Patricia Schroeder

(b. Portland, Oregon, 30 July 1940) US; Member of the US House of Representatives 1973 – 96 The daughter of an insurance adjuster, Schroeder was educated at the University of Minnesota and Harvard. She became a practising lawyer and law teacher before winning election in 1972. Her career in the House involved strong support for women's issues and civil liberties. (In the 104th Congress she sat on the Judiciary Committee and the National Security Committee and was co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Women's Issues.) Her most notable legislative achievement was the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act which President Clinton signed into law as one of his first presidential acts. She has also been a consistent dove on foreign policy issues as well as an opponent of cost-cutting in government.

Despite Schroeder's high profile in Democratic national politics, her intervention in presidential politics has been limited. She chaired Gary Hart's abortive campaign and made a brief bid for the nomination herself in 1988. She left Congress at the end of 1996 to assume a teaching position at Princeton University.

Patricia Schroeder, a graduate of Harvard Law School, campaigned as an antiwar, liberal Democrat and won the congressional seat representing the racially diverse Denver, Colorado, district in 1972. When she entered the House of Representatives in the 92nd Congress, there were just thirteen women members. By 1996, when Schroeder announced she would not seek reelection, there were forty‐seven women, though still barely 11 percent of the House. Schroeder's period of greatest influence on military issues came in the 1992–94 103rd Congress when the Democrats controlled the House; she chaired a House Armed Services subcommittee; there was a large, politically cohesive Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues and a network of sophisticated women's lobbying groups. Several of these groups focused on military issues (e.g., Women's Action for New Directions and the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services).

Among the issues that Schroeder influenced were: ensuring that military wives and female personnel had access to abortion services at U.S. overseas military hospitals; reversing a Department of Defense policy that had allowed divorced military men to exclude military retirement benefits from alimony calculations; opening up more “near‐combat” and “combat” jobs to women; and insisting that sexual harassment be taken seriously by senior Defense Department officials. On general questions, Schroeder joined all the other Democratic women in the House in voting against the “Don't ask, don't tell” formula for maintaining the gay men and lesbians in the military ban. She also voted against funding the B‐2 bomber for U.S. participation in United Nations peacekeeping.

[See also Gender and War; Gender: Female Identity and the Military; Women in the Military.]

Bibliography

• Debra L. Dodson, et al., Voices, Views, Votes: The Impact of Women on the 103rd Congress, 1995.
• WAND [Women's Action for New Directions] Bulletin, vol. 15, no. 2 (Spring 1996).
• Pat Schroeder, 24 Years of House Work … and the Place is Still a Mess: My Life in Politics, 1998

Patricia Scott Schroeder (born 1940) served as the first U.S. congresswoman from Colorado beginning in 1973. She was outspoken about what she considered wasteful spending by the Defense Department and championed women's and children's issues. When she retired from Congress in January 1997, she was the longest-serving woman in Congress.

Patricia Scott Schroeder, daughter of Lee and Bernice Scott, was born July 30, 1940, in Portland, Oregon. She received her Bachelor's degree in 1961 magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota where she was a member of Phi Betta Kappa. While studying law at Harvard she met James Schroeder, whom she married in 1962.

After receiving her law degree in 1964 the Schroeders moved to Denver, Colorado. Patricia worked as a field attorney for the National Labor Relations Board until 1966. In 1968, she became Democratic precinct committeewoman and in 1969 she worked as a lecturer and law instructor in Colorado. She served as a hearing officer for the Colorado Department of Personnel and as legal counsel to Planned Parenthood of Colorado from 1970-1972.

In 1972, Schroeder ran for Congress at the urging of her husband. Running on a liberal, anti-war platform, she was elected representative to the 1st District of Colorado. Schroeder had chosen not to assume a safe middle-of-the-road position. She was outspoken against the Vietnam War and asked for a reordering of national priorities with emphasis on health services, environmental protection, education, and health care. Although a virtually unknown candidate, she was able to capture the Democratic primary and upset the Republican incumbent with 51.6 percent of the vote. Schroeder would remain in office for 25 years.

