Gene Taylor

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Gene Taylor

Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Mississippi's 4th district
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 1989–
Preceded by	Ronnie Shows
Succeeded by	Incumbent

Born	September 17, 1953 (age 53) New Orleans, Louisiana
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Margaret Taylor
Religion	Roman Catholic

Gary Eugene "Gene" Taylor (born September 17, 1953) is an American politician of the Democratic Party and a U.S. Representative from the 4th District of Mississippi (map). Taylor was born in New Orleans. He is a graduate of Tulane University and also earned additional post-graduate work at University of Southern Mississippi, Gulf Park Campus. From 1971 through 1984, he was a member of the United States Coast Guard Reserve, commanding a search and rescue boat and earning several commendations. Taylor is a devout Roman Catholic, one of the few who has been elected in the predominantly Southern Baptist state of Mississippi.

1 Political life
2 Congressional positions
3 Hurricane Katrina
4 Quotes
5 External links

[edit] Political life

Taylor worked as a sales representative for Stone Container Corporation, working a territory from New Orleans to the Florida panhandle. He was elected to the Bay St. Louis City Council in 1981, and then to a vacant seat in the Mississippi State Senate in 1983. As a State Senator, Taylor and fellow Senator Steven Hale filed a lawsuit challenging the Senate powers of Democratic Lt. Governor Brad Dye. Taylor and Hale claimed that the Lt. Governor's control of committee appointments violated the state constitution's separation of powers. The Supreme Court of Mississippi sided with Dye, but the suit against a powerful leader from his own party helped establish Taylor's reputation of independence.

After only one term, he ran as the Democratic candidate to succeed Trent Lott in Mississippi's 5th District when Lott made a successful run for the Senate. He lost to Harrison County sheriff Larkin I. Smith by almost 10 points. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee offered very little help to Taylor, believing the district to be too heavily Republican. George H. W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis by approximately a 70 to 30 margin in the district, and Trent Lott beat Wayne Dowdy by a similar margin in the Senate race. Although about 30,000 Bush and Lott voters split their tickets to vote for Taylor, he could not overcome the Republican tide in Mississippi's 5th District.

However, Smith died in a plane crash eight months later. In the special election to fill Smith's seat, Taylor picked up 42 percent of the vote to lead Republican Tom Anderson and Democrat Mike Moore in the first round. Some Democratic Party leaders had tried to convince Taylor to stand aside in deference to Moore, the state's Attorney General, but Taylor doubled Moore's vote total. Two weeks later, Taylor beat Anderson, Lott's Chief of Staff, with 65 percent of the vote. Taylor took office on October 24, 1989. He won a full term in 1990 with 81 percent of the vote. He beat well-funded Republican challengers in 1992 and 1996, and has had little trouble in subsequent elections despite representing a district that has not supported the official Democratic presidential candidate since 1956. His district was renumbered the 4th after the 2000 redistricting cost Mississippi a congressional seat.

[edit] Congressional positions

Taylor has become a leading Democratic Member of the House Armed Services Committee. He led committee and floor fights to improve the medical care benefits of military retirees, and to extend TRICARE health insurance to members of the National Guard and Reserves. Taylor also has focused on U.S. policy in Latin America. He sponsored the successful cap on the number of U.S. troops that can be sent to Colombia without explicit Congressional authorization. Taylor also was a leading critic of the Base Realignment and Closure process, accusing the Department of Defense of smuggling in policy changes that were unrelated to excess capacity or facilities. Taylor served as the Ranking Democrat on the Projection Forces Subcommittee in the 109th Congress, and became chairman of the renamed Subcommittee on Seapower and Expeditionary Forces in the 110th Congress. He and the previous subcommittee chairman Roscoe Bartlett R-MD, who is now the ranking member of the subcommittee, advocate for more nuclear-powered surface ships in order to reduce the Navy's dependence on imported oil. Taylor is also a member of the Readiness subcommittee of the Armed Services committee in the 110th Congress. [1] Taylor has been a staunch advocate of maintaining the "Buy American" requirements in Defense contracting, and of maintaining the Jones Act requirements that vessels operating between U.S. ports must be American-flagged, American-made, owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed by U.S. citizens. In February 2007, he was one of two Democrats to oppose H CON RES 63 which expressed opposition to a troop surge in the Iraq War. [2]

