Patrick Leahy of Middlesex was elected to the United States Senate in
1974 and remains the only Democrat elected to this office from Vermont.
At 34, he was the youngest U.S. Senator ever to be elected from the
Green Mountain State. Leahy was born in Montpelier and grew up across
from the Statehouse. A graduate of Saint Michael's College in
Colchester (1961), he received his Juris Doctor from Georgetown
University Law Center (1964). He served for eight years as State's
Attorney in Chittenden County. He gained a national reputation for his
law enforcement activities and was selected (1974) as one of three
outstanding prosecutors in the United States. Leahy is the Chairman of
the Senate Judiciary Committee and is a senior member of the
Agriculture
and Appropriations
Committees. He ranks fourth in seniority in the
Senate.
As a leading member of the Appropriations Committee, Leahy is the
Chairman of the Committee's Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations
and also sits on its Defense, Interior, Commerce-Justice-Science,
Transportation-Treasury-Judiciary-Housing and Urban Development, and
Homeland Security subcommittees.
Active on human rights issues, Leahy also has been the leading U.S.
officeholder in the international campaign against the production,
export and use of
anti-personnel landmines. In 1992 Leahy wrote the
first law by any government to ban the export of these weapons. He led
efforts in Congress to aid mine victims by creating a special fund in
the foreign aid budget, and the
Leahy War Victims Fund now provides up
to $14 million of relief to these victims each year. He was
instrumental in establishing programs to support humanitarian demining
and played a key role in pushing for an international treaty banning
anti-personnel mines. He also wrote and enacted civilian war victims
relief programs that are underway in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11,
Leahy headed the Senate's negotiations on the 2001 anti-terrorism bill,
the USA PATRIOT Act. He added checks and balances to the bill to
protect civil liberties, as well as provisions which he authored to
triple staffing along the U.S.-Canada border, to authorize domestic
preparedness grants to states, and to facilitate the hiring of new FBI
translators.
Leahy’s Judiciary Committee investigation into the mass firings of
U.S.
Attorneys and of White House attempts to exert political influence
over the Justice Department led in 2008 to the resignation of Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales and the Department’s entire top rank of
political appointees.
Leahy is the chief sponsor of the
Innocence Protection Act, which
addresses flaws in the administration of capital punishment. Parts of
Leahy's death penalty reform package, which were enacted in 2004, will
reduce the risks that innocent people are executed by providing for
post-conviction DNA testing and better access to competent legal
counsel.
A leader on Internet and technology issues, Leahy was one of the first
members of Congress to go online and in 1995 was the second senator to
post a homepage. His website consistently has been judged one of the
Senate's best and a leading Internet magazine called Leahy the most
"Net-friendly" member of Congress. He has been the Senate's leading
champion of open government and of the
Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA)
and in 1996 was installed in the FOIA Hall of Fame in recognition of his
efforts. He is one of only two politicians ever awarded the John Peter
Zenger Press Freedom Award.
Leahy has crusaded for the protection of
privacy rights, copyright
protections and freedom of speech on the Internet. He was a co-founder
and remains a co-chair of the Congressional Internet Caucus. Leahy has taken the lead on several
important privacy issues, including
drafting legislation to address data privacy and security and leading
the effort to enact privacy safeguards for electronic health records.
Always ranked among the
top environmental legislators by the nation's
foremost conservation organizations, Leahy successfully opposed attempts
to allow oil and gas exploration in wildlife refuges in the United
States, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and the Missisquoi Wildlife Refuge in Vermont. Leahy has also helped secure
more than $70 million in federal funds to clean up Lake Champlain and
has spearheaded congressional efforts to tackle the dangers of
mercury
pollution. He has worked to add more than 125,000 acres to the Green
Mountain National Forest, an accomplishment matched by few lawmakers of
any era.
Leahy
has led bipartisan efforts to streamline the Department of
Agriculture, and the 1994 Leahy-Lugar bill reorganized the U.S.
Department of Agriculture by closing 1100 offices and saving more than
$2 billion. Leahy also led the successful effort to extend the
Conservation Reserve Program, which assists farmers in meeting
environmental objectives without reducing income. Leahy's Farms for the
Future program -- now the Farmland Protection Program, which was created
in the 1990 Farm Bill -- has helped preserve more than 350 Vermont
farms. He played a crucial role in enactment and implementation of the
Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact and also worked with others in the
Vermont Congressional Delegation in establishing the Milk Income Loss
Compensation (MILC) program, modeled on the Compact. Leahy also is the
father of the national organic standards and labeling program, which
took effect in October 2002.
Leahy co-chairs the Senate National Guard Caucus and has led in ensuring
that members of the
National Guard
in Vermont and across the nation
receive the necessary resources to fulfill their heightened missions
after 9/11. In 2003 the National Guard Association presented Leahy with
its highest individual honor, the Harry S. Truman Award, for his
"sustained contributions of exceptional and far-reaching magnitude to
the defense and security of the United States in a manner worthy of
recognition at the national level."
Patrick Leahy has been married to Marcelle Pomerleau Leahy since 1962. They have a daughter, two sons, two daughters-in-law, a
son-in-law, and five grandchildren. The Leahys live on a tree farm in
Middlesex, Vermont.
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