeffords jumped ship and that changed things and so I got on there and there was one committee that nobody wanted so I get to be the ranking member.

Later, they said, "How'd the new guy get that?

It was antiterrorism."

I got appointed to the United Nations task force for counter-terrorism.

And it was a bunch of accountants like me and we said why don't we follow the money?

And that really worked.

We had 130 countries that joined us in participating with that.

And a number of those countries caught the bad guys, tried the bad guys and eliminated the bad guys and you never heard anything about it.

But after a while, they figured out what we were doing and so they started using messengers and stuff for it.

But that was just a tremendous experience by itself.

- Do you think, generally speaking, senator, we're safer today than we were on that date so many years ago?

- Absolutely.

Yeah, we're so safety security conscious now that we spend a fortune on things that are never gonna happen.

Just in case.

- Is it the right thing for America to get out of Afghanistan now has been announced by President Biden?

- Well, I'm not a part of that decision process anymore but I really appreciated the first President Bush who did the Iraq War or the war in Kuwait, went in, kicked him out and came home.

And I'm hoping that wars will be of a much shorter duration and for much more specific purposes than that.

Of course, I was there when we did the second Iraqi war.

I looked at the videos, I am convinced that there were chemical weapons available and that they got hidden in the desert.

I saw videos of them moving them.

So I had no doubt that they were planning something much more dangerous and bigger than what we'd ever experienced before.

So we have to be diligent, we have to make sure that our military is up to snuff and provided.

I met with Gillette Korean veterans through the course of my thing and I've been to some of the places in Korea that they were they were stationed.

They tell a story about how their guard unit got activated because there weren't enough regular troops and they were promised they'd be trained before they went, they'd be trained on the way, they'd be trained when they got there and they weren't.

They were shoved right into battle and given eight bullets a day.

Fortunately, they're from Wyoming so they could line the bad guys up.

Not really, they were pretty scared over not having even enough ammunition to take on an enemy.

So hopefully, we will never be in that situation again.

We'll be prepared and not need to use it.

And hopefully, if we need to use it, we can use it on a short-term basis, not on a prolonged one that's a war between tribes.

- The nation is undergoing a revitalization of its nuclear arsenal.

I'm sure you're aware and that impacts Wyoming.

Are you satisfied?

Are you pleased with how that effort is progressing, specifically how it applies to FE Warren and our nation's nuclear defense?

- I worked real hard to make sure that that would be done and kept trying to move FE Warren up on the priority list and had some success with that but yes, we have to be prepared.

That's one of the tools that we can use to prevent a war.

- We'll lighten things up as we get towards the end of our interview, senator.

I'm told that the staff at Tortilla Coast misses you and Mrs. Enzi on Thursday nights.

That was a tradition for you.

- It was.

Thursday night was usually the end of the voting.

We didn't leave until about 5:30 the next morning to come back to Wyoming.

And so we go to Tortilla Coast and originally, just Diana and I went and then we decided that we ought to include some other people so we started inviting some staff members and it just became a Thursday night tradition and a very enjoyable one where you get to see some people outside the workplace.

And it was also relaxing for us.

- What do you miss about Washington?

Or what do you think you will miss about Washington?

- I'll miss the people and that's about it.

I got to serve with some tremendous people and I got to work with some tremendous people that were on my staff and on other people's staffs.

And I hope that I can see some of them again, most of them again, any of them that want.

We've invited a lot of people to come to Wyoming and we'd give them a tour.

I don't know if anybody will take us up on it but I'll miss the people.

- Well, senator, we appreciate your service to our great state.

Full disclosure, your wife now is a member of the Wyoming PBS Foundation Board and we appreciate her as well.

- Yeah, well, she's been the essential part of my life and has handled all kinds of problems that I never had to worry about and she handled it more efficiently than I would have.

And I'm just so pleased that I got to have this adventure that the Wyoming people trusted me to be their United States senator and act on their behalf and the same for the City of Gillette and the people in the state that let me learn all of those things.

People need to have adventures, get outside their comfort zone and I certainly have and it's been a privilege and an honor and just so many wonderful memories.

We certainly wish you the best.

- Thanks.

- Thanks for joining us on "Wyoming Chronicle" - Thank you.

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