Taylor is one of the most conservative Democrats in the House. In 2004 he voted with the Republican leadership 54.2 percent of the time [3]. He voted for all four articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton, making him the only Democrat to do so, and has frequently skipped Democratic conventions. He is pro-life, a supporter of the Federal Marriage Amendment and a firm supporter of the right to bear arms. He had refused to vote for Nancy Pelosi for party leader in the initial congressional calls until the party regained power in 2006, instead casting a protest vote for the more moderate Jack Murtha. Taylor is a strong opponent of affirmative action and opposes some anti-discrimination laws. In 2006, Taylor was the only Democrat in the House to vote in favor of all amendments to the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act. He did however vote with every Democrat in favor of the final bill. He strongly supports the death penalty and is more conservative on issues of immigration, crime, and drugs than many Republicans. He is among the House's strongest supporters of drug testing for all federal employees and has submitted amendments to that effect. He has voted in favor of lawsuit reform and tightening rules on personal bankruptcy. Throughout most of his career, Taylor has voted against many bills and amendments supported by labor unions. For instance in 2002, he was one of only five Democrats to vote against an amendment submitted by liberal Connie Morella (R-MD) to secure workplace rights for employees in the Department of Homeland Security. He has sided with labor, however, in opposition to trade agreements that he believes are responsible for a decline in U.S. manufacturing, and in support of increasing the minimum wage. Congressman Taylor also supported amending the U.S. Constitution to require a balanced budget and another amendment requiring a two-thirds majority to raise taxes.

Despite his conservative leanings, Taylor surprised many when he voted in favor of Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House at the opening of the 110th Congress in 2007. Taylor had previously voted for John Murtha over Pelosi for Minority Leader in 2003 and 2005.

Taylor has been a severe critic of the Bush Administration's fiscal policy. Taylor voted against the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003, claiming that the cuts contained in those bills would only increase the national debt. He derided the prescription drug plan passed in 2003 as a giveaway to companies that donate to the Republican Party. He opposes free trade and was strongly opposed to the Bush Administration's proposals for reforming Social Security. He once sponsored a bill that would repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and has voted numerous times to leave the World Trade Organization (WTO). Taylor has a mixed voting record on environmental issues. He has voted repeatedly against the ban on drilling in Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), while voting at other times with the mainstream of his party. He has also denounced Vice President Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton.

In House Armed Services Committee hearings, Taylor was sharply critical of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other Administration witnesses, particularly regarding shortages of armor for troops and vehicles in Iraq. He decried the lack of urgency to speed up production and procurement of armored vehicles and of jammers to block the signals of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

In the 2004 primary elections, Taylor endorsed fellow southern Democrat, General Wesley Clark.

[edit] Hurricane Katrina

Taylor has been a particularly harsh critic of the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina. Much of his district took a direct hit from the storm, which destroyed his home in Bay St. Louis (47 miles west of Biloxi) as well as Lott's home in Pascagoula. [4] When Republican leaders appointed a select committee to investigate the federal, state and local response to Katrina, most Democrats boycotted it because they felt it would be a whitewash. However, Taylor was one of three Democrats (the others were Bill Jefferson and Charlie Melancon, both of Louisiana) invited to attend the hearings because their districts were particularly hard-hit by the storm. He has since moved to Kiln while he rebuilds his home in Bay St. Louis.

When former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael Brown appeared before the committee, Taylor reacted angrily to Brown's attempts to put primary responsibility for the failed response at the state and local level. He seemed particularly upset that several first responders in his home county, Hancock County, were forced to loot a Wal-Mart to get food and supplies.

