Michael Enzi, the senior senator from Wyoming, was elected in 1996. He is the ranking Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and his mild-mannered demeanor masks deeply held conservative views. Read More
Michael Enzi, the senior senator from Wyoming, was elected in 1996. He is the ranking Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and his mild-mannered demeanor masks deeply held conservative views.
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 grassroots 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 rights. 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%.
In the Senate, he has been a reliable stalwart for the political right—his lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union through 2010 was above 93%, one of the highest among senators. He and Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, pleased tea party activists in May 2011 when they introduced the “Repeal Amendment,” a measure enabling states to repeal any federal law. They said in an op-ed article that their goal was “to restore the balance of power in our system of government as provided in the original Constitution.” When Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan’s controversial plan to transform Medicare into a voucher-like system came up for a Senate vote in May 2011, Enzi voted in favor of it. The legislation was defeated, 57-40. But Enzi has also tried to seek common ground on other issues during the 112th Congress. Enzi co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. that aimed to help small businesses pool together as regional associations to secure federal government contracts. Enzi also offered a bill with Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis. in May 2011 that would allow more time for displaced workers to repay loans to their 401(k) accounts.
Enzi also has a reputation as a hard worker who pays attention to the details of legislation and who looks for areas of compromise. He was a key negotiator in the Obama administration’s early efforts to get a health care bill through Congress in 2009. His own 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 was one of the “Gang of Six” senators that met during the summer of 2009 in an unsuccessful effort to hammer out a solution acceptable to both parties. He drew criticism from Democrats when he reportedly suggested to a town hall audience in Wyoming that his chief priority wasn’t striking a deal. “It’s not where I get them to compromise, it’s what I get them to leave out,” Enzi was quoted by the Associated Press as saying. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, “Sen. Enzi’s clearly turned over his cards on bipartisanship and decided that it’s time to walk away from the table.”
Since then, Enzi has remained a vocal critic of the Obama administration’s efforts on health care. In April 2011, he joined Republicans Olympia Snowe of Maine and Orrin Hatch of Utah in questioning the Small Business Administration in how the agency was protecting small companies who were overwhelmed in trying to meet the new law’s regulations. He also joined Hatch, the Finance Committee’s ranking Republican, in leading an ultimately unsuccessful GOP effort to block the nomination of Donald Berwick as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, contending Berwick lacked experience.
Enzi and California Democrat Dianne Feinstein worked in 2010 to limit the use of the controversial chemical bisphenol A as part of food safety legislation, but the chemical industry successfully blocked the move. He also joined North Dakota’s Byron Dorgan that year in pushing a bill to lift the U.S. travel ban on Cuba. And despite his ideological differences with the late liberal Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, he forged a productive and largely bipartisan working relationship with him. When Kennedy chaired the HELP panel, the two established what they called 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 school performance, stalled for several years.
In 2011, HELP Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. worked with Enzi in bipartisan fashion to iron out details of a rewrite of No Child Left Behind. But other Republicans on the committee derailed a scheduled markup of the bill in October, complaining that they were left out of the process. “I got the text of this bill at the same time it was released to the public,” Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. said in National Journal. “I don’t think it was a mistake. I think it was on purpose.” Freshman Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. fiercely opposed the bill on grounds that it allowed too much federal involvement in education. Despite the objections, the bill passed the committee by a 15-7 vote, with Enzi and two other Republicans joining all of the committee Democrats in voting yes. The legislation would remove the previous accountability system that required all students to be proficient in math and reading by 2014. In place of this, it would require states to adopt certain standards and develop their own accountability measures in order to receive federal funding. On other education issues, Enzi disagreed with Harkin. When Harkin planned a hearing examining controversial for-profit colleges, Enzi sent two letters to Harkin urging him to broaden the hearing to include all higher education institutions. When Harkin went ahead with the hearing, Enzi led other Republicans in a boycott of the inquiry in June 2011.
Enzi chaired the HELP panel in 2005 when Republicans held the majority, and did not always follow the Bush administration’s lead. He put together the reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, 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 Gulf states recovering from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Working with leaders of the Finance Committee, he also participated in the protracted negotiations with the House on pension reform. 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.
Earlier, he played a key role on a major corporate accountability bill in 2002. 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. Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee 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, and in June, the two negotiated a compromise. They agreed that two of the four members of the board would be accountants, that the board could adopt rules favored by the accounting industry and that the board would not be financed by accountants. Enzi led six of the 10 committee Republicans in voting for the Sarbanes bill. Disciplinary proceedings would be kept confidential. 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).
Enzi briefly considered retirement after being passed over twice for appointment to the Finance Committee. In 2007, GOP Senate leaders gave a committee vacancy to the less-senior John Ensign of Nevada as a reward for his work leading the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He tried again when another seat 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. He did not have serious opposition in either of his re-election races, winning both with at least 73% of the vote.
