John Dingell Totally Explained

Everything about John Dingell totally explained

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's 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. 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 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 of 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 15th District, represented by fellow Democrat Lynn Rivers, who Dingell also bested in the Democratic primary. The current 15th District ((External Link

)) 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's 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 became the second-longest serving member of the House.
On December 13, 2005, Dingell was honored at the White House with a Presidential lunch for his 50th anniversary. On December 15, 2005, Rep. Dingell read on the floor of the House a poem sharply critical of, among other things, Fox News, Bill O'Reilly and the so-called "War on Christmas." (External Link

) 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. (External Link

) Dingell announced on March 26 2008 that he's running for a 28th term in the November 2008 election. If he's still serving on February 14 2009, he'll surpass Whitten's record for 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. 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." raising mandatory automobile fuel efficiency standards, which he helped to write in the 1970s. Instead he's 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 of 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 won't 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.

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)).

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