Senator Dick Durbin
Senator Dick Durbin was elected by his fellow Democratic senators in December 2006 to the post of Assistant Majority Leader, also known as Majority Whip. It is the Senate's second highest ranking position. In 2004, Durbin was elected as Minority Whip. Durbin's election to leadership marked only the fifth time in history that an Illinois senator has served as a Senate leader.
Durbin, a Democrat from Springfield, is the 47th U.S. Senator from the State of Illinois and the first Illinois senator to serve on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee in more than a quarter of a century. He is the state's senior senator and convenor of the bipartisan Illinois delegation.
Elected to the U.S. Senate on November 5, 1996 and re-elected in 2002, Durbin fills the seat left vacant by the retirement of his long-time friend and mentor, U.S. Senator Paul Simon.
In 2001, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) appointed Durbin to the Senate's leadership team, Assistant Democratic Floor Leader. In 2000, Durbin served as Co-Chairman of the Democratic Platform Committee and also was Co-Chairman of the Atlantic Conference sponsored by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. He is a founding member of the Senate Global AIDS Caucus.
Senator Durbin is chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. Among the agencies the subcommittee oversees: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission; and the Food and Drug Administration. Like the agencies that were supposed to regulate Wall Street, these agencies have also been hobbled under the Bush Administration by deep budget and staff cuts and an ideological aversion to regulation. Senator Durbin has been working to increase their funding and authority.
As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Durbin authored a bill earlier this year to give bankruptcy judges the ability to renegotiate excessive subprime mortgages in bankruptcy court. The bill, the Helping Families Save Their Home in Bankruptcy Act, could have prevented up to 2 million foreclosures and helped stop the mortgage crisis before it became a full-blown credit crisis – at no cost to American taxpayers. It was opposed by the White House and Congressional Republicans.
Senator Durbin is the sponsor of:
The Protecting Consumers from Unreasonable Credit Rates Act – to eliminate the excessive rates some consumers pay for payday loans, car title loans and other types of predatory lending;
The National Guard and Reservists Debt Relief Act – to aid National Guard and Reserve members who are struggling financially receive bankruptcy assistance upon returning from an overseas deployment;
The Increasing Transparency and Accountability in Oil Prices Act – to curb the effects speculation in oil markets plays on the cost of gasoline;
