1994 PHIL GRAMM Texas CHRISTMAS CARD US Senate SENATOR Political SAN ANTONIO TX

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PHIL GRAMM CHRISTMAS CARD
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1994 Christmas card from Phil Gramm and family.
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William Philip
"
Phil
"
Gramm
(born July 8, 1942) is an American economist and politician, who has served as a
Democratic
Congressman
(1979–1983), a
Republican
Congressman
(1983–1985) and a Republican
Senator
(1985–2002) from Texas. He later became a lobbyist for
UBS
and founded a public policy and lobbying firm, Gramm Partners.
[1]
He was a senior economic adviser to
John McCain
's presidential campaign from the summer of 2007 until July 18, 2008.
Early life and university career
[
edit
]
Gramm was born on July 8, 1942 in
Fort Benning, Georgia
, and grew up in nearby
Columbus
.
[2]
Soon after his birth, Gramm's father, Kenneth Marsh Gramm, suffered a stroke and was partially
paralyzed
.
[3]
He died when Gramm was 14. Gramm's mother, Florence (née Scroggins),
[4]
worked double shifts as a nurse to supplement the
veterans
disability
pension.
Gramm attended
public schools
, graduated in 1961 from
Georgia Military Academy
(now
Woodward Academy
), and graduated in 1964 from the
University of Georgia
.
[2]
He received a doctorate in economics from the
University of Georgia
's
Terry College of Business
in 1967
He then taught economics at
Texas A&M University
from 1967 to 1978.
[2]
In addition to teaching, Gramm founded the economic consulting firm Gramm & Associates (1971–1978).
United States House of Representatives
[
edit
]
In 1976, Gramm unsuccessfully challenged Texas Democratic Senator
Lloyd Bentsen
, in the party's senatorial primary. Then in 1978 Gramm successfully ran as a Democrat for Representative from
Texas's 6th congressional district
, which stretched from the
Fort Worth
suburbs to
College Station
. He was reelected to his House seat as a Democrat in 1980.
Gramm's voting record was very conservative, even by Texas Democratic standards of the time. During his first four terms, he tallied an average rating of 89 from the
American Conservative Union
, and from 1980 to 1982 he garnered the highest rating from that body of any Democrat in the Texas delegation.
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
In 1981, he co-sponsored the
Gramm-Latta Budget
which implemented
President
Ronald Reagan
's economic program, increased
military spending
, cut other spending, and mandated the
Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981
(the Kemp-Roth Tax Cut).
[
citation needed
]
Just days after being reelected in 1982, Gramm was thrown off the
House Budget Committee
. In response, Gramm resigned his House seat on January 5, 1983. He then ran as a Republican for his own vacancy in a
special election
held on February 12, 1983, and won rather handily. One of his many special election opponents was the second-place finisher by only 115 votes in his 1978
Democratic Party
primary, the then newly elected
State Senator
Chet Edwards
of
Waco
, and later
U.S. Representative
for the
11th
and the
17th
congressional districts of Texas (January 3, 1991 – January 3, 2011). Another special election opponent was Texas
State Representative
Dan Kubiak
of
Rockdale, Texas
. Gramm became the first Republican to represent the district since its creation in 1846.
After he left the House, the seat was retained for the Republican party by
Joe Barton
.
United States Senate
[
edit
]
In 1984, Gramm was elected as a Republican to represent Texas in the
U.S. Senate
. He defeated Congressman
Ron Paul
, former gubernatorial nominee
Henry Grover
,
Robert Mosbacher, Jr.
, of
Houston
, and several of other contenders in the
primary
. He then faced the Democratic nominee,
State Senator
Lloyd Doggett
of
Austin
in the general election for the right to succeed retiring Republican Senator
John G. Tower
. Gramm polled 3,116,348 votes (58.5 percent) to Doggett's 2,207,557 (41.5 percent). Gramm was the first U.S. Senate candidate in the history of Texas to receive more than three million votes.
[9]
Gramm served on the
Senate Budget Committee
from 1989 until leaving office in 2003. Gramm and Senators
Fritz Hollings
and
Warren Rudman
devised a means of cutting the budget through across-the-board spending cuts if
deficit
-reduction targets were not met. They were successful in making the
Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act
law, although portions were ruled
unconstitutional
. In the years following the passage of the Act, other sections were largely superseded by other budget-controlling mechanisms.
