Sam Brownback has spent his life in the service of others. He was born in Parker, Kansas and raised on a farm where his mother and father still live. He was a leader in high school, in Future Farmers of America as state president, as student body president at Kansas State University and president of his class at University of Kansas Law School.
Sam served as a White House Fellow in the first Bush Administration and was the youngest Secretary of Agriculture in Kansas history. When he was 38, he was elected to the House of Representatives with the Republican Revolution in 1994. In 1996, he was elected to the U.S. Senate seat held by Bob Dole.
In the U.S. Senate, Sam serves on the Appropriations, Judiciary, and Joint Economic Committees. He is the Ranking Member on the Joint Economic Committee on the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee as well as the subcommittee responsible for the Constitution. He also serves on the Helsinki Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, co-chairs the Senate Cancer Coalition and the Human Rights Caucus, chairs the Senate Values Action Team, and is a founding member of the Senate Fiscal Watch Team.
Sam has earned a well-deserved reputation for expertise and genuine concern in a wide range of issue areas. His priority is growing the Kansas economy and creating jobs. He strongly supports funding for aviation research and expanding global aviation markets and promotes efforts to strengthen military and veteran services and facilities in Kansas. Sam is actively engaged in re-opening the U.S. beef trade in Asia and increasing markets for Kansas agriculture products while encouraging measures to protect American farmers and food supplies. Sam also focuses on promoting new energy sources and bio-technologies, and working to revitalize our rural heartland with tax incentives and job creation.
Sam is pushing for meaningful tax reform and an optional flat tax, a BRAC-like commission to review and terminate failed or completed federal programs, and to build market and consumer based solutions to health care reform. He feels passionately that we must defend and promote traditional marriage, confirm judges who will interpret the law and not legislate from the bench, protect and renew our American culture, and to defend human life at every stage of development everywhere in the world. He is actively engaged in stopping genocide in Darfur, incentivizing drug companies to find cures to neglected diseases throughout the world, and spreading democracy and human rights around the world, especially in Iran, North Korea and China.
His colleagues say he is one of the most sincere people in Congress, and even those who don't agree with him never doubt his conviction and appreciate the respectful way he debates even the most contentious of issues.
The Economist called Sam "The Wilberforce Republican," and the New York Times declared that he is "one of the most conservative, religious, fascinating — and, in many ways, admirable — politicians in America today." The Weekly Standard said Sam is "Mr. Compassionate Conservative," and the American Spectator called him, "a model of modern American conservatism."
Over the years, Sam has been a radio broadcaster, attorney, teacher, administrator, congressman and senator. Senator Brownback and his wife Mary have five children and live in Topeka, Kansas.
2007 Stephen Smith Images
From Left: Abby, Andy, Elizabeth, Mark, Sam, Jenna, Mary Brownback |