TopVet: Warren B. Rudman, Economic Legislator

Warren B. Rudman served in the Army as a combat platoon leader and company commander during the Korean War. He was wounded in action. His service, he told The New York Times, changed him forever.

Mr. Rudman, now a partner in the international law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, went on to a distinguished career in politics. Elected to two terms in the Senate from New Hampshire, he served on the Select Ethics, Appropriations, Intelligence, and Iran-Contra committees, among others. A voice of moderation, he established a record of independence, refusing to accept out-of-state donations from political action committees.

With his Senatorial colleagues Phil Gramm and Ernest Hollings, he sponsored the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Reduction Control Act of 1985. Popularly known as Gramm-Rudman, this historic legislation imposed discipline and accountability on the chaotic budget process to help reduce the then burgeoning federal deficit. He also shepherded David Souter through the political gauntlet to his seat on the Supreme Court. Mr. Rudman’s account of his career in politics is recounted in his book, Combat: Twelve Years in the U. S. Senate, published in 1996 by Random House.

Mr. Rudman served as New Hampshire’s Attorney General from 1970-76 and, in 1975, was elected president of the National Association of Attorneys General. He is a co-founder of The Concord Coalition, an organization established in 1992 as a grassroots movement to address the nation’s fiscal crisis. He has also served as chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, vice chairman of the Commission on Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community, and as special advisor to the Secretary of Defense on Gulf War illness issues. He co-chaired Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign.

Mr. Rudman is a director of the Chubb Corporation, Collins & Aikman, Dreyfus, Prime Succession, Raytheon, Allied Waste, and Boston Scientific; a trustee of Valley Forge Military Academy and The Brookings Institution; and a member of the senior advisory committee of the Institute of Politics of the Kennedy School at Harvard. Born in 1930, Mr. Rudman received a Bachelor of Science degree from Syracuse University in 1952. Following his stint in the Army, he earned his law degree from Boston College Law School in 1960 and began practicing law in his hometown, Nashua.