Senate Report Card: Dick Durbin D-IL

Senator Dick Durbin is the senior Democratic United States Senator from the state of Illinois. Senator Durbin assumed office in 1997 and has since become Majority Whip of the Senate, placing him in the second highest position in the Democratic Party in the Senate.

Senator Durbin serves on the Rules and Administration, Judiciary and Appropriations Committees.

Durbin led bipartisan efforts to increase funding for the global fight against AIDS, including massive funding for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria which matches funds from other nations. His efforts paid off in Congressional adoption of a series of amendments increasing U.S. funding for global AIDS efforts by more than $1.2 billion beyond the amounts proposed by President Bush.

He has promoted efforts to fight for food safety, he offered legislation enacted to increase cafeteria inspections and improve school cafeteria food safety planning. He stopped the Bush Administration from ending Salmonella testing of meat in school lunches. He also provided legislation that established stronger egg safety requirements to reduce the risk of Salmonella contamination of eggs. He passed a law requiring that imported meat and poultry meet the same standards as their U.S. versions.

Durbin is considered reliably liberal by most. He is a strong supporter of asbestos regulation, and environmental protection. He voted against oil drilling the the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He has sought to block conservative judicial nominations. He fought against closures of Illinois military bases in the Base Realignment and Cloture Act.

Durbin campaigned to maintain a $0.54 per gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Durbin justified the tariff believing that importing ethanol is neither necessary or a solution to gas prices. He believes that domestic ethanol production is sufficient and expanding and that the United States should support their own suppliers of ethanol.

Senator Durbin is proud of the fact that he voted against the Iraq War Resolution. He has since joined efforts in seeking a withdraw from Iraq, and is in favor of timetables for the war as he views it as a dangerous quagmire. He led the fight to pass the first requirement that the Administration provide Congress with meaningful assessments of the progress in training Iraqi security forces. He is seeking the possibility for the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq. He opposed President Bush's surge plan to escalate the number of troops in Iraq.

Durbin drew criticism when on the U.S. Senate floor he compared interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay, as reported by the FBI, with those utilized by such regimes as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Senator Dick Durbin is up for reelection in the state of Illinois in 2008.