Taylor has become a harsh critic of the insurance industry's actions after Katrina. In coastal areas that suffered hours of hurricane force winds followed by Katrina's unprecedented storm surge, several insurers assigned all the damages to the water rather than the wind. Taylor sponsored a successful amendment to the House version of the Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act that instructed the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security to investigate whether insurance companies defrauded the government by assigning some hurricane damages to flooding, covered by the National Flood Insurance Program, that should have been covered by the insurers' own windstorm policies. The Senate did not act on the flood insurance bill, but Sen. Trent Lott added a similar provision to the Homeland Security Appropriations Act. Taylor supports repeal of the insurance industry's exemption from federal antitrust laws that was granted by the McCarran-Ferguson Act. He also advocates Congressional action to create a program to provide for all-perils disaster insurance.

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic Caucus Chairman James Clyburn appointed Taylor to chair the Katrina Task Force to make policy recommendations to the Caucus. The task force has recommended insurance regulation and reforms, construction of Category-5 levees in Louisiana, coastal restoration projects, FEMA contracting reforms, reassigning some responsibilities from FEMA to other federal agencies, and replacing the National Guard equipment and supplies that have been left behind in Iraq.

[edit] Quotes

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Here in Mississippi, there's a great provision of the constitution that says you can't get any financial benefit from any law that passes a body of which you are a member. There's an outfit out there called Halliburton with billions of dollars in noncompetitive contracts that passed through the United States Senate. The vice president of the United States is the president of the United States Senate. He could not do that in Mississippi. He's still drawing money from that firm. That's government by auction. We don't allow that in Mississippi. It shouldn't be allowed in Washington.--referring to Dick Cheney's ties to Haliburton.

To Michael Brown on Hurricane Katrina:

(Y)ou can try to throw as much as you can on the backs of Louisianians, but I'm a witness as to what happened in Mississippi. You folks fell on your face. You get an F-minus in my book.

Maybe the president made a very good move when he asked you to leave your job.

To Donald Rumsfeld at May 7, 2004 hearing on Abu Ghraib:

I say this because I see -- as someone who believed the president when he said there were weapons of mass destruction and they were getting ready to be used against Americans, and who voted for and shares in the responsibility for the death of over 700 Americans, I see a pattern here that I don't like.

It was moms and dads from home who had to write me and tell me that their kids weren't getting the proper body armor.

Then it was David Kay, a Bush appointee, who had to tell me in Baghdad that because of a lack of manpower, huge ammunition caches were left unguarded in Iraq and were used by our enemies against our troops later on as people went and stole those weapons.

As far as IEDs, it was conversations with troops in the field that told me that that was their biggest fear, not a hearing in this room, not a statement from the secretary. It was troops in the field that told me that that's what they were afraid of and they didn't think the proper measures were being taken to protect them.

And lastly, it was a National Guard unit from home, shortly before Christmas, that showed me proudly their efforts to make their own up-armored Humvee, because apparently no one above was bothering to tell Congress, which writes the checks for these things, that they needed to be protected.

You're obviously a smart man. I mean, you're probably one of the smartest people I know...

And what's troubling is how someone who is so smart and so detail-oriented, why does it take from January to May for this committee now to find out about this in the wake of all those other things that this committee should have known about?

I sent those kids off to get killed. I share in that responsibility. I also share in the responsibility to fix these things, but we can't fix these things if we're not told about them.

[edit] External links

U.S. Congressman Gene Taylor official House site
Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
Federal Election Commission - Mr. Gene Taylor campaign finance reports and data
On the Issues - Gene Taylor issue positions and quotes
OpenSecrets.org - Gene Taylor campaign contributions
Project Vote Smart - Representative Gene Taylor (MS) profile
SourceWatch Congresspedia - Gene Taylor profile
Washington Post - Congress Votes Database: Gene Taylor voting record

Preceded by Larkin I. Smith (R)	United States Representative for the 5th Congressional District of Mississippi 1989-2003	Succeeded by 5th district eliminated after Census 2000
Preceded by Ronnie Shows (D)	United States Representative for the 4th Congressional District of Mississippi 2003-present	Succeeded by Incumbent