| As California's senior Senator, Dianne Feinstein has built a reputation as an independent voice, working hard to find commonsense solutions to problems facing California and the nation.
Since her election to the Senate in 1992, Senator Feinstein has built a significant record of legislative achievements across a wide range of issues.
Senator Feinstein led a bipartisan group of senators in passing legislation to drastically increase the fuel efficiency of cars. She was a leading voice in the effort to legalize gay marriage and ensure rights for LGBT Americans. She's a champion for the preservation of the Mojave Desert, Lake Tahoe and California's forests. She helped create the nationwide AMBER Alert network, passed bills to criminalize border drug tunnels and has long focused on improving California's water infrastructure and reducing the threat of wildfires. She also continues to advocate for commonsense gun laws.
Among her most notable achievements are the enactment of the federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994, a law that prohibited the sale, manufacture and import of military-style assault weapons that expired in 2014 and the six-year review of the CIA's detention and interrogation program that culminated in the 2014 release of the report's executive summary and passage of legislation ensuring that post-9/11 interrogation methods are never used again.
Senator Feinstein authored the first major cybersecurity bill to be signed into law in years. She's an aggressive opponent of sex trafficking and authored legislation to help prevent sex abuse of amateur athletes. She's an advocate for consumers, authoring bills to review chemicals in personal care products, ban chemicals in toys, crack down on rogue pharmacies and strengthen food safety.
In 2017, the senator became the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee - the first woman to assume that role - where she helped shape policy on criminal law, national security, immigration, civil rights and the courts. She stepped down from that position in January 2021.
Senator Feinstein was the first woman to chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a position she held for six years beginning in 2009. During her tenure as chairman, Senator Feinstein oversaw the passage of six intelligence authorization bills - after five years without a single bill - and the release of a key bipartisan report on the Benghazi attacks. She remains a senior member of the committee.
Senator Feinstein is a senior member of the Appropriations Committee where she serves as chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. She has secured billions of dollars for California communities, including critical transportation, water supply and federal building projects. She has worked with members of both parties to secure and safeguard spent nuclear waste and has used her seniority to oppose the development of new nuclear weapons and hold down the rapidly increasing costs of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Her fourth committee assignment is on the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which she chaired during the 110th Congress. In that capacity, Senator Feinstein was the first woman to chair the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and presided over the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009.
In addition to her committee assignments, Senator Feinstein is co-chairman of the National Security Working Group, co-chairman of the Senate Cancer Coalition and co-chairman of the Senate Women's Caucus on Burma. Senator Feinstein also served as co-Chairman of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control until 2021. She is also a member of the Anti-Meth Caucus, the Congressional Dairy Caucus and the Congressional Former Mayors Caucus. She has served as a member of the Aspen Strategy Group since 1997. |