About

Frank Lautenberg was born in Paterson, N.J. He attended Columbia Business School on the GI Bill, graduating with a BS in economics in 1949.

He was elected to the Senate in 1982 and reelected in 1988 and 1994, and served on four committees: environment and public works, budget, appropriations, and small business. Senator Lautenberg chose not to seek reelection in 2000. In September 2002, after an upheaval in the US Senate race, he was asked by the governor and by the Democratic Party to run for reelection. In a history-making six-week campaign, he won a fourth term, and he was reelected to a fifth term in 2008. He is on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which oversees the Department of Homeland Security, and the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, where he continues to pursue federal investments for rail and telecommunications projects in New Jersey.

Throughout his Senate career, Senator Lautenberg has sponsored legislation and fought for gun control, protection of the environment, national security and human rights, antiterrorism measures, transportation funding, and economic growth. His signature legislation began with “no smoking on airlines.” He is an advocate of high-speed railways in the United States and of funding for mass transit. He has written laws to end ocean dumping of sludge and plastic, track medical waste, initiate a national pollution prevention program, and give citizens the right to know about toxic pollutants released into their communities’ water, soil, and air. He also helped to enact the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and to raise the drinking age throughout the country to 21.

Since returning to the Senate in 2003, Senator Lautenberg has fought to improve the lives of New Jersey families. He has fought to save health insurance for thousands of children, reimburse military families who bought body armor for their loved ones serving in Iraq, modernize the G.I. Bill, strengthen Amtrak, increase security along railroads and at ports and chemical plants, reverse global warming, provide justice for victims of terrorism, make college more affordable, turn federal buildings “green”, and protect beaches and oceans.

He was one of the founders of Automatic Data Processing and served as chairman and chief executive officer of ADP until he was elected to the Senate. Today ADP is the largest computing services firm in the world.

Senator Lautenberg was inducted into the Information Processing Hall of Fame for his pioneering work in the computer services industry. He is a former president of the Association of Data Processing Services Organizations, founder of the Lautenberg Cancer Research Center, and former commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

He is a former chairman of the National United Jewish Appeal and is a member of the US Holocaust Council.

Senator Lautenberg resides in Cliffside Park with his wife Bonnie. He has four children and 10 grandchildren.