Rep. Michael Castle (R-At Large) Elected 1992, 7th term
Born:	July 2, 1939, Wilmington
Home:	Wilmington
Education:	Hamilton Col., B.A. 1961, Georgetown U., LL.B. 1964
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Jane)
Elected  Office:	DE House of Reps., 1966-68; DE Senate, 1968-76, Minority Ldr., 1975-76; DE Lt. Gov., 1980-84; DE Gov., 1984-92.
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1964-80; DE Dep. Atty. Gen., 1965-66.
DC Office	1233 LHOB20515, 202-225-4165; Fax: 202-225-2291; Web site: www.house.gov/castle
State Offices	Dover, 302-736-1666; Georgetown, 302-856-3334; Wilmington, 302-428-1902.
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Michael Castle, a Republican first elected in 1992, is Delaware's congressman-at-large. A direct descendant of Benjamin Franklin, he grew up in Delaware, the son of a DuPont patent lawyer. After college and law school, he returned to be a deputy attorney general. In 1966, at 27, local Republicans urged him to run for the state House in a Democratic seat; the competitive Castle was elected. Two years later he was elected to the state Senate, and in time became minority leader. He left the legislature in 1976 to practice law in Wilmington; he still lives there, in the same house, and commutes to Washington. In 1980 Governor Pete du Pont asked him to run for lieutenant governor; he did and won. He was elected governor in 1984 and 1988. In 1992, barred from running for re-election by term limits, he traded jobs with Democratic Congressman-at-Large Thomas Carper. Castle won the Republican primary for Congress by 56%-30% over state Treasurer Janet Rzewnicki, and won the general election 55%-43% over former Senate candidate and Lieutenant Governor S. B. Woo.

At that point it seemed unlikely that Castle, as a moderate member of a conservative minority party, could be influential; yet he was. He was a leader of the bipartisan freshmen who offered their own budget cuts. In August 1994 he withdrew his support from the crime bill when he thought Democrats overreached; then, at Newt Gingrich's suggestion, he led a group of moderate Republicans to negotiate with the Clinton administration. This delivered a stinging rebuke to Democrats--it broke their majority apart, in fact--and yet ultimately produced a crime bill with less spending on prevention but with the gun control provisions that Castle, unlike most Republicans, supported.

Castle has a voting record at the middle of the House; he was one of the 10 Republicans to support Clinton administration positions on most issues, has been a leader of the informal Tuesday Group which meets for lunch on Wednesdays (don't ask) and is the president of the Republican Main Street Partnership. He voted for the 2001 Bush tax cut with some ambivalence; he had voted against repeal of the estate tax and wanted the tax cuts made contingent. In September 2002 he said moderate Republicans would vote against the Labor-HHS appropriations unless more money was available for appropriations, and forced an extra $3.5 billion. He initially opposed the 2003 tax cut, but voted for it when it was reduced to $350 billion, with $20 billion in aid to the states. He voted against the budget resolution in March 2004 because it "does not address real reform, shared restraint and elimination of waste." Castle is cautious about tax cuts, because he wants to reduce deficits and is pessimistic about holding down spending. "If you go through the Republican Conference, you'll find almost no one who is pure in this. The whole idea of balancing the budget by cutting spending is somebody's wish list. It's highly unlikely to happen."

Castle chairs the Education Reform Subcommittee, and while he may support higher spending than some other Republicans, he also questions the worth of programs originally fashioned by Democrats. That was evident in his work on the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 and on Head Start in 2003. Castle's bill, passed in subcommittee and full committee in June 2003, maintained the core program. But he cited studies showing that the progress Head Start children make tends to disappear by third or fourth grade, and he inserted provisions requiring more teaching of literacy and academics. He also had a provision allowing eight states to get waivers to fashion their own programs. This brought down a storm of criticism from Democrats and from Head Start employees, who said these measures would gut a program that was a proven success. Castle persevered. The bill was pulled off the floor once, then passed in July 2003 by only a 217-216 vote; one Republican was brought in fresh from an auto accident. The Senate HELP committee passed a version cutting out the pilot projects but the bill did not receive a floor vote in 2003. Castle took a similar approach on reauthorization of the Carl Perkins vocational education act. His measure required states to impose new academic standards and accountability measures and merged the funding of Perkins grants and Tech-Prep but it also failed to get a floor vote. There was somewhat less controversy over reauthorization of the IDEA special education act, which expired in 2002. Castle's version passed the House 251-171 in April 2003. There were serious differences with the Senate bill passed in May 2004, but they were reconciled in November. The school lunch and WIC bill was least controversial. It included a 5-state test of expanding eligibility for free lunches to those at 185% of poverty level and allowing more states to increase access to fruits and vegetables, and passed with wide bipartisan support in June 2004 and was signed into law.

