Rick Santorum



Richard John Santorum (Rick Santorum) is a candidate for president in the 2012 race for the White House. He was a Republican member of the U.S. Senate from 1995-2007. He was defeated in the 2006 congressional elections by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). Like many of his fellow GOP candidates, Santorum is a right-wing conservative on domestic policy and a foreign policy hawk who argues that the United States faces existential threats from abroad.

Background
Santorum was born 10 May 1958 in Winchester, Virginia; raised in Butler County, Pennsylvania; and lists his residency as Penn Hills, Pennsylvania. His father was an Italian immigrant. Santorum received a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Political Science from Pennsylvania State University in 1980 and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1981. Santorum first became actively involved in politics volunteering for the late Senator John Heinz. 

After graduating he became an administrative assistant to pro-choice Republican state Senator J. Doyle Corman (until 1986) and director of the Pennsylvania Senate's local government committee (until 1984, when he became the director of the Pennsylvania Senate's Transportation Committee (1984 – 1986).

In 1986, Santorum received a law degree from the Dickinson School of Law, was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar, and began practicing law in Pittsburgh. While working at the law firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, Santorum represented the World Wrestling Federation. In that capacity, he argued that professional wrestling should be exempt from federal steroid regulations because it is not a sport. 

In 1990, at age 32, Santorum was elected to the United States House of Representatives, defeating a seven-term Democratic incumbent; he served two terms (1991–1995). A biogrpahical note states that as a member of the Gang of Seven, Santorum worked to expose congressional corruption by outing the guilty parties in the House banking scandal. 

In a biographical note, now no longer on his website, Santorum wrote that he "founded FightPac, a political action committee, when he was first elected to the Senate. FightPac supported Republican challengers who faced an uphill battle when running for the United States Congress. From 1995 through 2001, FightPac raised millions of dollars." (Pdf)

It stated that at the time Santorum was "Founder and Chairman of America's Foundation, a federally registered political action committee which assists in raising funds for Republican candidates running for office nationwide. America's Foundation has raised more than $5 million since its inception in 2001, making it one of the most powerful political organizations in the country, according to Roll Call, a well-respected political newspaper in Washington, D.C." Santorum was also Campaign Chairman of the Bush-Cheney re-election efforts in Pennsylvania. 

Senate Career
In 1994, Santorum was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating the incumbent Democrat, Harris Wofford. Santorum was re-elected in 2000.

Santorum has been active in welfare reform and government accountability. He is a self-described conservative who favors legislation that would restrict or prohibit abortion. Santorum has said he is personally against abortion and has expressed disapproval of homosexual acts, equating them with bestiality, polygamy and incest, issues he believes state legislatures should decide upon rather than courts.

In September 2005, Santorum gave a speech that outlined the future of conservatism at the Heritage Foundation's First International Conservative Conference on Social Justice. In November 2005, he adapted his speech into an op-ed piece for the political website TownHall.com outlining his vision for "Compassionate Conservatism." 

In January 2005, Santorum stated his intention to run for Whip after the 2006 elections. 

Iraq War
Santorum voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq in Oct. 2002.

Positions and Views

 * Welfare Reform In 1996 Santorum served as Chairman of the GOP Task Force on Welfare Reform and was the author and key sponsor of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. The legislation passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.


 * Evolution In 2001, Santorum tried unsuccessfully to insert language into the No Child Left Behind bill that would have required that "a full range of views" on human origins be taught in public schools. This so-called "Santorum Amendment" attempted to relativize the teaching of biological evolution in public school classrooms. The amendment would have required schools to discuss controversies surrounding scientific topics, and gave the theory of evolution as an example; many people interpreted this to mean that intelligent design would have to be taught in science classrooms.  The Senate passed a weaker, non-binding version of the amendment, which two Ohio Congressmen have invoked to suggest that the state should include "intelligent design" in its science standards. During an interview with National Public Radio in 2005, Santorum clarified his views, saying he is "not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom."


 * Religion Santorum and John Kerry (D-MA) are the lead sponsors of the Workplace Religious Freedom Act (WRFA), which would require employers to accommodate the religious observances of their employees as long as providing such accommodations would not impose an "undue hardship" upon the employer. Thus, employers would be required to afford employees flexible work shifts so that they could observe religious holy days and to permit employees to wear religiously-required garb at work. Versions of the WRFA have been introduced in 1997, 2000, and 2003, but so far have failed to be enacted.