In 1990, Gramm failed in an effort to amend the
Iraq
International Law
Compliance Act of 1990. An earlier amendment to the act, the D'Amato Amendment, prohibited the US from selling arms or extending any sort of financial assistance to Iraq unless the President could prove Iraq was in "substantial compliance" with the provisions of a number of human rights conventions, including the
Genocide Convention
. After reading the D'Amato Amendment, Gramm introduced his own amendment to counter the human rights sanctions in the D'Amato Amendment. Gramm's amendment would have allowed the
George Bush administration
to waive the terms of the D'Amato Amendment if it found that sanctions against Iraq hurt US businesses and farms more than they hurt Iraq.
[10]
In the end, the bill passed the Senate without Gramm's amendment only a week before
Saddam Hussein
invaded
Kuwait
.
Gramm won his second Senate term in 1990 with a victory over Democratic
State Senator
and former Fort Worth Mayor
Hugh Parmer
. Gramm polled 3,027,680 votes (60.2 percent) to Parmer's 1,429,986 (37.4 percent), again receiving more than three million votes.
Between 1999 and 2001, Gramm was the chairman of the
U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
. During that time he spearheaded efforts to pass banking
deregulation
laws, including the landmark
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
in 1999, which removed Depression-era laws separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities.
Gramm at a campaign
Nashua, New Hampshire
in 1995
As a senator, Gramm often called for reductions in taxes and fraud in government spending. He employed his "Dickey Flatt Test" ("Is it worth taking it out of Dickey's pocket?") to determine if federal programs were worthwhile. Richard "Dickey" Flatt owns a family run printing business started by his father and mother in
Mexia
, Texas, and is a longtime Gramm supporter".
[11]
In Gramm's eyes, Flatt embodied the burdens that a typical Texas independent small businessman faced in the realm of taxation and government spending.
In spite of his self-proclaimed opposition to Federal spending, Gramm voted to have the Federal Government build the
Superconducting Super Collider
in his state, which would have cost billions of dollars of taxpayer money.
[12]
Gramm ran unsuccessfully for the Republican Party nomination in the
1996 presidential election
, for which he had raised million as early as July 1994.
[11]
Although he began the race with a full war-chest and tied for first place with Dole in the 1995
Iowa Straw Poll
, his campaign was fatally wounded when in an upset he lost the Louisiana Caucus on February 7, 1996 to
Pat Buchanan
(the final delegate count was 13–8).
New Orleans Times Picayune
political columnist Otis Pike noted the loss could be traced to the passion of the supporters for Buchanan compared to those for Gramm. "Gramm should have won the Louisiana caucuses – but didn't, because the religious right turned out to vote in larger numbers."
[13]
This poor showing in a state adjacent to Texas plus placing 5th in Iowa's caucuses resulted in Gramm's withdrawal from the contest on the Sunday before the
New Hampshire primary
. He threw his support to senatorial colleague
Robert J. Dole
of Kansas. Gramm, a proponent of
free trade
, also lashed out at Buchanan, arguing that Buchanan was a "
protectionist
".
After abandoning his presidential bid, Gramm refocused on his bid for a third Senate term. He defeated
Victor Morales
of
Dallas
in November 1996 to win what would be his final term in the Senate.
Gramm was one of five co-sponsors of the
Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000
.
[14]
One provision of the bill is often referred to as the "
Enron loophole
" because some critics blame the provision for permitting the
Enron scandal
to occur.
[15]
In 2002, Gramm left his Senate seat (effective November 30) a few weeks before the expiration of his term in hopes that his successor, fellow Republican
John Cornyn
, could gain seniority over other newly elected senators. However, Cornyn did not gain additional seniority due to a 1980
Rules Committee
policy.
[16]
2007 mortgage and 2008 financial and economic crises
[
edit
]
See also:
Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act § Controversy
Some economists state that the 1999 legislation spearheaded by Gramm and signed into law by President Clinton – the
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
— was significantly to blame for the 2007
subprime mortgage crisis
and 2008 global economic crisis.