Castle serves on the Financial Services Committee, which is of great importance to Delaware. His special project there has been coins. He sponsored the 1997 law establishing commemorative quarters, with different designs for each state. He sponsored the Sacagawea dollar coin, more successful than its Susan B. Anthony predecessor. In 2004 he sponsored a bill for new dollar coins, with likenesses of each president replacing Sacagawea and the Statue of Liberty replacing the eagle. The bill did not come to the floor in 2004, but may in 2005. The coins have done more than just encouraging numismatics. The government makes a profit off seignorage, the difference between the value of the metal and the face value of the coin; the state quarters have brought in a cool $4 billion. In January 2005 Castle's bill to limit the number of Congressional Gold Medals to two a year was one of the first bills to pass the House in the 109th Congress.

Castle served on the Intelligence Committee and was part of the joint Senate-House hearings on intelligence failures before September 11; he endorsed the joint report. He also called for biometric identification of all foreigners entering the United States and for biometric identification for Americans who choose it. He was a co-sponsor of James Sensenbrenner's immigration measures included in the House intelligence bill in 2004, but dropped in conference.

Castle supports embryonic stem cell research. In 2004 he and Diana DeGette co-sponsored a bill to permit and fund research on stem cells obtained, with written consent, from embryos created for fertility treatment or about to be discarded. This, like the more restrictive Bush position, is somewhere in between allowing and forbidding all stem cell research.

Castle is a strong supporter of Amtrak and opposed the Bush administration's 2003 plan to divide it into three units. He negotiated a $1.225 billion compromise funding level in 2003 and in 2004, and naturally opposed the defunding proposed in Bush's 2005 budget. He has also criticized the Department of Homeland Security for spending virtually no money on railroad security. He and Rob Andrews sought to cut the $8 million for dredging the Delaware River another five feet in July 2003, but lost 213-194 as Philadelphians pushed strongly for it.

Castle has been re-elected by wide margins in Delaware, 68%-31% in 2000, 72%-27% in 2002, 69%-30% in 2004, when his opponent was a Head Start family services worker. He has often been mentioned as a candidate for the Senate in this small state, and said that he would have run if Republican Senator William Roth had retired in 1994. But Roth chose to run then and again in 2000 when, at 79, he lost. But even if Roth had not run, Castle might not have. ''As time has evolved, I have grown to like my role in the House,'' he said in 1998. In October 2004 he said, "I want to do it more today than perhaps I've ever wanted to do it."

Committees

• Education & the Workforce (4th of 27 R): 21st Century Competitiveness; Education Reform (Chmn.).
• Financial Services (6th of 37 R): Capital Markets, Insurance & Government Sponsored Enterprises; Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade & Technology; Financial Institutions & Consumer Credit.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	50	30	25	73	67	52	85	52	60	38	--
2003	40	--	25	70	--	50	76	44	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	52%	--	47%		50%	--	49%
Social	59%	--	40%		57%	--	42%
Foreign	46%	--	52%		45%	--	54%
For National Journal's complete 2004 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 108th Congress (More Info)
1. Drilling in ANWR N 2. Approve Bush Tax Cuts Y 3. Medicare/Rx Bill Y 4. Bar Overtime Pay Regs. N 5. DC School Vouchers Y 6. Ban Human Cloning N		7. Restrict Gun Liability N  8. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion Y  9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage N 10. Fund Iraq War Y 11. Bar Cuba Embargo Funds N 12. Intelligence Reorg. Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2004 general	Michael Castle (R)	245,978	69%	$902,706
	Paul Donnelly (D)	105,716	30%	$4,429
	Other	4,351	1%
2004 primary	Michael Castle (R)	unopposed
2002 general	Michael Castle (R)	164,605	72%	$760,161
	Michael Miller (D)	61,011	27%	$13,202
	Other	2,789	1%
Prior winning percentages: 2000 (68%); 1998 (66%); 1996 (70%); 1994 (71%); 1992 (55%)