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Last Updated June 22, 2005
Max Baucus is from a well-known Montana ranching family; in 1897 his great-grandfather Henry Sieben started the huge Sieben Ranch, including the land in A River Runs Through It. Baucus grew up on a 125,000-acre (195 square miles) ranch near Helena, graduated from college and law school at Stanford, then worked four years at the now-abolished Civil Aeronautics Board and the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington. He returned to Montana in 1971 and was executive director of the state constitutional convention in 1972. In 1973, he served in the state House. In 1974, at 32, he won the western House seat (Montana had two House seats until 1992) by walking 600 miles along highways through the district and beating three past or future holders of it (Democrats Pat Williams and Arnold Olsen in the primary and Republican Richard Shoup in the general). He won his Senate seat in 1978 by easily beating an appointed senator in the primary and a conservative Republican investment adviser in the general. Reelected easily in 2002, he became in March 2005 the longest-serving senator from Montana, though he has spent only four years of his adult life living full-time in the state. Baucus is ranking minority member on the Senate Finance Committee and, from June 2001 to January 2003, was chairman. He is also the Democrat with the greatest seniority on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which he chaired in 1993-94. To these posts he has not brought the philosophic depth of Daniel Patrick Moynihan nor a reputation of loyalty to the Democratic leadership; he always remembers that he is a Democrat in a usually Republican state. As ranking member and in his 18 months as chairman, Baucus has worked closely with Charles Grassley, chairman in early 2001 and again since January 2003. This is in line with Finance Committee tradition: Moynihan and William Roth did so in the 1990s and Russell Long and Bob Dole did so in the 1980s, regardless of which of them was chairman. In early 2001, when the incoming George W. Bush was pushing for a major tax cut, Baucus and Grassley worked together to produce a bipartisan package that could gain a committee majority. They unveiled their $1.3 trillion package in May; specific provisions were aimed at moderate Republicans Lincoln Chafee and Olympia Snowe and Democrats John Breaux and Bob Torricelli. The bill passed the committee 14-6 and the Senate 62-38 (with 12 Democrats, including Baucus). Key members of the coalition Grassley and Baucus assembled insisted they would not accept major changes from the Senate bill; so something very much like it came out of the conference committee. So, just as Jim Jeffords was in the process of leaving the Republican party, the first domestic priority of the Bush administration was passed into law. Tom Daschle, who became majority leader in June 2001, was reportedly furious that Baucus refused to consult with the Democratic Caucus before markup; he presumably wanted the 50 Democrats to hold out for a much more Democratic tax cut that would have left the government with much more revenue in the out-years. Pressure from Daschle may have reined in Baucus in October 2001, when Baucus introduced a $70 billion stimulus package and Republicans urged him to negotiate a compromise with Grassley; Baucus instead called on Bush to step in; a smaller Baucus plan passed the committee 11-10 in November (with Jeffords as the swing vote). In effect, Daschle had forced Baucus to go along with his strategy for confrontation with Republicans on the floor rather than compromise in committee. Similarly, on welfare, Baucus was unable to come up with a united Democratic position; the 1996 law was not reauthorized in 2002, 2003 or 2004. Baucus was more successful on securing trade promotion authority for the president, for which there was a large majority in the Senate; after passage by an excruciatingly narrow margin in the House in December 2001, it was delayed some months by Daschle but became law in July 2002. In September 2002, Baucus summoned all Finance members and told them that Daschle would allow no prescription drug bill to come out of committee and, according to some reports that Baucus denied, said that Daschle would strip him of his chairmanship if he marked one up; instead Daschle brought his own bill to the floor. That month Baucus also cancelled the markup on a small business tax cut after Daschle, the third-ranking Democrat on Finance, filed 78 amendments--one of four markups cancelled because Baucus could not assemble a majority. Baucus and Daschle fought over whether Baucus would brief the Democratic Caucus on the repeal of a tax law ruled by the WTO as an illegal export subsidy on which the European Union was threatening a $4 billion retaliatory tariff. In the November 2002 elections, Republicans regained a majority in the Senate. That cost Baucus the Finance chairmanship, but it also gave him more freedom of action, and he began working closely again with Grassley on major legislation. Pressure to replace the export subsidy was strong as the European Union imposed $4 billion in retaliatory tariffs, and Grassley and Baucus came up with a corporate tax bill that passed the Senate 92-5 in May 2004. The export subsidies were repealed, $170 billion in tax cuts were granted to manufacturers (or businesses arguing successfully that they were manufacturers) and revenue losses were offset by increased penalties for corporate tax violations and crackdowns on tax shelters. "This is the biggest loophole-closing bill in my memory," Baucus said in May as the conference committee version was about to be approved. Baucus was one of six Democrats on the conference committee, a narrow majority, who acquiesced in the House's removal of FDA regulation of tobacco from the bill. Baucus also worked with Grassley in drawing up in June 2003 a Medicare/prescription drug bill that won a majority in the Finance Committee and in the Senate. Baucus supported provisions sought mostly by Republicans for a larger role for private health insurance in Medicare but got Republicans to drop provisions that would allow greater prescription drug coverage in private plans than in Medicare. He and Grassley also got what they wanted on rural health care, including provisions to allow the government to step in areas where managed care or private insurance proved unavailable. This bill got its