Chuck Hagel - Senate Career

Senate Career

Since his election to the Senate in 1996, Hagel served as deputy whip for the Republican Caucus. He was chair of both the Senate Global Climate Change Observer Group and the Senate Oversight Task Force. He served as co-chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. He also served on the NATO Observer Group. Hagel was a member of four Senate committees: Foreign Relations; Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; the Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Committee on Rules and Administration.

Hagel's name was widely rumoured to be one of those considered by George W. Bush as a potential running mate in the 2000 presidential election. During the Bush administration, Hagel maintained a "traditionally Republican" voting record, receiving "a lifetime rating of 84 percent from the American Conservative Union and consistent A and B grades from the National Taxpayers Union." Among his most notable votes, Hagel:

• Voted for the Iraq war
• Voted for the Patriot Act
• Voted for the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts
• Voted for No Child Left Behind
• Voted against Bush’s Medicare prescription drug bill
• Voted against McCain-Feingold

In August 2004, Hagel acknowledged that he was considering a presidential campaign in 2008.

Hagel appeared as himself on the HBO series K Street in 2003, on the episode entitled "Week Four".

On immigration, Senator Hagel supports a "pathway to citizenship" and a "guest worker program" for undocumented immigrants. On May 25, 2006 he voted for S. 2611, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, which passed the Senate before reaching a stalemate in the House in late 2006. On June 26, 2007, Hagel joined with Senator Ted Kennedy to support the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1639).

In July 2007, Hagel was one of three Republican Senators who supported the legislation proposed by Democrats to require a troop withdrawal from Iraq to begin within 120 days. "This thing is really coming undone quickly, and Maliki's government is weaker by the day. The police are corrupt, top to bottom. The oil problem is a huge problem. They still can't get anything through the parliament—no hydrocarbon law, no de-Baathification law, no provincial elections" (from Robert Novak's interview with Hagel, published in the Washington Post: "Hagel's Stand".)

During his first campaign, Hagel indicated that, were he to be elected, he would retire in 2008 after two terms in the Senate. Nebraska State Attorney General Jon Bruning announced plans to challenge him in the primaries in 2008 if he did not retire. After considering running in the 2008 presidential election, Hagel announced in 2007 that he would retire from the Senate at the end of his present term and would not seek the presidency. He has joined the faculty of Georgetown University, where his daughter currently attends, starting in the fall of 2009, as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of National Governance and will begin teaching in the fall of 2009, as reported in the Georgetown University student paper "The Hoya", and in the Washington Post

Senator Hagel's differences with his party's platform on Iraq are reflected in a change to his voting record. As reported in: " ... ccording to Congressional Quarterly, in 2006 he voted with the President ninety-six per cent of the time... Hagel's support for Bush's policies declined—in 2007, he voted with the President just seventy-two per cent of the time."

Hagel had a tradition of wearing costumes to work on Halloween, usually masquerading as colleagues or other notable political figures. He has arrived at work dressed as Joe Biden, John McCain, Colin Powell, and Pat Roberts in past years.