Sen. Michael Enzi (R)

Michael Enzi, the senior senator from Wyoming, was elected in 1996. He is the ranking Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Enzi grew up in Thermopolis and Sheridan, the son of a shoe salesman. He earned degrees in accounting and retail marketing, moved to Gillette and became an accountant for an oil well servicing company. He and his wife, Diana, started a small business, NZ Shoes. In the 1970s, at a Jaycees meeting, Enzi met Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, who was impressed by his volunteerism and suggested he run for public office. In 1975, Enzi was elected mayor of Gillette, the center of Wyoming’s coal belt and its fastest-growing town. He was mayor for eight years. In 1986, he was elected to the Wyoming state House and in 1990 to the state Senate. After Simpson announced his retirement in December 1995, Enzi was one of nine Republicans and two Democrats who ran for the seat. With support from a grass-roots network of conservatives, Enzi finished first in a straw poll at the May 1996 Republican state convention. In second place was John Barrasso, an orthopedic surgeon from Casper who had statewide name recognition as a television commentator on health issues. Their chief difference was on abortion rights. Enzi opposed abortion rights, and Barrasso did not. Barrasso also had more money, but Enzi won 32%-30%. The Democratic nominee was former Secretary of State Kathy Karpan, who opposed gun control and abortion. But she had the liabilities of having supported the presidential candidacies of Bill Clinton, who was unpopular in conservative Wyoming, and Bruce Babbitt, who was unpopular in Wyoming as Clinton’s Interior secretary. Enzi led in polls throughout the campaign and won 54%-42%.

Enzi started off in the Senate by attempting to bring technology to the tradition-bound Senate chamber. He lobbied colleagues for permission to bring his laptop on the floor, but the Rules Committee voted 6-1 to continue a ban on electronic devices on the floor.

In 2002, his sixth year in the Senate, Enzi was still little known nationally, but he played a key role on a major piece of legislation. The issue was corporate accountability, and as the only accountant in the Senate, Enzi could claim special expertise. Enzi opposed a move by Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt to bar accounting firms from doing auditing and consulting work for the same corporation. After the Enron bankruptcy in December 2001 raised questions about accounting, Enzi still urged caution and said he feared overregulation. Banking Chairman Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., introduced a bill that did not go as far as Levitt’s proposal, but included an accounting board independent of the SEC with power to set rules, investigate, punish violations and conduct regular inspections of accounting firms’ work. Enzi worked closely with lobbyists for the big accounting firms but also held negotiations with Sarbanes, who was eager to have a bipartisan bill. In June, Enzi and Sarbanes negotiated a compromise. They agreed that two of the four members of the board be accountants, that the board could adopt rules favored by the accounting industry and that the board would not be financed by accountants. Disciplinary proceedings would be confidential. Enzi led six of the 10 committee Republicans in voting for the Sarbanes bill. The Senate later passed the bill without a single no vote. It became known as the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate accounting law (after House Republican Michael Oxley of Ohio, who pushed it through the House).

In early 2005, when Republicans still controlled the Senate, Enzi became chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, where he earned a reputation as a hard worker who was knowledgeable about the details of legislation and took into account the views of those affected. He also did not always follow the lead of the Bush administration. His unassuming manner helped him manage the egos on a panel featuring four former chairmen of the committee (Republicans Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Orrin Hatch of Utah, and Democrats James Jeffords of Vermont and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts) and seven senators who had run for president or were planning to in 2008. He put together the reauthorization of the Carl Perkins vocational and technical education bill, which passed the Senate 99-0 and was enacted in August 2005. Enzi also won passage of renewed versions of a major jobs training bill and the higher education law. He sided with ranking minority member Kennedy in opposing a White House proposal to encourage more use of government vouchers for private school tuition in the recovery following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Working with leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, he also participated in the protracted negotiations with the House on pension reform. “Promises made will be promises kept by limiting when benefits may be increased,” he said when Congress completed action in 2006. On an issue of special interest back home, Enzi helped to enact a bill to expedite the clean-up of abandoned coal mines. In the closing days of the Republican majority, he helped to resolve conflicts over the funding formula to renew domestic AIDS programs.

When Democrats took control in of the Senate in 2007, Enzi became the ranking member on the HELP Committee, taking a backseat to Kennedy, the new chairman. Despite his ideological differences with the liberal Kennedy, he forged a productive and largely bipartisan working relationship with him. The two established what they call the 80-20 principle: reach broad agreement on 80% of an issue and leave out the 20% where no agreement can be found. The two successfully pushed through the committee a bill requiring insurance companies to treat mental illness the same as other ailments in coverage decisions. And they agreed on reauthorization of Head Start early education programs and on renewal of college programs. Still, talks on reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era law tying federal education funding to performance, stalled in both 2007 and 2008 and efforts continued into 2009. They also disagreed on Kennedy’s bill requiring employers to provide workers with paid sick leave, with Enzi arguing the rule would have an adverse effect on employee health benefits. The bill stalled. On Wyoming issues, Enzi successfully opposed a change in the 2008 spending bill that decreased the amount of mineral royalties the state would receive.

In the 111th Congress (2009-10), Enzi has remained a firm backer of health care reform through collaboration between the public and private sectors, and he was a key GOP negotiator in the Obama administration’s early efforts to get a health care bill through Congress. His own 10-point health care proposal called for tax credits for buying health care, assistance to help small businesses provide coverage for their employees and requirements for the states to reduce the cost of medical malpractice insurance. He also has been a vocal advocate for increased implementation of health information technology, such electronic health records. Although a bill failed in the 110th Congress (2007-08), he worked successfully to get funds for health IT into the January 2009 economic stimulus bill.

Enzi briefly considered retirement after being passed over twice for appointment to the Finance Committee. In 2007, Enzi had lobbied for a vacancy but GOP Senate leaders gave it to the less-senior John Ensign of Nevada as reward for his work leading the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He tried again when a second vacancy opened in late 2007, but the spot instead went to New Hampshire Sen. John Sununu, who also had less seniority but was facing a difficult re-election in 2008. “That was a really down time in my life,” Enzi told the Associated Press. Sununu lost in 2008, and Enzi finally got his appointment to the powerful Finance panel. “An accountant working on tax issues, now here is finally something in Washington that makes sense," Enzi said. Among his first acts on the committee was to vote against Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s nomination, citing Geithner’s unpaid back taxes.

Enzi did not have serious opposition in 2002. He won the Republican primary 86%-14% and the general election 73%-27%. The death of Craig Thomas in June 2007 set up an unusual situation in which each Wyoming senator faced election in November 2008. Democrats tried to recruit popular Gov. Dave Freudenthal to run against Enzi, but to no avail. He cruised to a third term 76-24%.