For 18 years, Alan K. Simpson represented the State of Wyoming in the United States Senate. As Assistant Majority Leader for ten of those years, he was an influential member of the body's Republican leadership. Partisanship aside, he was noted throughout his service for independent thinking, personal integrity and for a dry sense of humor that evaporated pretension on both sides of the aisle. One of his proudest achievements in the Senate was the passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act -- the Simpson-Mazzoli bill -- which combined improved border security with a program for legally hiring temporary guest workers and a means for undocumented workers and their families to pursue legal residence and citizenship. Since leaving the Senate in 1997, Alan Simpson has served as Director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In 2010, he was appointed by President Obama to lead a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Along with his co-chair, former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, he produced a report that was widely praised for its realistic approach to restructuring the finances of the United States. He continues to practice law, alongside his two sons, with the family firm in Cody, Wyoming.
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