John Dingell

For other people named John David Dingell, see John David Dingell (disambiguation).

John Dingell
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan's 15th district
Incumbent
Assumed office December 13, 1955
Preceded by	John D. Dingell, Sr.
Personal details
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Deborah Dingell
Residence	Dearborn, Michigan
Alma mater	Georgetown University
Occupation	attorney
Website	The Honorable John D. Dingell
Military service
Branch/service	United States Army
Years of service	1944-1946

Rep. Dingell with President Kennedy

Dingell sworn in by Speaker Rayburn in 1955

John David Dingell, Jr. (born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, July 8, 1926) is a Democratic United States Representative from Michigan and is currently the Dean (longest currently serving member) of the House of Representatives. He is the 2nd longest serving Representative ever and the 4th longest serving Congressman ever. Since 1955, he has represented a district that was first in western Detroit but has successively moved further into that city's western suburbs, currently Michigan's 15th congressional district.

With the Democrats' victory in the 2006 midterm elections, Dingell again became chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a panel he previously chaired from 1981 to 1995. According to the 2008 Congress.org Power Ranking, Dingell is the 4th most powerful congressman, preceded only by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, all fellow Democrats.

He is known by the friendly nickname, "Big John."

Biography

Congressional career

Dingell is of Polish and Scots-Irish descent. His father, John D. Dingell, Sr. (1894–1955), represented the 15th district from 1933 to 1955. He is married to Deborah Insley Dingell.

In Washington, D.C., John, Jr. attended Georgetown Preparatory School and then the House Page School when he served as a page for the U.S. House of Representatives from 1938 to 1943. In 1944, at the age of 18, Dingell joined the United States Army. He rose to the rank of Second Lieutenant and received orders to take part in the first wave of a planned invasion of Japan in November 1945; the Congressman has said President Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb to end the war saved his life.

He then attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he graduated in law in 1952. He was a lawyer in private practice, a research assistant to U.S. Circuit Court judge Theodore Levin, a Congressional employee, a forest ranger, and assistant prosecuting attorney for Wayne County until 1955, when John, Sr. died and John, Jr. won a special election to succeed him.

He won a full term in 1956 and has been reelected 26 times, including a run in 2006 with no major opponent. Between them, he and his father have represented the southeastern Michigan area for 74 years.

His district was numbered as the 15th District from 1955 to 1965, when redistricting merged it into the Dearborn-based 16th District; in the primary that year, he defeated 16th District incumbent John Lesinski, Jr.

In 2002, redistricting merged Dingell's 16th District with the Washtenaw County and western Wayne County-based 13th District, represented by fellow Democrat Lynn Rivers, who Dingell also bested in the Democratic primary. The current 15th District ([1]) includes Wayne County suburbs generally southwest of Detroit, the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti areas in Washtenaw County, and all of Monroe County. For many years, Dingell represented much of western Detroit itself, though Detroit's declining population and the growth of its suburbs has pushed all of Detroit into the districts of fellow Democrats John Conyers and Carolyn Kilpatrick.

Dingell has always won reelection by double-digit margins, although the increasing conservatism of the white suburbs of Detroit since the 1970s led to several serious Republican challenges in the 1990s. However, he has won his last two elections with over 70 percent of the vote. With the retirement of Jamie L. Whitten at the start of a new Congress in January 1995, he became the Dean of the United States House of Representatives. He is one of three people to serve in the House for 50 years, the others being Whitten and Carl Vinson. On Valentine's Day, 2006, Dingell surpassed Vinson to become the second-longest serving member of the House in history.

On December 13, 2005, Dingell was honored at the White House with a Presidential lunch for his 50th anniversary.

On December 15, 2005, on the floor of the House, Rep. Dingell read a poem which was sharply critical of, among other things, Fox News, Bill O'Reilly and the so-called "War on Christmas." [2]

Along with John Conyers, in April 2006 Dingell brought an action against George W. Bush and others alleging violations of the Constitution in the passing of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. The case (Conyers v. Bush) was ultimately dismissed. [3]

Dingell announced on March 26, 2008 that he would run for a 28th term in the November 2008 election. If Dingell is still serving on February 14, 2009, he will surpass Whitten's record for longest tenure in the House.

Energy and Commerce chairman

During his first stint as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Dingell was regarded by analysts as one of the four or five most powerful members of the House.

Dingell is well known, and often feared, for his vigorous approach to oversight. Rumor has it he hung a portrait of the Earth near his committee's hearing room, and pointed to it when asked about his committee's jurisdiction. He subpoenaed numerous high government officials to testify before the committee and grilled them for hours. He insisted that anyone testifying before his committee do so under oath, thus exposing them to perjury charges if they didn't tell the truth. His committee uncovered numerous instances of corruption and waste, such as the use of $600 toilet seats at the Pentagon. He also takes credit for forcing the resignations of many Environmental Protection Agency officials, and sending many Food and Drug Administration officials to jail.

After serving as the committee's ranking Democrat for 12 years, Dingell regained the chairmanship in 2007. He told Newsweek that he wants to investigate the Bush Administration's handling of port security, the Medicare prescription drug program and Dick Cheney's energy task force. Dingell told Time magazine that he intends to oversee legislation that addresses global warming and climate change caused by carbon emissions from automobiles, energy companies and industry (citation: June 2007 issue, Time magazine).

