Jacky Rosen
Jacklyn Sheryl Rosen is an American politician serving as the junior United States Senator from Nevada since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously was the U.S. Representative for Nevada's 3rd congressional district from 2017 to 2019.
Rosen was elected to the U.S. Senate in the 2018 election, defeating Republican incumbent Dean Heller. She is the only freshman in the U.S. House of Representatives who won a seat in the U.S. Senate during the 2018 midterm elections and the only challenger to defeat a Republican incumbent U.S. Senator in the 2018 cycle.
Early life and career
Rosen was born on August 2, 1957, in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Carol, a homemaker, and Leonard Spektor, a car dealership owner who had served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. Her mother was of Irish, German, and Austrian descent, and her father's family were Jewish emigrants from Russia and Austria.Rosen attended the University of Minnesota and graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1979. While she attended college, her parents moved to Las Vegas, where she also moved after graduating. She took a job with Summa Corporation and worked summers as a waitress at Caesars Palace throughout the 1980s. While working for Summa, she attended Clark County Community College and received an associate degree in computing and information technology in 1985. She began to work for Southwest Gas in 1990 and then left to open her own consulting business three years later.
U.S. House of Representatives
2016 election
A former computer programmer with no political experience at the time, Rosen was asked by then–Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to run for the U.S. House seat vacated by Republican Joe Heck in the 2016 elections. On January 26, she officially declared her candidacy for. Rosen won 60% of the vote in the Democratic Party primary election and narrowly defeated Republican nominee Danny Tarkanian in the general election. Rosen was sworn into office on January 3, 2017.Committee assignments
- Committee on Armed Services
- *Subcommittee on Military Personnel
- *Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces
- Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
- *Subcommittee on Energy
- *Subcommittee on Research and Technology
Caucus memberships
- Congressional Arts Caucus
- Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus
- Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues
U.S. Senate
2018 campaign
Rosen was elected to the U.S. Senate on November 6, 2018, becoming the junior Senator from Nevada. Her candidacy, announced on July 5, 2017, was endorsed by former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden. During the campaign, Rosen emphasized her support for the Affordable Care Act and criticized Heller's vote to repeal it in 2017. At the time, Rosen voted against Republicans' attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.Ultimately, Rosen defeated Heller, the incumbent, by a 50.4%-45.4% margin. While Heller carried 15 of Nevada's 17 county-level jurisdictions, Rosen carried the two largest, Clark and Washoe. She won Clark County by over 92,000 votes, almost double her statewide margin of over 48,900 votes.
Rosen was one of only two non-incumbent Democrats to win election to the Senate in 2018. She is also the 37th freshman member of the United States House of Representatives to win a seat in the Senate and the first woman to do so.
Committee assignments
- Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
- *Subcommittee on Aviation and Space
- *Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet
- *Subcommittee on Manufacturing, Trade and Consumer Protection
- *Subcommittee on Security
- Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
- *Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety
- *Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security
- Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
- *Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
- *Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management
- Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
- Special Committee on Aging
Political positions
Civil rights and liberties
On January 29, 2019, she along with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida introduced Bipartisan Legislation to Require the President of the United States to Create Special Envoy Position to Combat Anti-Semitism. On February 5, 2019, she and 45 of her other senate colleagues introduced the Keep Families Together Act which would ensure that the federal government carries out immigration procedures in the best interest of detained children. On March 13, 2019, she helped introduce the equality act in the senate. Following this she cosponsored the Fair Housing and Equity Act.Congress
During the Government shutdown in 2019, Senator Jacky Rosen Co-Sponsored the No Budget, No Pay Act. On February 14, 2019, she voted to reopen the government without Trump's border wall.She along with Senator Steve Daines, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator John Hoeven, Senator John Boozman, and Senator Jon Tester introduced the bipartisan TRICARE Reserve Improvement Act.