 * Privacy Rights Santorum has frequently stated that he does not believe a "right to privacy" exists under the Constitution, even within marriage. Thus he has been particularly critical of the Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which held that the Constitution guarantees the aforementionied right, and based upon it, overturned a law prohibiting the sale and use birth control.


 * National Weather Service data On April 14, 2005, Santorum introduced the National Weather Services Duties Act of 2005 to "clarify the duties and responsibilities of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service (NWS), and for other purposes". This legislation, if enacted, will provide for equal access by the public and private sector to the data collected by the National Weather Service. It prohibits the NWS from competing with private sector entities, such as AccuWeather in Santorum's home state, for the publication of weather data. Opponents of this bill contend that it will prevent the NWS from providing user-friendly presentation of the data it collects, thereby assisting private sector weather services in retaining their own customers.


 * Social Security Santorum is also a supporter of partial privatization of Social Security. Following the 2004 presidential election, Santorum has held forums across Pennsylvania on the topic.


 * CARE Act The cornerstone of Santorum's current legislative agenda is the Charity, Aid, Recover and Empowerment (CARE) Act. The CARE Act provides incentives for charitable giving, opportunities for low-income families to build their individual assets, and equity between faith-based and secular organizations as they provide charitable social services. "It Is Time To Pass CARE" by Rick Santorum Santorum has worked closely with Senator Joe Lieberman in a bipartisan effort to pass the CARE Act.


 * Abortion Santorum sponsored the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 which outlaws a specific late-term abortion procedure. On November 5, 2003, President George W. Bush signed it into law.

2006 reelection campaign
Santorum was challenged in the Republican primary by John Featherman, a self-described social liberal and fiscal conservative, who had previously ran against Santorum in the 2000 Senate election as a Libertarian. Santorum defeated Featherman handily.

In the general election, the Democrats nominated Pennsylvania State Treasurer Bob Casey to face Santorum. Casey defeated Santorum by a margin of 59% to 41%. 

Joins Ethics and Public Policy Center
In January 2007, following his reelection defeat, Santorum joined the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington D.C.-based think tank devoted to “dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy.” Specifically, Santorum was hired to establish and direct a program, titled America's Enemies, “focused on identifying, studying, and heightening awareness of the threats posed to America and the West from a growing array of anti-Western forces that are increasingly casting a shadow over our future and violating religious liberty around the world.”

Energy
At a 2012 debate, presidential candidate Rick Santorum said he helped a local company fight government regulations on greenhouse gas emissions: "My grandfather was a coal miner. So I contacted a local coal company from my area. I said, look, I want to join you in that fight." The local company, according to Mother Jones, was Consol Energy, and Santorum was paid $142,500 from 2010 to August 2011 for his counseling work. Before that, Consol donated more than $73,800 to Santorum during his time as a legislator. In 2006, Santorum authored a provision for a tax bill that would have created a tax credit for synfuel, which included coalbed methane, of which Consol is a "leading producer" of the product. Former Santorum staffers Tommy Johnson and Kevin Roy became lobbyists for Consol after he lost his Senate seat.

Money in politics
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Controversy
Santorum has attracted support and criticism because of his socially conservative and outspoken views, primarily because of his stance on same-sex marriage, homosexuality, and abortion. His views on social and cultural issues are presented in his 2005 book, It Takes a Family, published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute of Wilmington, Delaware.

Homosexuality
See also, Wikipedia article on Santorum controversy

A controversy arose following Santorum's statements about homosexuality in an interview with the Associated Press published April 20, 2003. In response to a question about how to prevent sexual abuse of children by priests, Santorum described homosexual acts as part of a class of deviant sexual behavior that are "antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family." Santorum further stated that he does not agree with the extension of privacy rights dependent on Griswold v. Connecticut.

Santorum said the priests were engaged in "a basic homosexual relationship" with "post-pubescent men," and went on to say that he had "a problem with homosexual acts," that the right to privacy "doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution," that "whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, whether it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family," and that sodomy laws properly exist to prevent acts which "undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family." When the Associated Press reporter asked if homosexuals should not then have sex, Santorum replied, "Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality &mdash;". 

