The Salt Lake Chamber has announced that U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan will be the keynote speaker at the organization’s Giant in Our City event scheduled for June 9 at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City.
The chamber had previously announced that it will honor Sen. Orrin Hatch as the 39th Giant in Our City. The award honors those with exceptional and distinguished service and extraordinary professional achievement and is widely recognized as the most prestigious business award given in Utah, the chamber said.
“In the history of the state of Utah, no other individual legislator has had greater impact than Sen. Orrin Hatch. He has spent the entirety of his career dedicated to the citizens of Utah and this state’s business community,” said Lane Beattie, president and CEO of the Salt Lake Chamber. “We are pleased that Speaker Ryan, someone who has worked so closely with Senator Hatch to develop and enact legislation that has helped Utah and the rest of the country unlock economic growth, will be in attendance to help us honor this great statesman.”
Now in his seventh and final term as Utah’s senator, Hatch is the most-senior Republican in the Senate and the longest-serving Republican senator in United States history. Hatch became the president pro tempore of the Senate in 2015. Among his initiatives are the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, the Strengthening Our Commitment to Legal Immigration and America’s Security Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Utah School Trust Lands Exchange Act.
Hatch is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance and a member (and former chairman) of the Judiciary Committee; a member (and former chairman) of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; and a member of the Joint Committee on Taxation. He also serves on the board of directors for the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.