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Senator Dick Durbin was elected by his fellow Democratic senators in
December 2006 to the post of Assistant Majority Leader, also known as
Majority Whip. It is the Senate's second highest ranking position. In
2004, Durbin was elected as Minority Whip. Durbin\'s election to
leadership marked only the fifth time in history that an Illinois
senator has served as a Senate leader.

Durbin, a Democrat from Springfield, is the 47th U.S. Senator from the
State of Illinois and the first Illinois senator to serve on the U.S.
Senate Appropriations Committee in more than a quarter of a century. He
is the state's senior senator and convenor of the bipartisan Illinois
delegation.

Elected to the U.S. Senate on November 5, 1996 and re-elected in 2002,
Durbin fills the seat left vacant by the retirement of his long-time
friend and mentor, U.S. Senator Paul Simon.

In 1999, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) appointed Durbin to
the Senate's leadership team, Assistant Democratic Floor Leader. In
2000, Durbin served as Co-Chairman of the Democratic Platform Committee
and also was Co-Chairman of the Atlantic Conference sponsored by the
Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. He is a founding member of the
Senate Global AIDS Caucus.

***Improving Health Care:*** The House author of landmark legislation to
ban smoking on commercial airline flights, Durbin has worked in the
Senate to protect children from the harm caused by tobacco. For his
work, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Lung
Association.

Among his other health achievements, Durbin has worked successfully for
increased federal funding to prevent childhood asthma, increase
immunizations and expand medical research. He has successfully fought to
increase the share of federal funding dedicated to combating AIDS
worldwide. He has also been a leader in promoting organ and tissue
donation. In the spring of 2004, Durbin put forth a plan to give small
businesses affordable choices among private health insurance plans and
expand access to coverage for their employees.

In 1999, Durbin was honored as the American Public Health Association's
"Legislator of the Year," and in 2001 he received the American Medical
Association\'s Dr. Nathan Davis Award for Outstanding Government
Service.

***Protecting Consumers:*** Consumer protection is high on Durbin's list
of priorities. Continuing an effort spurred by a meeting with the mother
of a Chicago six-year-old who died after eating contaminated hamburger,
Durbin led the effort to modernize the fragmented federal food safety
system under a single food-safety agency.

Durbin also led the effort to ban ephedra, a dangerous product sold as a
nutritional supplement and has introduced legislation to require
manufacturers of other dietary supplements to ensure their products are
safe before they are sold. He secured \$2.8 million for the
implementation of new safety standards to protect patients from injuries
related to re-use of medical devices that are intended to be used only
once.

***Leading Gun Safety Efforts:*** Durbin has worked for gun safety
legislation to keep guns out of the hands of children. He introduced
bipartisan legislation to hold adults responsible if they fail to lock
up their firearms and the weapons are subsequently taken by a child and
used to kill or injure another person.

He also teamed up with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
and local law enforcement agencies to launch an initiative to help
Illinois become the first state to voluntarily trace every crime gun
recovered from a crime scene. It was the first comprehensive statewide
effort in Illinois to encourage all local law enforcement agencies to
work with the ATF to better use crime-gun tracing information to reduce
gun trafficking and other criminal endeavors.

***Fighting for Farmers:*** Durbin has been a champion of Illinois
farmers and has worked to promote ethanol use. In 1998, he secured
passage of a provision extending the ethanol tax incentive to 2007. In
2000, he worked with other members of the Illinois delegation for
funding for the construction of an ethanol research pilot plant near the
Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville campus, a project he has
promoted since the early 1990s. The full deductibility of health
insurance costs for the self-employed -- including farmers -- has been a
career-long battle for Durbin, ending in a victory in 2003.

Farm organizations across the state have recognized his consistent
leadership and the Illinois Farm Bureau awarded him its "Friend of
Agriculture" Award in 2000.

***Working for a Fair Tax Code:*** Durbin's tax cut agenda includes tax
credits for small businesses buying health insurance for their
low-income workers, estate tax relief for family-owned small businesses
and farms, tax incentives to promote charitable giving, and tax credits
for long-term care insurance, child care and college tuition.