As the first woman ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Colorado in its 79-year history, she quickly became aware of entrenched attitudes against females in Congress. When a colleague asked her how she, a mother of two small children, could be a legislator at the same time, she responded, "I have a brain and a uterus and I use them both."

Schroeder surprised those who thought she would prefer a House committee dealing with quality of life or women's issues by negotiating a seat on the powerful Arms Services Committee, headed by F. Edward Hébert. There she tried to expose what she viewed as the waste and folly of defense policies and to channel "saved" funds into social welfare programs.

Soon she appeared to threaten the long standing, good relationship between the committee and the Pentagon. She denounced their Military Procurement Authorization Bill as "frivolous," "a boon-doggle," and a "colossal waste of money." She chided those who thought that "killing an enemy fifteen times over makes us more secure than if we can kill him only five times over," and condemned her committee as "the Pentagon's lobby on the Hill." She accused the committee of being frightened of open debate on defense issues and challenged their logic in arguing either that "the Russians are doing it and therefore we must do it in order to avoid falling behind" or "the Russians are NOT doing it and therefore we must do it in order to stay ahead."

Her comments put her at odds with Hébert, who disliked having dissenting views aired in public, and he became openly critical of Schroeder. He once refused to approve her as a member of the U.S. delegation to a Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) disarmament conference, telling her, "I wouldn't send you to represent this committee at a dog fight," but she went after the rule requiring the chairman's approval and the rule was later dropped. Eventually Hébert was deposed and Schroeder claimed it as her greatest victory.

Schroeder was also active in women's and children's issues, attempting to eliminate gender inequities, introducing legislation providing funds for child-abuse centers, cosponsoring legislation to expand Head Start programs, and supporting year-round use of recreational facilities for poor children. As chairman of the National Task Force on Equal Rights for Women she called for federal payments for abortions. In March, 1985, she was a regular on news programs denouncing the violent tactics of anti-abortionists.

Although Schroeder believed some improvement had been made in women-related legislation, such as gains in the military and certain areas of credit, she felt that one of the most important issues of the 1980s was to solve problems such as pension and job inequities, Social Security, and other inequalities based on sex. She also believed it urgent that women become more politically active, although she was not optimistic that they would become office-holders in large numbers. Other crucial issues of the 1980s, she believed, were the continuing problems of environment, military expenditures, and the need to convince other countries to share more of their defense costs. In 1988 Schroeder was appointed chair of the Defense Burden Sharing Panel, a component of the House Armed Services Committee. Schroeder enthusiastically undertook a challenging cause: that of women and their participation in the military. In 1989, following the U.S. invasion of Panama, she introduced legislation which would afford women a greater chance of participation in all areas of the military

Other legislation introduced by Schroeder would also have a profound effect on the lives of American women and children. In 1993, the Breast and Cervical Cancer Mortality Prevention Act provided breast and cervical cancer screening to poor women and the National Child Protection Act provided for child care providers access to a national database of information on child abusers for the purpose of background checks. The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 was enacted to assist law enforcement professionals and victims rights organizations to fight rape and other forms of violent crime against women.

As a congresswoman Schroeder avoided the Washington social scene, preferring to be with her husband and children. She frequently returned to Colorado to report to her constituents. In 1987, however, she became more of a national figure as she travelled the country to see if she should become a candidate for president the following year. After five months of "testing" she decided not to enter the race.

The decision to retire from the House of Representatives came only after the 1994 Republican "House cleaning" that removed much of the power of the Democratic party within the House. She announced in 1995 that she would not seek another term, and she spent much of 1996 campaigning on behalf of President Bill Clinton and then turned to teaching and writing.

Further Reading

See Schroeder, Pat; Camp, Andrea; and Lipner, Robyn. Champion of the Great American Family (Random House, 1989).

