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Working For Maine

Biography


Tom and Diana Allen
Rep. Tom Allen was elected to his sixth term in the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2006. He was first elected in 1996 to represent the First District of Maine, which includes York, Cumberland, Sagadahoc, Lincoln and Knox Counties, and part of Kennebec County.

Born in Portland, Maine in 1945, Rep. Allen attended Portland’s public schools and graduated from Deering High School. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1967 and earned a B.Phil in Politics as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. After college, Tom worked for Senator Edmund S. Muskie and then attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1974. While working in a Portland law firm for 19 years, Tom was active in civic affairs. He served on the City Council and as Mayor of Portland. In 1968, Tom married his high school classmate, Diana Bell. They have two daughters, Gwen and Kate. On February 26, 2008, Tom and Diana welcomed their first grandson, Charles Allen Cresswell.

Rep. Allen serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and its Subcommittees on Energy and Air Quality and Environment and Hazardous Materials. He is also a senior member of the House Budget Committee, and is a co-chair of the House Affordable Medicines Task Force and the bipartisan House Oceans Caucus.
From his seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, Rep. Allen works on a wide range of health care issues important to Maine and the nation. He has become a nationally recognized leader on prescription drugs through his ground-breaking legislation to prevent drug price gouging of senior citizens. Rep. Allen continues to work to make prescription

Rep. Allen at an Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing
drugs more affordable for all Americans, including through his legislation to fund studies on the comparative effectiveness of drugs. He has introduced legislation to fix the flaws in the new Medicare Part D program and to authorize the government to negotiate better prices on behalf of seniors. He has developed legislation to reduce health insurance costs for small business owners and their employees.

Rep. Allen advocates for clean air and reliable, affordable energy from his positions on the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality and the Environment and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee. He supports changing our national energy policy to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels and foreign oil and to encourage innovation and conservation. He has introduced legislation that would provide relief to Maine families and small businesses from the soaring costs of heating oil.

Rep. Allen has been a leader in the effort to stop attempts to weaken our nation’s landmark environmental statutes. He fought initiatives to exempt the Department of Defense from environmental regulations. He led the effort to protect local governments from paying to clean up Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (MTBE), to preserve Clean Air Act ozone regulations, and to defend the right of communities to participate in hydropower licensing proceedings.

On the House Budget Committee, Rep. Allen fights for fiscal responsibility and federal budget priorities that invest in people and communities. He has offered amendments to prevent cuts to the Medicaid program and to increase funding for education and Navy shipbuilding. He supports "pay as you go" rules to require offsets to pay for new tax cuts or new spending.

For six years, Rep. Allen served on the House Armed Services Committee, developing an expertise on military issues that is invaluable in advocating for Maine defense industries and the needs of the troops. He has been a leader in national debates over unnecessary missile defense spending and new nuclear weapons research. He helped develop the alternative to the blank check that Congress gave the President on Iraq in October 2002. He has also passed legislation to reject permanent U.S. bases in Iraq.