Frank R. Lautenberg BS ’49
Senator Frank Lautenberg attended Columbia Business School on the GI Bill, graduating with a BS in economics in 1949. He was elected to the Senate in 1982, reelected in 1988 and 1994 and served on four committees: environment and public works, budget, appropriations and small business. He chose not to seek reelection in 2000. In September 2002, after an upheaval in the U.S. Senate race, Senator Lautenberg was asked by the governor and by the Democratic Party to run for reelection and save the seat in the U.S. Senate. In a history-making six-week campaign, he was reelected and serves in the U.S. Senate. He is on the Senate Committee for Commerce, Transportation and Science; the Environment and Public Works Committee; and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He is the ranking member of the Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Global Warming.
Throughout his Senate career he has sponsored legislation and continues to fight for gun control, protection of the environment, national security and human rights, antiterrorism measures, transportation funding and economic growth. His signature legislation began with “no smoking on airlines.” He is an advocate of high-speed railways in the United States and of funding for mass transit. He has written laws to end ocean dumping of sludge and plastic, track medical waste, initiate a national pollution prevention program and give citizens the right to know about toxic pollutants released into their communities’ water, soil and air. He helped to enact the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and to raise the drinking age throughout the country to 21.
He was one of the founders of Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and served as chairman and chief executive officer of ADP until he was elected to the Senate. Today ADP is the largest computing services firm in the world.
Senator Lautenberg was inducted into the Information Processing Hall of Fame for his pioneering work in the computer services industry. He is a former president of the Association of Data Processing Services Organizations, founder of the Lautenberg Cancer Research Center and former commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He is a former chairman of the National United Jewish Appeal and is a member of the U.S. Holocaust Council.