Biographical data for Patricia Schroeder can be found in Esther Stineman's American Political Women. Additional materials concerning Schroeder's life and political activities are in Ilene Barth's "Congresswoman Pat Schroeder: She Calls Herself a Troublemaker," Ms. (June 1976); Norma L. Friedman's "Patricia Schroeder: Wife, Mother, Congresswoman - She Shows Us How," Vogue (November 1978); and Karen Elliott House's "That's No Pretty Young Thing … That's Congresswoman Pat Schroeder," Family Circle (July 1975).

This article is about the politician. For the wrestler, see Leilani Kai.

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (December 2007) (Find sources: Patricia Schroeder – news, books, scholar)

Patricia Schroeder
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Colorado's 1st district
In office 3 January 1973 – 3 January 1997
Preceded by	James McKevitt
Succeeded by	Diana DeGette
Born	July 30, 1940 (1940-07-30) (age 69) Portland, Oregon
Political party	Democratic
Profession	CEO of Association of American Publishers

Patricia Nell Scott "Pat" Schroeder (born July 30, 1940), American politician, was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from Colorado, serving from 1973 to 1997. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Colorado.

Contents 1 Early years 2 U.S. Government service 3 Publishing industry service 4 References 5 External links

Early years

Born in Portland, Oregon, she moved to Des Moines, Iowa with her family as a child. After graduating from Roosevelt High School in 1958 she left Des Moines and attended the University of Minnesota and majored in history. She graduated with a B.A. in 1961 and later earned a law degree from Harvard University in 1964. Moving to Denver, Colorado, she worked for the National Labor Relations Board from 1964 to 1966. She later worked for Planned Parenthood and taught in Denver's public schools.

U.S. Government service

In 1972, she won election for Congress in Colorado's first district, based in Denver, over freshman Republican incumbent James McKevitt. McKevitt, previously the Denver district attorney, had been the first Republican to represent the district, regarded as the most Democratic in the Rockies, since Dean M. Gillespie in 1947. Schroeder won by just over 8,000 votes, but was re-elected eleven more times without a contest nearly as close.

While in Congress, she became the first woman to serve on the House Armed Services Committee, and was a prime mover behind the Family and Medical Leave Act. She ran for President of the United States in 1988, before announcing her withdrawal in an emotional press conference on September 28, 1987. She was lampooned on Saturday Night Live by Nora Dunn, acting as Schroeder, repeatedly bursting into tears while moderating a Democratic primary debate. [1]

She is perhaps best known, however, for saying, of Ronald Reagan, "He has been perfecting the Teflon-coated presidency. He sees to it that nothing sticks to him." The characterization "Teflon President" has entered the American political lexicon.^{[citation needed]} She did not seek a thirteenth term in 1996, and was succeeded by state house minority whip Diana DeGette, a fellow Democrat.

Publishing industry service

Schroeder was named president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers in 1997. She has been a vocal proponent of stronger copyright law, supporting the government in Eldred v. Ashcroft and opposing Google's plan to digitize books and post limited content online. She has publicly criticized libraries for distributing electronic content without compensation to publishers, writers and others in the publishing industry, telling the Washington Post "They aren't rich...they have mortgages."^[1] At the same time, she has tried to make the publishing industry more socially responsible, cooperating with organizations for the blind and others with reading difficulties to help make materials more accessible to them, particularly by encouraging publishers to release books so that nonprofit groups can transfer them to electronic formats. She has also sat on the panel of judges for the PEN/Newman's Own Award, a $25,000 award designed to recognize the protection of free speech as it applies to the written word.

Schroeder recently stirred some controversy when she referred to liberals as those reading more books than conservatives. Her statement was relatively unflattering about conservative readers in her explanation: "The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: 'No, don't raise my taxes, no new taxes,'" she said in a recent interview. "It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes' on every page." Schroeder was commenting on an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that found people who consider themselves liberals are more prodigious book readers than conservatives.

She said liberals tend to be policy wonks who "can't say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion."

References

1. ^ "The Former Congresswoman Is Battling For America's Publishers", Washington Post, February 7, 2001

External links

• The Association of American Publishers

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Voting record maintained by The Washington Post

United States House of Representatives
Preceded by James McKevitt	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Colorado's 1st congressional district 1973–1997	Succeeded by Diana DeGette

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