Democratic politicians, gay rights advocates such as Dan Savage, and other liberal commentators condemned the statements, while Republican politicians, religious conservatives, and other conservative commentators supported Santorum and called the condemnations unfair. Some critics argued that Santorum's position might also affect heterosexuals, as Santorum said that he did not believe there is a Constitutional right to engage in private consensual sexual acts.

Santorum did not retract his remarks, stating that they were not intended to equate homosexuality with incest and adultery, but rather as a critique of the specific legal position that the right to privacy prevents the government from regulating consensual acts among adults (such as bigamy, incest, etc.).

On July 20 2004, while debating the Federal Marriage Amendment, Santorum said "defending marriage" was the "ultimate homeland security." 

Residency and tuition controversy
In November 2004, a controversy developed over education costs for Santorum's children. Santorum's legal address is in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. But as a Senator, he lives at his home in Leesburg, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. (Leesburg is located about one hour's drive west of Washington, D.C., and about 90 minutes' drive south of the Pennsylvania border). Santorum's five older children received education through the Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School with 80 percent of tuition costs paid by the Penn Hills School District. At a meeting in November 2004, the Penn Hills School District announced that it did not believe Santorum met the qualifications for residency status since he and his family spend most of the year in Virginia. They demanded repayment of tuition costs totaling $67,000.

Santorum's supporters said that the controversy is politically-motivated as the school board is controlled by Democrats (Erin Vecchio, the school board member who first publicly raised the issue, is the chair of the local Democratic Party). They also noted that since Santorum votes in Penn Hills and pays property and school taxes there, he is entitled to the same privileges as any other Penn Hills resident and he should not be deprived of these privileges as a result of his service in the U.S. Senate.

In November 2004, the Penn Hills Progress, a local paper, reported that the Santorum and his wife pay about $2,000 per year in property taxes on the home they own. They also found that another couple - possibly renters - were registered voters at the same address.

After the controversy developed, Santorum said he would make other arrangements for his children's education, but insisted that he did not owe the school board any back tuition. On July 8, 2005, a Pennsylvania state hearing officer ruled that the Penn Hills School District had not filed objections to Santorum's residency in a timely manner and dismissed the complaint. Santorum hailed the ruling as a victory against what he termed "baseless and politically motivated charges." Santorum told reporters that "[n]o one's children &mdash; and especially not small, school-age children &mdash; should be used as pawns in the 'politics of personal destruction.'"

In the 2000 campaign, Santorum's opponent, Ron Klink, ran an attack ad featuring an image of the senator's house in Virginia calling him a "hypocrite." The ad noted that in his 1990 campaign for Congress Santorum had run attack ads criticising the then Democratic Representative Doug Walgren for buying a house and living in McLean, Virginia. A news report noted that "when asked about Santorum's comments in 1990, his spokeswoman said that when Santorum was a congressman, he did not own a home outside Pennsylvania." (Sub req'd.)

Santorum's Family Budget
On March 10, 2006 the American Prospect issued a report on Santorum's finances that reveals that he has received a home loan from a campaign contributor and used money from his political action committee in a variety of questionable ways.

According to the report, Santorum received a second mortgage on his Herndon, Virginia mansion from Philadelphia Trust Company, "a new private bank catering to 'affluent investors and institutions'". The loan to Santorum is questionable because the bank's policy is to only offer loans to clients with investment assets of $250,000 or more, a sum that Santorum does not come close to reporting in his annual personal financial filings. Santorum and his leadership PAC received $24,000 from Philadelphia Trust Company's executives and directors.

The use of funds by Santorum's leadership PAC is also a source of intrigue. The PACs filings show numerous charges at grocery stores, fast food restaurants, and coffee shops (66 trips to Starbucks and over 100 to a local Washington, D.C. coffee shop). The Prospect compared Santorum's PAC expenditures to "to five other senators' leadership PAC expenses shows that those PACs do not list expenditures on items such as convenience stores or coffee shops, with a couple of exceptions for out-of-state travel." Santorum's expenditures at coffee shops, fast food restaurants, and grocery stores accounted for 8.6 percent of his total PAC expenditures, "while comparable numbers for Kentucky's Mitch McConnell, his partner in the GOP Senate leadership, were $29,524 and 1.6 percent."

