SEN. KENT CONRAD (D-ND)
Member
Sen. Kent Conrad was elected to the Senate in 1986. He currently serves as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. His other committee assignments include the Senate Finance Committee and on the Joint Committee on Taxation.
The fiscal commission was borne out of a proposal by Chairman Conrad and his colleague, Senate Budget Committee Ranking Republican Judd Gregg (NH). Under the Conrad-Gregg proposal the House and Senate would have been required to vote on the commission’s recommendations. In the end, Senate leadership agreed to a weaker commission created by executive order by President Obama, which would not require - Congress to vote on the commission’s recommendations.
On Jan. 28, Sen. Conrad voted against an amendment by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) that would have reflected the Conrad/ Gregg original proposal.
Sen. Conrad has long warned that country’s current fiscal path will lead to dire consequences. In May he told an audience hosted by Third Way, “[I]t is as clear as anything could be that a failure to take on this debt means a lower standard of living for the American people in the future, lower rates of economic growth, lower economic opportunity for all of our people — for all of our people.”
But while the Senator told Third Way “everything is on the table” as far as the commission is concerned, it’s notable the senator voted against an amendment to the fiscal year 2010 budget that would have restricted non-defense discretionary spending growth to one percent.
