The Honorable Barbara B. Kennelly, Member of the U.S. House representing
the First Congressional District of Connecticut from 1982-1999.
Congresswoman Kennelly began her political career when she was appointed to fill a
vacancy on the Hartford Court of Common Council. She was elected to the post the
subsequent year and served for a total of four years. She later was elected to the
post of Connecticut Secretary of State. In 1982 she won a special election to fill the
seat vacated by the death of Congressman William Cotter, in a Congressional District
that encompasses Hartford and more than 15 towns in central Connecticut. The
largest employers were major insurance corporations, a defense contractor, and
state government agencies. She served a total of nine terms in the House.
Barbara Ann Bailey was born in Hartford, Connecticut, daughter of John Bailey, a
Connecticut political boss and state Democratic leader and Chairman of the
Democratic National Committee in the 1960s. He was widely credited with being one
of those who engineered John F. Kennedy’s presidential nomination and victory in
1960. Her husband, Jim Kennelly, was speaker of the Connecticut House.
Congresswoman Kennelly drew on her fathers’ advice for working within the existing
power structure. To fit in as one of a small number of women elected to the House at
that time, she polished her golf game in order to mingle with the mostly male
membership. Her efforts paid dividends. Kennelly quickly established herself as a
serious legislator and set a number of firsts for a woman Member. In her first full
term during the 98th Congress she was assigned to the influential Ways and Means
Committee, where she served on the Subcommittees on Human Resources and
Select Revenue Measures. House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill also named
Congresswoman Kennelly to the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which
made Committee appointments and set the broad outlines of the party’s legislative
agenda.
In 1987, she became the first woman to serve on the Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence and to chair one of its Subcommittees. Two years later, she was
appointed Chief Deputy Majority Whip, the first woman named to that position.
During the 103rd Congress, Congresswoman Kennelly captured the vice chairmanship
of the Democratic Caucus. At the time, it made her the highest ranking woman ever
in the Democratic Party leadership.
The seat on the Ways and Means Committee gave Congresswoman Kennelly a
powerful post from which to tend to her district and other longtime legislative
interests that had national reach: tax reform, child support, housing credits and
welfare reform. The Ways and Means assignment was particularly important for the
insurance industry which resided in her district and she helped pass measures that
both lowered its tax burden and minimized the impact of new tax regulations. In the
100th Congress, over the wishes of powerful Ways and Means Chairman Dan
Rostenkowski, Kennelly presented and won passage for a scaled-back plan to
regulate tax-free earnings on premium payments. A self-admitted “policy wonk,” she
pushed legislation to reduce the vesting period for pension plans, to allow the
terminally ill to collect life insurance benefits early and tax-free, to increase the
minimum wage, and to defeat a bill that would have denied illegal immigrants a
public education.
Kennelly supported women’s rights as a member of the Women’s Caucus. In 1983,
she introduced the Child Support Enforcement Amendment, which required states to
withhold earnings if child support payments were more than a month late. The House
and Senate unanimously passed the bill in 1984. Kennelly again supported
strengthening laws against “deadbeat” parents who were delinquent on their
payments in the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill. She also used her seat on Ways and
Means to help preserve the childcare federal tax eduction and to expand the
standard deduction for single parents.
Kennelly chose not to run for re-election in 1998, mounting an unsuccessful bid for
the governor’s office in Connecticut. In 1999, President Bill Clinton appointed
Kennelly Associate Commissioner and Counselor to the Commissioner at the Social
Security Administration, overseeing the office of retirement policy. Subsequently,
she served as an advisor and lobbyist for the law firm of Baker & Hostetler. From
2002 to 2011 Kennelly served as President and CEO of the National Committee to
Preserve Social Security and Medicare, a multi-million dollar national advocacy group
for seniors. She served on the Policy Committee for the 2005 White House
Conference on Aging, and in 2006 she was appointed to the Social Security Advisory
Board by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Congresswoman Kennelly received a B.A. in Economics from Trinity University,
Washington, D.C. She earned a certificate from the Harvard Business School on
completion of the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration and a
Master’s Degree in Government from Trinity College in Hartford, CT.