Principally as a result of this and the previously mentioned tuition scandal, Santorum was named in 2006 by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as one of the twenty most corrupt US legislators. 

Comments about the Boston Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal
In 2005, a controversy developed over comments about Boston, Massachusetts Santorum made in a 2002 article about the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Santorum, a Roman Catholic himself, wrote:

"It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning 'private' moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

These comments came to wider attention through an opinion column in the Philadelphia Daily News on June 24, 2005. Columnist John Baer cited Santorum's article and wrote:

"I'd remind you this is the same Senate leader who recently likened Democrats fighting to save the filibuster to Nazis, who once equated homosexuality with bestiality and who claimed the Catholic priest pedophile scandal in Boston should be no surprise since Boston is 'a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America.'"

Santorum's remarks were criticized, especially in Massachusetts. On July 12, 2005, Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory called on Santorum to explain his statement, and reported that Robert Traynham, Santorum's Director of Communcations, told him: "It's an open secret that you have Harvard University and MIT that tend to tilt to the left in terms of academic biases. I think that's what the senator was speaking to." Julie Teer, a spokeswoman for Governor of Massachusetts, Republican Mitt Romney, said, "What happened with the church sex abuse scandal was a tragedy, but it had nothing to do with geography or the culture of Boston." 

Later that day Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) delivered a personal rebuke to Santorum on the Senate floor, saying: "The people of Boston are to blame for the clergy sexual abuse? That is an irresponsible, insensitive and inexcusable thing to say." Santorum has stood by his 2002 article and has not apologized.

On July 21, 2005, Rush Limbaugh interviewed Santorum about Kennedy's speech. Santorum said that he was being targeted by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which he said coordinated with the media to publicize Kennedy's speech. He argued that his statement about Boston was taken out of context from an article he had written three years earlier. Santorum agreed with Limbaugh's summary that it was "no surprise that the center of the Catholic Church abuse took place in very liberal, or perhaps the nation's most liberal area, Boston." Santorum reiterated his broader theme of a cultural connection: "[I]t's ... no surprise that the culture affects people's behavior. ... [T]he liberal culture &mdash; the idea that ... sexual inhibitions should be put aside and people should be able to do whatever they want to do, has an impact on people and how they behave." When asked why Boston specifically was mentioned, Santorum pointed out in July 2002, the outrage of American Catholics, and his, was focused on the Archdiocese of Boston.

Hurricane Katrina
Santorum remarked to a Pittsburgh TV station WTAE on September 4, 2005 regarding the evacuation warnings given for Hurricane Katrina:

"I mean people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings ... There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving."

He was criticized for this statement by the campaign of Bob Casey, Jr., his Democratic opponent for the Senate. On September 6, in a follow-up interview with WTAE, Santorum said:

"Obviously most of the people here in this case, an overwhelming majority of people just literally couldn't have gotten out on their own,' he said. 'Many didn't have cars ... And that really was a failure on the part of local officials in not making transportation available to get people out."

On September 8, during an interview with public radio station WITF in Harrisburg, PA, Santorum said:

"the weather service gave no warning, or not sufficient warning in my opinion, as to the effects when it came on land in Florida as a Category One hurricane ... Predictions were that it wasn't going to go out to the gulf and affect the western gulf coast, it was going to sort of head up to Florida or go right off the coast of Florida ... I'm not going to suggest when it comes to Katrina that there were any major errors. I don't know. This is something that I think needs to be investigated."

On September 9, Senator Jim DeMint (R.,S.C.) issued a press release stating "After reviewing the actions taken by the National Weather Service, I am convinced that this was one of the most accurate hurricane predictions we have ever seen." 

In April 2005 Santorum introduced the National Weather Services Duties Act of 2005 which proposed to prevent the National Weather Service from competing with private sector weather services. Santorum had claimed that the overlap with commercial weather services "detracts from NWS’s core missions of maintaining a modern and effective meteorological infrastructure, collecting comprehensive observational data, and issuing warnings and forecasts of severe weather that imperil life and property."  By the end of the 2005, Santorum's bill had failed to gain a co-sponor and had not managed to gain support from the relevant committee.

In February 2006, Santorum sought to revive his stalled bill, issuing a media release defending his proposal and lashing out at the opposition to his bill. 

