Barbara Boxer for U.S. Senate

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As chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW), a member of Senate Leadership and a forceful advocate for her home state of California, Barbara Boxer is one of the foremost leaders of progressive politics in the nation today.  

Following her belief that healthy kids require a healthy planet, Senator Boxer has used her position leading the EPW committee to fight for clean air and water.  She turned the committee’s spotlight onto global warming through a series of groundbreaking hearings, ending years of inaction on the single biggest environmental challenge facing the world today.  She is fighting for legislation to make the United States the world’s leader in carbon reduction.  

Senator Boxer has won numerous awards for her efforts to create a cleaner, healthier environment. She authored the amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act to ensure that drinking water standards are set to protect children and other vulnerable populations. She has been a leader in the fight to remove arsenic from drinking water, block oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and along California’s coast, and revitalize the Superfund by making polluters – not taxpayers – pay to clean up the toxic waste they leave behind.

The Senate’s leading defender of a woman’s right to choose, Senator Boxer authored the Freedom of Choice Act of 2004 and helped lead the floor fight for passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. She is now leading efforts to stop extremists in Congress from weakening a woman’s Constitutional right to choose.

Senator Boxer wrote the law creating the first authorization for federal funding for local afterschool programs. With her leadership, support for afterschool has risen dramatically. The first federal appropriation for afterschool programs was in fiscal year 1995 – for $750,000. Over the next eight years, funding increased to reach $1 billion per year, covering 1.4 million children.

A strong proponent of medical research to find cures for diseases, Senator Boxer is part of a coalition to expand our nation’s research capacity. She was among the first in Congress to recognize HMO abuses.  She authored a Patients’ Bill of Rights in 1997 and continues to fight for these much-needed protections and for affordable health care. She wrote legislation to make health insurance tax deductible and to let Americans buy into the same health insurance program that members of Congress have. She supports comprehensive prescription drug coverage through Medicare and the right of all consumers to purchase lower-cost prescription drugs reimported from Canada.

Senator Boxer has worked to preserve the safety net for older Americans by strengthening Social Security and Medicare. She introduced the 401(k) Pension Protection Act to protect workers’ retirement nest eggs by requiring the diversification of 401(k) plans; a modified version of her bill was signed into law as part of the 1997 tax bill.

Senator Boxer joined colleagues to pass the 1994 Crime Bill, which banned assault weapons and established the COPS program, helping local law enforcement reduce crime to its lowest rate in 25 years. She supports reauthorization of both programs. She strongly supports a ban on cop-killer bullets and authored legislation to require child safety locks on guns. Her bill to prevent the criminal use of personal information obtained through motor vehicle records was signed into law and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. She also authored the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) while serving in the House and helped steer it through the Senate; it too is now law. She has authored the Violence Against Children Act, based on the successful VAWA.

In response to the September 11th attacks, Senator Boxer authored a bill to protect commercial airliners against attacks by shoulder-fired missiles, and she wrote the law allowing airline pilots with special training to carry guns in the cockpit. She wrote the law to ensure that air marshals would be on board high-risk flights, and she continues to press for implementation of this measure to make the skies as secure as they can be. She has also authored legislation on port security, rail security, and providing assistance to first responders.

Senator Boxer serves on the Senate Committees on Commerce, Foreign Relations, and Environment and Public Works, is the Democratic Chief Deputy Whip, and serves on the Democratic Policy Committee's Committee on Oversight and Investigations.  She became a United States Senator in January 1993 after 10 years of service in the House of Representatives. Elected to a third term in 2004, she received more than 6.9 million votes, the highest total for any Senate candidate in American history.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Throughout her career, Barbara Boxer has been a progressive champion and a strong voice for policies that will move our country forward. She stood up against the right-wing policies of the Bush Administration from the beginning. She has fought long and hard to promote progressive solutions — even when she was a lonely voice against the conventional wisdom.

• Against the War in Iraq: From the outset, Senator Boxer was a vocal opponent and critic of the use of force in Iraq. She cast her vote against the war in 2002, repeatedly criticized the Bush Administration's go-it-alone/pay-it-alone strategy, and supported numerous efforts in Congress to force a redeployment of American troops out of Iraq. She authored amendments in the Senate to end the no-bid contracts given to Halliburton and to require the Pentagon to regularly report on the cost of military operations in Iraq.
• No Confidence in Gonzales: Senator Boxer cosponsored the resolution in the Senate to express a vote of no confidence in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
• Opposed Radical Bush Appointments: Senator Boxer opposed the nomination of Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State and John Bolton to be Ambassador to the United Nations. She was the first Senator to oppose the nomination of John Ashcroft to be Attorney General. She also opposed the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General and Gale Norton to be Secretary of the Interior.
• Fought Extremist Judicial Nominations: Senator Boxer fought numerous attempts by President Bush to stack the federal courts with right-wing extremists. She voted against John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. She strongly opposed the nominations of Priscilla Owen, Leslie Southwick and Carolyn Kuhl.
• Ensuring Fair Elections: Following the allegations of vote tampering and voter suppression in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election, Senator Boxer was the lone Senator to challenge the certification of Ohio's electoral votes. To ensure that every vote counts, Senator Boxer introduced legislation to require that electronic voting systems provide a paper record so that voters can verify their votes before they are counted.
• Stopping Media Monopolies: As a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, Senator Boxer was a leading critic of attempts by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to ease restrictions on media ownership that would lead to even greater media consolidation – and a lessening of diverse voices and viewpoints on the public airwaves.
• Strengthening Civil Rights: Senator Boxer cosponsored and strongly supported the Civil Rights Act of 2008 to strengthen the nation's civil rights statutes by, among other things, making it easier to show that an employer's policies have had a discriminatory impact on minorities.
• Protecting Women's Right to Choose: Senator Boxer is recognized as the Senate's leading advocate for protecting a woman's right to choose. She led the Senate opposition to the global gag rule and to the bill banning a late-term abortion procedure that is sometimes needed to protect the lives of women.
• Regulating the U.S. Banking Industry: Senator Boxer was one of only eight Senators who voted against the Gramm-Leach-Bliley law that deregulated the banking industry and, according to many economists, led to the banking crisis facing America today.
• Protecting Health and the Environment: Senator Boxer fought the Bush Administration attempts to roll back environmental laws that protect the health of the American people. She led the successful fight against the Bush Administration's plan to weaken the arsenic standard for drinking water. She successfully shamed the Bush Administration into backing down from its proposal to eliminate funding to test poor children for lead poisoning. She forced the cancellation of an EPA-funded study to expose children to pesticides.
• Expanding Wilderness Protection: To protect 2.5 million acres of wild public lands, Senator Boxer introduced the California Wild Heritage Wilderness Act. Parts of her bill have been signed into law and 1 million acres are now permanently protected from new logging, mining, and drilling while remaining open to recreational activities.
• Securing Civil Liberties: During the Bush Administration, Senator Boxer worked hard to protect our civil liberties. As one example, she wrote legislation to repeal provisions of the USA Patriot Act to protect library and bookstore records from unwarranted searches. She was an outspoken critic of the Bush Administration warrantless surveillance program. 
• Demanding Fair Trade: Senator Boxer voted against NAFTA and has opposed the so-called "Fast Track" process that allows the President to enter into trade agreements with foreign countries without full and complete oversight by the United States Senate. 
• Giving Employee the Right to Choose: Senator Boxer is a strong supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers, not employers, to choose the method of organizing a union. 
• Increasing the Minimum Wage: For 10 years, Senator Boxer was a leader in the effort to increase the federal minimum wage to reduce the wage stagnation that was affecting 13 million American workers.