Phil Gramm

Gramm became the first Republican to represent the district since its creation in 1846.

After he left the House, the seat was retained for the Republican Party by Joe Barton.

William Philip Gramm (born July 8, 1942) is an American economist and politician who represented Texas in both chambers of Congress.

Gramm was born on July 8, 1942, in Fort Benning, Georgia, and grew up in nearby Columbus.

Soon after his birth, Gramm's father, Kenneth Marsh Gramm, a career Army sergeant, suffered a stroke and was partially paralyzed.

He died when Gramm was 14.

Gramm's mother, Florence (née Scroggins), worked double shifts as a nurse to supplement the veterans disability pension.

Gramm attended public schools, graduated in 1961 from Georgia Military Academy (now Woodward Academy), and graduated in 1964 from the University of Georgia.

He received a doctorate in economics from the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business in 1967.

Gramm taught economics at Texas A&M University from 1967 to 1978.

In addition to teaching, Gramm founded the economic consulting firm Gramm and Associates (1971–1978).

In 1976, Gramm unsuccessfully challenged Texas Democratic Senator Lloyd Bentsen, in the party's senatorial primary.

Then in 1978 Gramm successfully ran as a Democrat for Representative from Texas's 6th congressional district, which stretched from the Fort Worth suburbs to College Station.

He was reelected to his House seat as a Democrat in 1980.

Gramm's voting record was very conservative, even by Texas Democratic standards of the time.

During his first four terms, he tallied an average rating of 89 from the American Conservative Union, and from 1980 to 1982 he garnered the highest rating from that body of any Democrat in the Texas delegation.

In 1981, he co-sponsored the Gramm-Latta Budget which implemented President Ronald Reagan's economic program, increased military spending, cut other spending, and mandated the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (the Kemp-Roth Tax Cut).

Just days after being reelected in 1982, Gramm was thrown off the House Budget Committee.

Though he began his political career as a Democrat, Gramm switched to the Republican Party in 1983.

In response, Gramm resigned his House seat on January 5, 1983.

He then ran as a Republican for his own vacancy in a February 12, 1983 special election, and won easily.

In 1984, Gramm was elected as a Republican to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate.

He defeated Congressman Ron Paul, former gubernatorial nominee Henry Grover, Robert Mosbacher, Jr., of Houston, and several of other contenders in the primary.

He then faced the Democratic nominee, State Senator Lloyd Doggett of Austin in the general election for the right to succeed retiring Republican Senator John G. Tower.

Gramm polled 3,116,348 votes (58.5 percent) to Doggett's 2,207,557 (41.5 percent).

Gramm was the first U.S. Senate candidate in the history of Texas to receive more than three million votes.

In October 1985, Gramm, Fritz Hollings, and Warren Rudman sponsored an amendment to establish a budget deficits ceiling that would decline to zero by 1991 that was attached to a bill raising the debt limit of the federal government by more than $250 billion.

The amendment was approved by a vote of 75 to 24 and was stated as a possible prelude to a balanced budget in five years without a tax increase by United States Secretary of the Treasury James Baker: "I think it's important that we recognize the Gramm-Rudman amendment is basically a process designed to give the legislative branch and in some degree the executive branch, the political will to deal with the deficit. It means it's going to force some action. Given the political will to make the hard choices you can reach balance without having to raise taxes."

Gramm served on the Senate Budget Committee from 1989 until leaving office in 2002.

Gramm and Senators Fritz Hollings and Warren Rudman devised a means of cutting the budget through across-the-board spending cuts if deficit-reduction targets were not met.

They were successful in making the Gramm–Rudman–Hollings Act law, although portions were ruled unconstitutional.

In the years following the passage of the Act, other sections were largely superseded by other budget-controlling mechanisms.

In 1990, Gramm failed in an effort to amend the Iraq International Law Compliance Act of 1990.

An earlier amendment to the act, the D'Amato Amendment, prohibited the US from selling arms or extending any sort of financial assistance to Iraq unless the President could prove Iraq was in "substantial compliance" with the provisions of a number of human rights conventions, including the Genocide Convention.

After reading the D'Amato Amendment, Gramm introduced his own amendment to counter the human rights sanctions in the D'Amato Amendment.

Gramm's amendment would have allowed the George Bush administration to waive the terms of the D'Amato Amendment if it found that sanctions against Iraq hurt US businesses and farms more than they hurt Iraq.

In the end, the bill passed the Senate without Gramm's amendment only a week before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

One of his many special election opponents was the second-place finisher by only 115 votes in his 1978 Democratic Party primary, the then newly elected State Senator Chet Edwards of Waco, and later U.S. Representative for the 11th and the 17th congressional districts of Texas (January 3, 1991 – January 3, 2011).

Another special election opponent was Texas State Representative Dan Kubiak of Rockdale, Texas.

Gramm was an unsuccessful candidate in the 1996 Republican Party presidential primaries against eventual nominee Bob Dole.