AccuWeather, one of the private weather companies, is based in Pennsylvania. The founder, CEO and president of AccuWeather, Dr. Joel Myers, contributed $500 to Santorum on March 9, 2005. Joel's brother Barry Myers contributed $250 on the same day, as did Mrs Lee Myers. 

K Street Project
Beginning in the 1990s and accelerating since the 2000 election of George W. Bush the Republican majority in Congress has waged a campaign to get lobbying firm, located on Washington's K Street, to only hire Republican lobbyists. This was called the K Street Project and was originally developed by Dick Armey, Tom DeLay, and Grover Norquist. Santorum has also been at the center of this project, as the Senate's pointman for the project he held meetings every Tuesday to discuss lobbying openings and work with Republican lobbyists and leaders to plot strategy. Nick Confessore wrote about the meetings in the Washington Monthly,

"Every week, the lobbyists present pass around a list of the jobs available and discuss whom to support. Santorum's responsibility is to make sure each one is filled by a loyal Republican--a senator's chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated. After Santorum settles on a candidate, the lobbyists present make sure it is known whom the Republican leadership favors. 'The underlying theme was [to] place Republicans in key positions on K Street. Everybody taking part was a Republican and understood that that was the purpose of what we were doing,' says Rod Chandler, a retired congressman and lobbyist who has participated in the Santorum meetings. 'It's been a very successful effort.'"

In the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal that erupted in Congress in January of 2006 Santorum was made the pointman on reforming lobbying rules by the Senate leadership. He came under fire from critics who viewed the K Street Project and the aggressive badgering of lobbyists by the Republican leadership as leading to the abuses of lobbying during the Jack Abramoff years. Santorum quickly denied that he had ever been part of the K Street Project. Santorum also denied ever knowing Jack Abramoff despite the fact that Abramoff was one of the original lobbyists to attend Santorum's meetings. In January Santorum also claimed to have stopped holding the meetings in an attempt to appease the reform-minded. However, in March of 2006 the Washington Post reported, "After saying in January that he would end his regular meetings with lobbyists, Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), the third-ranking GOP leader in the Senate, has continued to meet with many of the same lobbyists at the same time and on the same day of the week."

Use and Abuse of Hitler Comparisons
On March 3, 2005, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) was taken to task for a remark he made "making an outrageous and reprehensible comparison between Adolf Hitler's Nazis and a Senate GOP plan to block Democrats from filibustering," at which time Senator Santorum "called for Byrd to retract his remarks." 

On May 19, 2005, Senator Santorum had this to say regarding President George W. Bush's judicial nominations before Congress and the possibility of Republicans' use of the nuclear option: Note: not an official transcript


 * "And we shouldn't go mucking around in this institution and changing the way we've done things, particularly when it comes to the balance of powers between the three branches of government. And the independence of one of those branches of the judiciary. We must tread very carefully before we go radically changing the way we do things that has served this country well, and we have radically changed the way we do things here. Some are suggesting we're trying to change the law, we're trying to break the rules. Remarkable. Remarkable hubris. I mean, imagine, the rule has been in place for 214 years that this is the way we confirm judges. Broken by the other side two years ago, and the audacity of some members to stand up and say, how dare you break this rule. It's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 'I'm here in Paris. How dare you invade me? How dare you bomb my city? It's mine.' This is no more the rule of the Senate than it was the rule of the Senate before not to filibuster. It was an understanding and agreement, and it has been abused. ..."

Operation Good Neigbor Foundation
An earlier version of Santorum's official biographical note states that he "founded the Operation Good Neighbor Foundation which unites corporations, businesses, and individuals across America to work directly with grassroots organizations whose sole purpose is to address the special needs of the underprivileged, the vulnerable and the indefensible citizens of the Unites States." . In March 2006 the Philadelphia Daily News reported that Preferred Real Estate contributed $25,000 to the foundation in 2002. The contribution, which was the largest received by the foundation, was receiced "as the senator was working to win as much as $8.5 million in federal aid for the donor's project in Delaware County." Sanotrum officials denied that the company had been given any special favours. Preferred Real Estate confimred that Santorum had assisted in winning funding for the redevelopment of an abandoned power plant but denied the contribution was connected in any way. The company's chief executive officer, Michael O'Neill, made donations of more than $1 million that year, a spokesman said. 

