The congressman from the 10th District is Frank Wolf, a Republican first elected in 1980. One of the House’s leading crusaders for human rights, he is also an influential appropriator as chairman of the Appropriations’ Commerce, Justice, Science Subcommittee. Read More

The congressman from the 10th District is Frank Wolf, a Republican first elected in 1980. One of the House’s leading crusaders for human rights, he is also an influential appropriator as chairman of the Appropriations’ Commerce, Justice, Science Subcommittee.

Wolf grew up in Philadelphia, the son of a police officer. As a child, he developed a strong interest in American history and precociously consumed biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. He majored in political science at Pennsylvania State University and went on to get a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He worked as an aide on Capitol Hill and was an Interior Department appointee in the Nixon and Ford administrations. In 1976, he ran for Congress and lost the Republican primary. In 1978, he won the nomination to run against Joseph Fisher, a liberal who had won the district (then not extending beyond Fairfax County) in 1974. Wolf lost, 53%-47%. In 1980, Wolf ran again and won 51%-49%.

Conservative but not ideologically rigid, Wolf voted in 2009 to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and in 2010 for a Democratic bill to overhaul the nation’s food safety system. On the Appropriations Committee, he joined younger conservatives in sounding alarms about federal spending, and warned in January 2011 that he would oppose raising the statutory debt ceiling unless there was a commitment to a plan “to put America on a path to financial responsibility.” He was one of the forces behind a bipartisan commission to look at looming U.S. fiscal problems, a panel that President Barack Obama created administratively in 2010 with former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson and former Democratic White House official Erskine Bowles as chairmen. Wolf opposed earmarking even before that position became popular with budget reformers in recent years.

Wolf turned quite a few heads in October 2011 for challenging anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist. As the president of the advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist has persuaded a large number of Republicans to agree to a no tax hike pledge in all instances, even at the expense of the party’s commitment to deficit reduction. But Wolf took to the House floor to attack Norquist. “Have we really reached a point where one person’s demand for ideological purity is paralyzing Congress to the point that even a discussion of tax reform is viewed as breaking a no-tax pledge?” Wolf asked. Wolf also criticized Norquist for his ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Wolf started off his House career concentrating on issues affecting federal employees. With Democrat Steny Hoyer, who represents a suburban D.C. district in Maryland, he sponsored a bill in 2007 to increase the government contribution to federal employees’ health insurance premiums. He has long promoted telecommuting for federal employees. In 2008, Congress enacted his 175-mile Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area, which will run from Gettysburg to Charlottesville, passing six presidential houses, 13 national historic landmarks and many Revolutionary War and Civil War battlefields. For years he has sought funding for a Metro rail link to Dulles International Airport which, astonishingly, was not foreseen by the system’s planners. In 2011, he pressured the agency that runs Dulles to drop plans for an expensive underground station at the airport in favor of a cheaper, above-ground facility.

Wolf traces his interest in human rights to a 1984 trip he took to Ethiopia with his best friend in Congress, liberal Ohio Rep. Tony Hall (1979-2002). The country was in the middle of a famine, and Wolf called his close-up view of the impact on the Ethiopian people “a life-changing experience.” Since then, Wolf has been to El Salvador, Chechnya, the Sudan, Sierra Leone and other global trouble spots. In 1998, Wolf sponsored the law setting up a religious freedom office in the State Department and requiring annual reports on religious freedom throughout the world.

With Democrat Nancy Pelosi of California, he led the annual efforts in the 1990s to withdraw normalized trade relations with China because of human right violations, citing China’s acts of jailing dissidents, persecuting Tibetan Buddhists, and aiming missiles at the United States. In June 2008, he and New Jersey Republican Chris Smith charged that the Chinese had hacked into their office computers searching for casework information involving Chinese dissidents. When he and Smith tried to meet with dissidents’ lawyers in China, the lawyers were arrested. Wolf joined several lawmakers in criticizing NASA Administrator Charles Bolden’s visit to China in 2010 and crusaded against the space agency’s cooperation with that country. The following year, he called for the creation of a special U.S. envoy to promote freedom for religious minorities overseas. In May 2011, Wolf inserted language into a spending bill temporarily prohibiting NASA or the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from using federal funds for joint scientific activity with China.

Wolf has also had an impact on policy toward Iraq. After his third visit to the country in September 2005, he called for “fresh eyes” to look at American policy there and suggested a bipartisan study group. The result was the influential Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Indiana Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton. When President George W. Bush ordered a troop surge to try to restore order in Iraq rather than move toward withdrawal as the ISG recommended, Wolf sponsored a bill to implement its recommendations, but the Democratic leadership declined to bring it up. He introduced a bill in April 2011 calling for an Afghanistan-Pakistan study group.

In 2009, Wolf became a vocal opponent of transferring prisoners from the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to prisons within the continental United States. In July 2011, Wolf got into a spat with Matthew Olsen, President Obama’s nominee to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, claiming that Olsen mislead him on a plan to resettle Guantanamo detainees in Northern Virginia. Wolf said that Olsen led him to believe that no decision was made to transfer Chinese Muslims to a facility in Wolf’s district, when the Obama Administration already had a plan in place to do so. Olsen said Wolf suffered from a “misrecollection” of their discussion, and the administration later scrapped the plan to transfer the detainees to Northern Virginia anyway (Olsen was eventually confirmed for the post).

Wolf also has long been one of Congress’ leading opponents of gambling and has tried, so far unsuccessfully, to stop the proliferation of Indian-run casinos. He also pushed for passage of a national .08 blood-alcohol limit for drunken driving.

Wolf generally has been re-elected by wide margins, but the Democratic trend in Northern Virginia has produced well-financed challenges to him in several elections. In 2004, he faced a well-financed opponent and won 64%-36%. In 2006 and 2008, his opponent was Judy Feder, who worked in the Clinton administration. She spent $1.5 million the first time and $2.2 million the second, attacking him for supporting the Bush administration and for GOP inaction on the health care crisis. Wolf kept pace with her spending and criticized her for backing the 1993 Clinton health care plan. He won 57%-41% in 2006. Two years later, despite Obama’s success in boosting Democratic turnout in Northern Virginia, Wolf won, 59%-39%, carrying every county. He sailed to victory in 2010 against an underfunded Democrat, retired Air Force Col. Jeff Barnett. Redistricting in 2012 is expected to add Republicans to his district, which would bolster GOP efforts to keep the seat when Wolf retires.