Committee Assignments

• Committee on Energy and Commerce (Chairman)
  • Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection (Ex Officio)
  • Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality (Ex Officio)
  • Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials (Ex Officio)
  • Subcommittee on Health (Ex Officio)
  • Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (Ex Officio)
  • Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet (Ex Officio)
• Board of Trustees for the Nature Conservancy of Michigan

Political views

Dingell is generally classed as a liberal Democrat, and throughout his career he has been a leading congressional supporter of organized labor, of social welfare measures and of traditional progressive policies. At the beginning of every Congress, Dingell introduces a bill providing for a national health insurance system, the same bill that his father proposed while he was in Congress. However, he was a strong proponent of Bill Clinton's managed-care proposal early in his administration.

Rep. Dingell & Rep. Rahm Emanuel sharing pączki

On some issues, though, he reflects the conservative values of his largely Catholic and working-class district. He was a supporter of the Vietnam War until 1971. Although he supported the Johnson Administration's civil rights bills, he opposed campaigns to expand school desegregation to the Detroit suburbs via mandatory busing. He takes a moderately liberal position on abortion. He has worked to balance clean air legislation with the need to protect manufacturing jobs.

An avid sportsman and hunter, he strongly opposes gun control, and is a former board member of the National Rifle Association. For many years, Dingell has received an A+ rating from the NRA.

The political analyst Michael Barone wrote of Dingell in 2002:

"There is something grand about the range of Dingell's experience and about his adherence to his philosophy over a very long career. He is an old-fashioned social Democrat who knows that most voters don't agree with his goals of a single-payer national health insurance plan but presses forward toward that goal as far as he can. 'It's hard to believe that there was once no Social Security or Medicare', he says. 'The Dingell family helped change that. My father worked on Social Security and for national health insurance, and I sat in the chair and presided over the House as Medicare passed (in 1965). I went with Lyndon Johnson for the signing of Medicare at the Harry S. Truman Library, and I have successfully fought efforts to privatize Social Security and Medicare'. Whether you agree or disagree, the social democratic tradition is one of the great traditions in our history, and John Dingell has fought for it for a very long time."

Environment

For his conduct regarding environmental issues during the 109th Congress the nonpartisan watchdog group League of Conservation Voters has awarded Dingell its highest rating, 100%. According to the LCV, Dingell voted "pro-environment" on twelve out of twelve issues the group deemed critical; they also praised him for introducing, with representatives James Oberstar and Jim Leach, an amendment compelling the EPA to rescind a directive issued in 2003 by the Bush Administration "requiring EPA staff to get permission from headquarters before protecting 'isolated' water bodies like vernal pools, prairie potholes, playa lakes and bogs," which provide "critical wildlife habitat, store flood water, and protect drinking water supplies." Dingell is also a member of the Congressional Wildlife Refuge Caucus.

Dingell has opposed raising mandatory automobile fuel efficiency standards, which he helped to write in the 1970s. Instead he has indicated that he intends to pursue a regulatory structure that takes greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption into account.. In a July, 2007 interview with thehill.com, he said “I have made it very plain that I intend to see to it that CAFE is increased” and went on to point out that his plan would have CAFE increases tantamount to those in the Senate bill recently passed. In November 2007, working with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Dingell helped draft an energy bill that would regulate a 40% increase in fuel efficiency standards.

In July 2007, Dingell indicated he planned to introduce a new a tax on carbon usage in order to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. The policy has been criticized by some, as polling numbers show voters may be unwilling to pay for the changes. It has also been claimed that vehicle emissions standards that he supports will not yield any substantial greenhouse gas emissions savings..

Private sector ties

Dingell has drawn criticism for his ties to the automotive industry. The three largest contributors to his campaign for the 2006 election cycle are political action committees, employees, or other affiliates of General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and DaimlerChrysler; since 1989, intermediaries for these corporations have contributed more than $US 600,000 to his campaign. Dingell also holds an unknown quantity, more than $US 1 million, in assets through General Motors stock options and savings-stock purchase programs; his spouse, Debbie Dingell, worked as a lobbyist for the corporation until they married, whereupon she moved to an administrative position there. At present Ms. Dingell is a senior executive at General Motors and vice chair of the General Motors Foundation.

Investigations of alleged scientific fraud

The Baltimore case

In the 1980s Dingell led a series of congressional hearings to pursue alleged scientific fraud by Thereza Imanishi-Kari and Nobel Prize-winner David Baltimore. Although the scientists were later exonerated, the hearings and negative publicity surrounding them forced David Baltimore to resign as president of Rockefeller University and caused Imanishi-Kari to lose a tenure-track position.

The story of the case is described in Daniel Kevles' book The Baltimore Case and the book "The Great Betrayal : Fraud in Science" by Horace Freeland Judson For a different perspective, see Lang's study (updated and reprinted in his book, "Challenges" (New York: Springer-Verlag; 1997)).

Robert Gallo and the controversy on who discovered the AIDS virus

In 1991-1995 Dingell's staff investigated claims that Robert Gallo had falsified claims to be the discoverer of the AIDS virus. They concluded Gallo had indeed engaged in fraud and the NIH covered up misappropriation of work by the French team of Luc Montagnier at the Institut Pasteur. The report was never formally published as a sub-committee report due to the 1995 change in control of the House from Democrats to Republicans.

External links

• The Honorable John D. Dingell, official U.S. House site
• John D. Dingell for U.S. Congress, official campaign site

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
• Profile at Vote Smart
• SourceWatch Congresspedia — John Dingell profile
• Michigan Democratic Party
• Michigan Liberal's 15th Congressional District section
• Dingell's account of his civil rights record

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