[17]
[18]
The Act is most widely known for repealing portions of the
Glass–Steagall Act
, which had regulated the financial services industry.
[19]
The Act passed the House and Senate by an overwhelming majority on November 4, 1999.
[20]
[21]
Gramm responded in March 2008 to criticism of the act by stating that he saw "no evidence whatsoever" that the sub-prime mortgage crisis was caused in any way "by allowing banks and securities companies and insurance companies to compete against each other".
[22]
Gramm's support was later critical in the passage of the
Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000
, which kept derivatives transactions, including those involving
credit default swaps
, free of government regulation.
[23]
In its 2008 coverage of the financial crisis,
The Washington Post
named Gramm one of seven "Key Players In the Battle Over Regulating Derivatives", for having "pushed through several major bills to deregulate the banking and investment industries, including the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley act that brought down the walls separating the commercial banking, investment and insurance industries".
[24]
2008
Nobel Laureate
in Economics
Paul Krugman
, a supporter of
Barack Obama
and former President
Bill Clinton
, described Gramm during the 2008 presidential race as "the high priest of deregulation," and has listed him as the number two person responsible for the
economic crisis of 2008
behind only
Alan Greenspan
.
[25]
[26]
On October 14, 2008,
CNN
ranked Gramm number seven in its list of the 10 individuals most responsible for the current economic crisis.
[27]
In January 2009
Guardian
City editor
Julia Finch
identified Gramm as one of twenty-five people who were at the heart of the financial meltdown.
[28]
Time
included Gramm in its list of the top 25 people to blame for the economic crisis.
[29]
John McCain 2008 presidential campaign
[
edit
]
Gramm was co-chair of
John McCain
’s presidential campaign
[30]
and his most senior economic adviser
[31]
[32]
from the summer of 2007
[33]
until July 18, 2008.
[30]
In a July 9, 2008 interview on McCain's economic plans, Gramm explained the nation was not in a
recession
, stating, "You've heard of
mental depression
; this is a mental recession." He added, "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."
[34]
Gramm's comments immediately became a campaign issue. McCain's opponent, Senator
Barack Obama
, stated, "America already has one
Dr. Phil
. We don't need another one when it comes to the economy. ... This economic downturn is not in your head."
[35]
McCain strongly denounced Gramm's comments.
[36]
On July 18, 2008 Gramm stepped down from his position with the McCain campaign.
[37]
Explaining his remarks, Gramm stated that he had used the word "whiners" to describe the nation's politicians rather than the public, stating "the whiners are the leaders."
[38]
In the same interview, Gramm said, "I'm not going to retract any of it. Every word I said was true."
[39]
2016 presidential primary
[
edit
]
Gramm endorsed US Senator
Marco Rubio
in the 2016
Republican presidential primary
stating: "He's the best prepared on national security. He can win the general election."
[40]
Upon Marco Rubio's withdrawal from the race, Gramm endorsed his fellow Texan
Ted Cruz
, calling him "a fearless leader and fighter for conservatives all over the country".
Current employment
[
edit
]
As of 2009, Gramm is employed by
UBS AG
as a vice chairman of the
Investment Bank
division. UBS.com states that a vice chairman of a UBS division is "...appointed to support the business in their relationships with key clients."
[41]
He joined UBS in 2002 immediately after retiring from the Senate.
[42]
Personal
[
edit
]
Gramm lives in
Helotes
, outside
San Antonio
, Texas. He is married to Dr.
Wendy Lee Gramm
, a native of Hawaii, who is associated with
George Mason University
's
Mercatus Center
in Virginia. They are the parents of two sons: Marshall Gramm, a professor of economics at
Rhodes College
in
Memphis, Tennessee
, and Jeff Gramm, who has played in the
indie
pop band
Aden
. In 1999, after
a bonfire stack collapse
at
Texas A&M University
that resulted in 12 deaths, then-Senator Phil Gramm offered the F-16 flyover reserved for his future funeral as a US senator to be given instead to the Texas A&M community. The offer was accepted and a memorial flyover for the 12 killed was flown at a Texas A&M football game on November 26, 1999.
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