Education
Senator Jacky Rosen helped reintroduce the Rebuild America's Schools Act of 2019 which would allocate an investment of $100 billion for school infrastructure projects, a $70 billion grant program, and a $30 billion tax credit bond program targeted to low-income schools with facilities that pose health and safety risks to students and staff. The bill would also expand access to high-speed broadband in public schools to provide reliable and high-speed internet access for digital learning. She and her colleagues introduced the bipartisan Building Blocks of STEM Act.Environment
Senator Rosen has voted for the Natural Resources Management Act which is a comprehensive federal lands bill and permanently reauthorize the Land and Water, Conservation Fund. She signed on Senator Tom Carper's resolution that acknowledges that climate change is real. She supports prohibition of the Secretary of Energy from taking action relating to the licensing, planning, development, or construction of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain until the Director of the Office of Management and Budget submits a study to Congress on the economic benefits of alternative uses of the site, and Congress holds a hearing on the benefits of alternative uses.Foreign policy
In April 2019, Rosen was one of thirty-four senators to sign a letter to President Trump encouraging him "to listen to members of your own Administration and reverse a decision that will damage our national security and aggravate conditions inside Central America", asserting that Trump had "consistently expressed a flawed understanding of U.S. foreign assistance" since becoming president and that he was "personally undermining efforts to promote U.S. national security and economic prosperity" through preventing the use of Fiscal Year 2018 national security funding. The senators argued that foreign assistance to Central American countries created less migration to the U.S., citing the funding's helping to improve conditions in those countries. She has cosponsred the Paycheck Fairness Act which would hold employers accountable for discriminatory practices, ending the practice of pay secrecy, easing workers’ ability to individually or jointly challenge pay discrimination, and strengthening the available remedies for wronged employees.Gun policy
Rosen supports an assault weapons ban.Health care
Rosen supports the Affordable Care Act and its provisions that prevent patients from being denied insurance or charged more due to age or having a pre-existing condition. She supports allowing citizens to buy into Medicaid as an alternative option to compete with private insurance companies.In January 2019, during the 2018–19 United States federal government shutdown, Rosen was one of thirty-four senators to sign a letter to Commissioner of Food and Drugs Scott Gottlieb recognizing the efforts of the FDA to address the effect of the government shutdown on the public health and employees while remaining alarmed "that the continued shutdown will result in increasingly harmful effects on the agency's employees and the safety and security of the nation's food and medical products." She introduced a resolution along with Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to authorize Senate Legal Counsel to intervene in Texas vs. The United States to protect pre-existing protections.
In February 2019, Rosen was one of eleven senators to sign a letter to insulin manufactures Eli Lilly and Company, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi over increased insulin prices and charging the price increases with having caused patients to lack "access to the life-saving medications they need." She also helped introduce a resolution Urging Newly-Confirmed Attorney General Barr to Defend Health Care Law and Uphold the Constitutionality of the ACA. She has cosponsored the Healthy MOM act which ensures that women who are pregnant can sign up for health care coverage, outside of standard open enrollment periods. She does not support the Trump Administration's Short Term Association Health plans and has co-sponsored legislation to repeal them. She has cosponsored the Improving HOPE for Alzheimer's Act. As a result of the abortion laws enacted in Georgia and Alabama she announced her support for a resolution in Support of Women's Reproductive Rights.
With colleagues from both sides of the aisle, she supports bipartisan legislation to prevent surprise medical billing. She has a commitment to fight autism and has supported legislation to promote research, education, and awareness into autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities. She believes that breast cancer patients and survivors who have experienced a mastectomy are able to access custom breast prosthetics under Medicare. She supports extending a pilot program for Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics across the country for an additional two years. She thinks our country needs to improve emergency mental health access. She supports the Maternal CARE act.
In August 2019, Rosen was one of nineteen senators to sign a letter to United States Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar requesting data from the Trump administration in order to aid in the comprehension of states and Congress on potential consequences in the event that the Texas v. United States Affordable Care Act lawsuit prevailed in courts, citing that an overhaul of the present health care system would form "an enormous hole in the pocketbooks of the people we serve as well as wreck state budgets".