Mark R. Warner
Mark Warner was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2008.
As a member of the Senate’s Banking Committee, he has been a key leader in bipartisan efforts to effectively update oversight of Wall Street and end taxpayer bailouts of failing financial firms.
He is also viewed as a tireless champion of small businesses on Main Street, working effectively with the White House on creative solutions to try to increase the flow of credit to small businesses that continue to struggle in this tough economy.
As a member of the Senate Budget Committee, he was selected to lead a bipartisan task force that is looking for ways to increase accountability and improve government performance to reduce federal budget deficits.
In his first year in Congress, Senator Warner organized and led a dozen of his freshman colleagues in successfully amending major health reform legislation. The freshmen amendments included new tools that will compel greater innovation, increase transparency and lower health care costs for consumers and employers.
Senator Warner led a successful effort to compel the U.S. Veterans Administration to look for new ways to improve its health care services and support for our female military veterans. And when chronic management issues and IT challenges recently surfaced at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, Senator Warner enlisted leaders of the region’s technology community to step-up with a pro-bono effort to help fix it.
Senator Warner also has worked to broaden the mission of the AmeriCorps national community service program to include new opportunities for military veterans to continue serving in their communities once their military service ends. He also agreed to serve as honorary chairman of an AmeriCorps effort to enlist business leaders in supporting greater opportunities for more of their employees to volunteer for community service efforts.
Mark Warner was born in Indiana and raised in Connecticut. He was the first member of his family to graduate from college, earning an undergraduate degree from The George Washington University and a law degree from Harvard. He co-founded the cellular phone company Nextel and made early investments in hundreds of promising new companies that ultimately created thousands of jobs.
From 2002 to 2006, Senator Warner served as Governor of Virginia during its worst economic recession in 20 years. He worked in a bipartisan way to make Virginia state government more modern, effective and affordable, and his efforts ultimately turned record deficits into a budget surplus. When Governor Warner left office in 2006, Virginia was nationally recognized as the country’s “best-managed state” and the “best state for business.”
Senator Warner, his wife Lisa, and their three daughters live in Alexandria, Virginia.
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