The according to the report, "officials from Preferred Real Estate and their spouses have donated $22,350 to Santorum's re-election campaign and $6,000 to his political-action committee, America's Foundation." 

Payments to staff
According to campaign records released in July 2006, Santorum’s 2006 re-election campaign and political action committee paid a dozen members of his personal and leadership staff more than $82,000 between the beginning of 2005 and July 2006. This included more than $42,000 to Senate Republican Conference Staff Director Mark Rodgers and more than $24,000 to Conference and personal office spokesman Robert Traynham. 

Green Party signatures controversy
During Santorum's Senate reelection campaign against Bob Casey, six of his staffers actively collected voter signatures to help place Green Party candidate Carl Rominelli on the fall ballot. In addition to collecting signatures, Republicans and Santorum supporters invested more than $60,000 into the petition drive. Democratic officials have accused the campaign of collecting multiple signatures by the same person, in addition to fake names. T.J. Rooney, the state Democratic Party chairman, indicated that the party may challenge the eligibility of Rominelli to be on the ballot due to petition irregularities. 

On September 6, 2006, Virginia Davis, a Santorum campaign spokesperson, admitted the campaign steered money to help Rominelli candidacy, which would likely peel some votes away from Casey. Davis stated, “We encouraged those who inquired to help with the Green Party effort...We welcome Carl Romanelli's entry into the race because at least he's expressed a real interest in being up front and honest about where he is on the issues.”

On September 22, 2006, a count of the signatures needed to put Romanelli on the ballot was halted by a PA judge. Romanelli was about 9000 signatures short of the 67,000 that he needed to earn his ballot spot. 

Committees in the 109th Congress (2005-2007)

 * Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
 * Subcommittee on Research Nutrition and General Legislation - Chair
 * Subcommittee on Production and Price Competitiveness
 * Senate Special Committee on Aging
 * Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
 * Subcommittee on Financial Institutions
 * Subcommittee on Housing and Transportation
 * Subcommittee on Securities and Investment
 * Senate Committee on Finance
 * Subcommittee on Health Care -
 * Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy - Chair
 * Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight
 * Senate Committee on Rules and Administration

Coalitions and Caucuses

 * Senate Transportation Committee, Director, 1984-1986
 * Senate Local Government Committee, Director, 1982-1986
 * Congressional Volunteer Firefighters Caucus
 * Health Care Task Force
 * National Republican Senatorial Committee
 * Chair, Renewal Alliance
 * Senate Health Care Task Force
 * Chair, Senate Republican Conference
 * Senate Rural Health Caucus
 * Senate Steel Caucus.

Boards and other Affiliations

 * Member, Italian Heritage Society
 * Member, Italian Sons and Daughters of America
 * Board Member, Mount Lebanon Extended Day Program
 * Member, Pennsylvania State Bar Association
 * Member, Rotary
 * Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC).

More Background Data

 * Rick Santorum's Senate profile at On the Issues (2000).
 * "The Bankrollers: Lobbyists’ Payments to the Lawmakers They Court, 1998 - 2006," Public Citizen, Congress Watch, May 2006. (73-page pdf).

Resources

 * Interview with Jon Stewart, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, July 25, 2005. (Other Daily Show interviews with members of Congress.)
 * Official U.S. Senate website
 * Recent Press Releases posted on Santorum's Senate website.
 * RickSantorum.com, Santorum's 2006 campaign website.
 * "It Takes a Family"
 * Technorati Search: Rick Santorum
 * Google News Search: Rick Santorum
 * Yahoo! News Search: Rick Santorum
 * Power Trips: How much does Rick Santorum travel?
 * Open Secrets - 2006 congressional races database
 * Compare where Rick Santorum stands on the issues - whereIstand.com
 * Right-Web: Profile: Rick Santorum

Local blogs and discussion sites

 * Gort 42
 * The All-Spin Zone
 * Snakes on a Senate, a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee website.

SourceWatch/Congresspedia Resources

 * Progressive Policy Council

Books

 * Santorum, Rick It Takes a Family : Conservatism and the Common Good (2005) ISBN 1932236295
 * Santorum, Rick Rick Santorum (2005) ISBN 0976966808