Ben Sasse is a fifth-generation Nebraskan with the honor of representing the Cornhusker state in the U.S. Senate. Having never run for anything before, he and his family campaigned tirelessly in a rickety old campaign bus in 2013 and 2014, ultimately winning all of Nebraska's 93 counties in one of the biggest landslides in state history.
Like many Nebraskans, Ben learned about hard work in corn and bean fields at an early age. The son of a coach and a graduate of Fremont High, he was recruited to wrestle at Harvard and subsequently earned a PhD in American history at Yale. An occasional professor, Ben has spent most of his worklife helping companies and institutions through technological and leadership disruptions. He’s worked with the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey and Company, as well as private equity firms and not-for-profit organizations, to tackle failing strategies across dozens of sectors and nations.
Before being elected to the Senate, Ben spent five years as a college president. When he was recruited to lead Midland University, Ben was just 37, making him one of the youngest college presidents in the nation. The 130-year-old Lutheran college in Ben’s hometown was on the verge of bankruptcy when he arrived, but became one of the nation's fastest-growing schools just three years later.
A member of the intelligence, judiciary, finance, and banking committees, Ben is focused on the future of work, the future of war, and the First Amendment. He worries that the Senate lacks urgency about cyber and about the nation’s generational debt crisis. An opponent of perpetual incumbency, he has no intention of spending his life in the Senate.
Ben has written two books – one about the evaporating distinction between adolescence and perpetual adolescence in economies with limited work for teenagers, and the other about the paradox of loneliness and collapsing local community precisely as the digital revolution makes middle-class Americans the richest people in human history. Both books quickly became national best-sellers.
Ben and his wife, Melissa, have three kids – Corrie, Alex, and Breck, any one of whom can often be spotted accompanying their dad on their weekly commute from Nebraska to Capitol Hill. In their spare time, the Sasse kids seek to break their parents via more unauthorized pet adoptions.
Committee Assignments
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The Senate Finance Committee (formerly the Select Committee on Finance and Uniform National Currency) has jurisdiction over trade, tax, and health care policy. The committee also is tasked with oversight and reform of federal entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
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Established in 1816 as one of the original standing committees in the United States Senate, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary's broad legislative jurisdiction has assured its primary role as a forum for the public discussion of social and constitutional issues. The Committee is also responsible for oversight of key activities of the executive branch, and is responsible for the initial stages of the confirmation process of all judicial nominations for the federal judiciary.
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The Committee was created by the Senate in 1976 to “oversee and make continuing studies of the intelligence activities and programs of the United States Government,” to “submit to the Senate appropriate proposals for legislation and report to the Senate concerning such intelligence activities and programs,” and to “provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States.”
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The United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (formerly the Committee on Banking and Currency) has jurisdiction over matters related to banks and banking, price controls, deposit insurance, export promotion and controls, federal monetary policy, financial aid to commerce and industry, issuance of redemption of notes, currency and coinage, public and private housing, urban development and mass transit, and government contracts.
- Official Portrait - Senator Ben Sasse.jpg (1.1 MBs)