final shape in the conference committee dominated by House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, who allowed no House Democrats to participate; Baucus and John Breaux were the only Senate Democrats present. Thomas could argue that concessions to him were necessary in the House, where the conference bill was approved by one vote only after a three-hour roll call. But the final product was attacked bitterly by Edward Kennedy and other liberal Democrats who had been favorable to the concept when Baucus and Grassley were marking up their bill in Finance. Trade issues had been Baucus's main concentration on Finance before he became ranking member and chairman. Although he, like other Democrats, voices support for insistence on labor conditions and environmental standards in trade agreements, he has generally been more favorable to lowering trade barriers than most congressional Democrats: Montana is an exporting state. He was a leading advocate of normal trade relations with China, a potentially huge market for Montana wheat. In 2000, he led the fight for approval of PNTR with China. When PNTR with China was approved, Baucus called for an end to the trade embargo on Cuba. After Japan banned U.S. beef in December 2003 Baucus negotiated directly with the Japanese to open up their market again; Japan announced in October 2004 that it would. Baucus endorsed the U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement, but was less enthusiastic about the Central American Free Trade Agreement, expressing concerns about lower environmental and labor standards in CAFTA nations. Baucus could play a pivotal role on critical issues in 2005 and 2006. Two of George W. Bush's chief domestic priorities are personal retirement accounts in Social Security and major tax adjustments. Both must go through the Senate Finance Committee. In late 2004 Baucus seemed inclined to work on a bipartisan basis with Grassley, as he did on Medicare/prescription drugs and the tax bill in 2004; he joined a bipartisan group with Grassley and other moderates to discuss social security reform. With Tom Daschle defeated for reelection and a reduced number of Democratic senators, the Democratic leadership would seem to have less leverage to rein him in, as Daschle did in 2002. At the same time, the Democratic trend in Montana's state elections in 2004 would seem to leave him less vulnerable to electoral pressure at home. But in spring 2005 Baucus proved to be a trusted point man for Minority Leader Harry Reid by sticking to the party line and rejecting personal retirement accounts. "Privatization has to be off the table because it exacerbates or makes more difficult [achieving] Social Security solvency," he said. When Baucus was first elected to the Senate in 1978, Montana had been represented there only by Democrats since 1952. But in the years since, Montana has trended Republican. Baucus was reelected in 1996 by only a 50%-45% margin, despite a huge money advantage, over Denny Rehberg, then lieutenant governor and since 2000, the state's congressman-at-large. The increasing conservatism of Montana voters and resentment at Clinton environmental policies put him in an uncomfortable position in the run up to the 2002 election. He supported the Clinton administration moratorium on mining in the Rocky Mountain Front north of Helena, but was neutral on the Clinton proposal to give national monument status to the 149-mile Missouri River Breaks area, which Republican Conrad Burns strongly opposed. He was the only Senate Democrat to oppose a resolution calling for gun control legislation by Memorial Day 2000. But Baucus has worked hard to maintain a presence in Montana. In 1995-96 he walked 820 miles across the state and shook thousands of hands. He has a "day in the life" program of working a day a month at an ordinary job, building houses with Great Falls high school students, working at a high-tech aerospace firm in Helena, building a grandstand at the Glendive fairgrounds (for once a politician admits to grandstanding). In early 2001, Baucus nonetheless seemed vulnerable. One Republican who could clearly beat him was Marc Racicot, who had high job ratings as governor from 1992 to 2000. But Racicot, having been the lowest-salaried governor in the nation, wanted to make money and refused to run, despite pleas from George W. Bush; in December 2001 Bush made him Republican National Committee chairman. That left the Republican nomination to state Senator Mike Taylor, sponsor of a law cutting the business equipment tax from 6% to 3% by 2003. Taylor had made millions in a hair salon and cosmetology school business and eventually spent $1 million of his own money on the campaign. But Baucus had much more money. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, his fundraising capacity was enormous, and in all he spent over $6 million--almost four times as much as Taylor. Baucus ran ads showing how he helped Montana small businesses and showing George W. Bush thanking him at bill-signing ceremonies. Then, on October 10, Taylor announced he was dropping out of the race, because of an ad run by the Montana Democratic party that slyly suggested he was homosexual. The ad showed 1980s footage of Taylor, with open front shirt and gold chains, massaging a man's face applying facial cream; it stated that Taylor had failed to refund student loan money when students dropped out. Taylor claimed that his wife made paperwork errors and a Taylor aide said, "They're playing off the old stereotype of men who work in the hair-care profession." In any case, the race was already probably over. Taylor had only raised $658,000 from others and was unwilling or unable to put more of his own money in; he was still far behind Baucus in public polls, and national Republicans had decided this was not a priority race. In late October, Taylor resumed his campaign. It didn't matter. Baucus won 63%-32%, carrying all but two small counties. Baucus, always fit and physically active, has had a few health problems. In November 2003 he took a bad fall in a 50-mile race in Maryland and two months later had surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. In June 2004 he had a pacemaker installed, and in July 2004 he suffered minor injuries in a motorcycle crash in Montana. But he still seems vigorous and is in a position to make a major impact on important national issues. He comes up for reelection in 2008.
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