Maurice D. Hinchey is a leading progressive, Democratic voice in Congress and has earned a reputation as a hard-working and effective advocate for the middle class. Now serving his tenth term in Congress, Maurice represents New York's 22nd Congressional District, which spans eight counties from the Hudson Valley to the Finger Lakes region.

Maurice is a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, which allocates funds in the federal budget. On that panel, he serves on the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies and the Subcommittee on Defense. He is also one of only 10 House members on the bicameral Joint Economic Committee.

Born to a working class family in New York City's Lower West Side, Maurice has helped lead the effort to prevent abusive corporate practices and ensure fair economic policies that strengthen the middle class and create jobs in all sectors of the economy. He is a strong supporter of tax cuts for middle class families and small businesses. In order to rein in the risky and manipulative investment practices that led to the recent economic collapse, Maurice is also one of the strongest proponents of comprehensive Wall Street reform -- authoring legislation to break up the largest banks and putting in common-sense protections to safeguard the public from another economic collapse.

Recognizing that the renewable energy sector will increasingly play a leading role in our economy, Maurice has worked tirelessly to position upstate New York as a world leader in the high-tech, clean energy manufacturing job revolution. With the goal of establishing a national and international hub for solar energy research, development and manufacturing, Maurice led the effort to establish The Solar Energy Consortium (TSEC) -- a not-for-profit entity in upstate New York that brings together private solar companies and research institutions throughout the state to develop new ways to efficiently and effectively develop economically viable solar technologies. The results have been extraordinary. Maurice and TSEC have attracted numerous companies to upstate New York and helped create more than 600 solar energy-related jobs. As a result of these efforts, upstate New York is gaining the reputation as a premiere place to conduct renewable energy business.

Maurice is a leader in Congress of the effort to protect drinking water and the environment from the risks of hydraulic fracturing. He is a coauthor of the FRAC Act, which would mandate public disclosure of chemicals used in frack fluid and close a loophole in order allow the EPA to regulate fracking activities under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The congressman also authored the appropriations language that led to the current EPA study on hydraulic fracturing.

As a Navy veteran, Maurice recognizes the solemn responsibility that he and other elected officials in Washington have to ensure our military is used wisely and effectively and that our servicemen and women are treated with the respect and honor they deserve both in the military and later when they leave and become veterans.

Early in his first year in Congress, Maurice initiated and led the successful effort to preserve Sterling Forest, the last significant area of open space in the New York metropolitan region and an important watershed for southeastern New York and northern New Jersey. He also introduced and saw enacted legislation to create the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, the first federal action formally recognizing the fundamentally significant role the people of the Hudson Valley played in the early development of America and its institutions.

As a member of the House Banking Committee, Maurice's pointed and persistent questioning of Alan Greenspan forced the Federal Reserve Board Chairman to admit to the existence of taped recordings of the meetings of the Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC), the board's policy making body. As a result, the public now has, for the first time, direct insight into the thinking of the FOMC and the logic behind the decisions affecting interest rates and other important economic policies.

On the Appropriations Committee, Maurice has been a strong advocate for the integrity of American agriculture, focusing on protecting the family farm and the safety of the food supply. He continues to be a firm and effective defender of America's natural resources, especially our national parks and wilderness areas. Maurice is the author of legislation that would designate more than nine million acres of federal land in southern Utah as permanent wilderness, thereby protecting some of the nation’s most spectacular landscapes, rare pictographs and fragile lands. He has also led the battle to protect the integrity of the Smithsonian Institution from crass commercialization.

In 1997, Maurice and the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote and passed legislation re-designating New York's Route 17 as Interstate 86, which could bring an additional $3.2 billion in increased economic activity to the Southern Tier and Catskills regions. When the legislation was passed, Maurice secured more than $17 million in needed upgrades for the highway and led a community lobbying effort to convince New York State to complete the project quickly. He has used his position on the Appropriations Committee to ensure maximum federal funding for this important project.

In 1999, Maurice wrote an amendment to intelligence reauthorization legislation that forced the declassification of documents that revealed the active role the Nixon Administration --especially Henry Kissinger-- played in the illegal overthrow of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile, in 1973. He was one of the first and most outspoken opponents of the 2003 war in Iraq. He has traveled extensively in the Middle East, Asia, Northern Africa and Europe.

Before coming to Congress in January 1993, Maurice served 18 years in the New York State Assembly beginning in 1975. He was the first Democrat elected to the state legislature from Ulster County since 1912, and only the second since the Civil War. He became Chairman of the Environmental Conservation Committee in 1979. Under his leadership, the committee conducted a successful investigation into the causes of "Love Canal," the nation's first major toxic dumpsite, and developed landmark environmental legislation including the nation's first law to control acid rain. Between 1982 and 1992, Maurice led an investigation into organized crime's control of the waste-hauling industry that led to the conviction of more than 20 criminal figures, including one for murder. He successfully led the fight --first in Albany and later in Washington-- to force the cleanup of PCBs from the Hudson River. During his tenure in Albany, he was responsible for the development of the statewide system of Urban Cultural Parks (now called Heritage Areas), including those in Kingston and Binghamton. Maurice is the author of the act that created the Hudson River Valley Greenway. He also served on the Ways and Means, Rules, Banks, Health, Higher Education, Labor, Energy and Agriculture committees.

Maurice enlisted in the U.S. Navy following his high school graduation and served in the Pacific on the destroyer U.S.S. Marshall. After receiving an honorable discharge, he worked for two years as a laborer in a Hudson Valley cement plant. He then enrolled in the State University of New York at New Paltz and put himself through college working as a night-shift toll collector on the New York State Thruway. He went on to earn a master's degree at SUNY New Paltz and did advanced graduate work in public administration and economics at the State University of New York at Albany. Maurice has three children and lives in Saugerties, New York.