page_title: Phil Gramm
section_title: United States Senate
hierarchical_section_title: Phil Gramm / United States Senate
caption_attribution_description: English: Phil Gramm while at a campaign stop for President in Nashua, New Hampshire
context_page_description: William Philip Gramm is an American economist and politician who represented Texas in both houses of Congress. Though he began his political career as a Democrat, Gramm switched to the Republican Party in 1983.
context_section_description: 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 2003. 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 In the years following the passage of the Act, other sections were largely superseded by other budget-controlling mechanisms.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.
  Gramm won his second Senate term in 1990 with a victory over Democratic State Senator and former Fort Worth Mayor Hugh Parmer. Gramm polled 3,027,680 votes (60.2 percent) to Parmer's 1,429,986 (37.4 percent), again receiving more than three million votes.
  Between 1999 and 2001, Gramm was the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. During that time he spearheaded efforts to pass banking deregulation laws, including the landmark Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act in 1999, which removed Depression-era laws separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities.
  As a senator, Gramm often called for reductions in taxes and fraud in government spending. He employed his "Dickey Flatt Test" ("Is it worth taking it out of Dickey's pocket?") to determine if federal programs were worthwhile. Richard "Dickey" Flatt owns a family run printing business started by his father and mother in Mexia, Texas, and is a longtime Gramm supporter". In Gramm's eyes, Flatt embodied the burdens that a typical Texas independent small businessman faced in the realm of taxation and government spending.
  In spite of his self-proclaimed opposition to Federal spending, Gramm voted to have the Federal Government build the Superconducting Super Collider in his state, which would have cost billions of d
caption: Gramm at a campaign Nashua, New Hampshire in 1995
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