Rosa DeLauro is currently serving her tenth term as a United States Congresswoman for Connecticut’s 3rd Congressional District. Rosa serves in the leadership of the Democratic Caucus as co-chair of the House Steering and Policy Committee, and chairs the Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee, where she oversees the nation’s prescription drugs and food safety and supply system and ensures that federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture prioritize science and the public interest. She is also a member of the Labor, Health, and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees the nation’s investments in labor, health, and education.

For Rosa, her work has been and will always be about helping people. Since coming to Congress, she has built a reputation as a hard-working, passionate, and forthright advocate for her constituents, an honest broker who works with members of all parties, and a leader on matters of domestic and social policy. She has helped improve schools, bring tax relief to middle-class families, protect employee pensions, and encourage job creation in Connecticut.

In her position as Chairwoman of the House Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee, Rosa is charged with overseeing what she considers the core responsibilities of our federal government. She has worked to provide funding for a safe food supply, a healthy agricultural economy, and for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate thousands of products we use everyday. She has made reform of the FDA a top priority to strengthen oversight of food and drugs. And with rising instances of food safety and food-borne illness a concern for many Americans, Congresswoman DeLauro co-founded the Congressional Food Safety Caucus to explore remedies to secure the food supply.

Rosa understands that middle class families today are being forced to work harder than ever to make ends meet. That is why she supports common-sense tax cuts for working and middle class families, including an expansion of the Child Tax Credit and more tax credits for families facing long-term health care needs. As a strong and unyielding champion for women and working families, Congresswoman DeLauro has also has led the fight in Congress to achieve full pay equity for women and to ensure that all employees have access to paid sick days.

In one of the most important legislative achievements in our nation’s history, the reform of our health care system, Rosa played an integral role. As a cancer survivor herself, she understood the critical importance of every American having access to quality, affordable health care. Congresswoman DeLauro and her colleagues in the House and the Senate fought for months to get the best bill possible to the President’s desk, and she is enormously proud of the new law.

In order to improve our nation’s crumbling infrastructure while stimulating job growth in some of the sectors hardest hit by the recent downturn, Congresswoman DeLauro has introduced the National Infrastructure Development Act. This innovative bill would create public-private partnerships to invest in and insure infrastructure projects while creating 427,000 new construction, engineering and contracting jobs across the nation, providing both much-needed jobs and future investments in our economy. Rosa believes that we have a moral obligation to our nation’s veterans and their families., and her concern for these heroes extends to both their physical and mental well-being. Rosa supports a transformation in how the Department of Veterans Affairs is funded, including advanced appropriations for health services, to ensure its fiscal soundness; and she successfully championed legislation to guarantee that troops deploying to combat theaters get the mental health screening they need both before and after deployment, as well as introduced legislation, the Post-9/11 Veterans' Job Training Act, that would assist today’s veterans choosing to pursue on-the-job training and apprenticeship programs.

To really know Rosa, you have to know her family. From her first days tagging along with her father in Wooster Square, to standing up for her beliefs in Congress, one thing has never changed about Rosa DeLauro—she cares about people. Rosa’s parents always stressed the importance of hard work, compassion for others, and a quality education. Her father, Ted, came to America when he was 13, speaking no English, but went on to serve as a New Haven Alderman whose hard work earned him the nickname "Mayor of Wooster Square." Rosa’s mother, Luisa, was raised by Rosa’s grandmother, who was widowed with six children in 1918, and supported the family by running a pastry shop, Canestri’s, in New Haven’s Wooster Square. Despite these challenges, Luisa DeLauro became the longest-serving member of the New Haven Board of Aldermen, serving from 1965 to 1998.

Soon after earning degrees from Marymount College and Columbia University, Rosa followed her parents’ footsteps into public service, serving as the first Executive Director of EMILY'S List, a national organization dedicated to increasing the number of women in elected office, Executive Director of Countdown '87, the national campaign that successfully stopped U.S. military aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, and as Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd. In 1990, Rosa was elected to the House of Representatives, and she has served as the Congresswoman from Connecticut’s 3rd District since.

DeLauro is married to Stanley Greenberg, President of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a public issues research firm. Their children—Anna, Kathryn and Jonathan Greenberg—all are grown and pursuing careers. They have four grandchildren, Rigby, Teo, Sadie, and Jasper.

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