In January 2003, Jim Cooper was sworn-in to Congress to represent the citizens of Tennessee's 5th District, which includes most of Davidson, Wilson and Cheatham Counties.

Jim is honored to have the opportunity to serve as his constituents' voice in Washington.

A champion of reforming health care, protecting seniors and veterans, streamlining government and instituting sound economic policy, Jim currently sits on the Budget Committee, the Armed Services Committee and the Government Reform Committee in the House of Representatives.

Prior to his current term of service, Jim was elected at age 28 as the youngest member of Congress up to that point and served Tennessee's 4th District for six terms from 1983 to 1995.

During his hiatus from public service, Jim worked as managing director of Equitable Securities, a Nashville-based investment bank, and then became a founding partner of Brentwood Capital Advisors, a firm that raised money for growing businesses in Tennessee. Meanwhile, he taught health care policy as Adjunct Professor at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management and served on various corporate and nonprofit boards, including the national Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Before Jim's first term in Congress, he practiced law at Waller, Lansden, Dortch & Davis in Nashville, having received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1980. Jim earned his master's degree in politics and economics as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University after completing undergraduate studies as a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

The son of the late Tennessee Governor Prentice Cooper and Mrs. Hortense Cooper, Jim was born in 1954 in Nashville and was raised in Shelbyville. He is married to the former Martha Hayes and they have three children: Mary, Jamie and Hayes.

Rep. Jim Cooper's Official Website

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It will cost $322 billion to bring the existing public schools into overall good condition. (National Education Association)