Everything about Tom Lantos totally explained
Thomas Peter Lantos (
February 1 1928 –
February 11 2008) was a
Democratic member of the
United States House of Representatives from 1981 until his death, representing the northern two-thirds of
San Mateo County and a small portion of southwest
San Francisco. Lantos had announced in early January 2008 that he wouldn't run for reelection because of
cancer of the esophagus, but died before finishing his term. Lantos was the only
Holocaust survivor to have served in the US Congress.
Personal and family life
Born as
Lantos Tamás Péter to a
Jewish family in
Budapest,
Hungary, Lantos was part of a
resistance movement against the
Nazis during the
German occupation of Hungary. In his floor speeches, he sometimes referred to himself as one of the few living members of Congress who had fought against
fascism.
He sought refuge in a safe house established by
Raoul Wallenberg; in 1981 Lantos sponsored a bill making Wallenberg an
Honorary Citizen of the United States. He moved to the United States in 1947, and though he became fluent in English, he retained a marked
Hungarian accent for the rest of his life.
Lantos considered himself a
secular Jew
Lantos and his wife Annette have two daughters, Annette and
Katrina, and 17 grandchildren. Lantos' wife is a member of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Annette Lantos is a first cousin of the sisters
Zsa Zsa,
Eva, and
Magda Gabor. Katrina, who married
ambassador and former U.S. Representative from
New Hampshire Richard Swett, was a candidate for Congress in New Hampshire, running for the House of Representatives in 2002 against
Charlie Bass and in 2008 for the U.S. Senate against
John Sununu. His daughter Annette was married to Timber Dick, "an independent businessman in Colorado," until Dick's death on
April 10,
2008 from burns suffered in an automobile accident.
Lantos appeared in the
Academy Award-winning film
The Last Days, a documentary of the Holocaust's effect on Hungarian Jews, and "To Bear Witness", another documentary.
Lantos often brought a small white terrier named Mackó (; "little bear" in Hungarian) to his Capitol Hill office. Lantos' previous dog, a small poodle named Gigi, was also a fixture in Washington.
Tom Lantos was an honorary member of the
International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.
Political positions
Lantos was a strong supporter of the
Iraq War from the start, but from 2006 onward made increasingly critical statements about the conduct of the war, and as the
chairman of the
United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs he held 20 oversight hearings on the war in 2007. (See separate section below about the war in Iraq.)
Lantos was a member of the
Congressional Progressive Caucus and repeatedly called for reforms to the nation's
health-care system, reduction of the
national budget deficit and the
national debt, repeal of the
Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, and has opposed
Social Security privatization efforts. He supported
same-sex marriage rights and
marijuana for medical use, was a strong proponent of
gun control and was adamantly
pro-choice.
Lantos was a well-known advocate on behalf of the
environment, receiving consistently high ratings from the
League of Conservation Voters and other
environmental organizations for his legislative record. His long-standing efforts to protect open space brought thousands of acres under the protection of the
Golden Gate National Recreation Area, including Mori Point, Sweeney Ridge and — most recently — Rancho Corral de Tierra, which will keep its watersheds and delicate habitats free from development permanently. In 2005 he opposed an effort to expand public use of the
Farallon Islands, a protected wildlife haven.
Lantos consistently championed local
transportation projects that need federal funds and, given his seniority in Congress, proved successful at delivering this support.
He also championed human rights. For example, Yahoo turned over the email records of two pro-democracy dissidents to the Chinese government that allowed it to trace them. One was given ten years in a Chinese dungeon. Lantos had Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang testify at a congressional hearing with the weeping mother of the political prisoner seated directly behind him.
Foreign affairs issues
Lantos served as the chairman of the
United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Through its more than 20 years of work, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus — of which Lantos was co-chair with Representative
Frank Wolf — has covered a wide range of human rights issues, speaking out for Christians who want to practice their faith in
Saudi Arabia and
Sudan, fighting for Tibetans to be able to retain their culture and religion in Tibet and advocating for other oppressed minorities worldwide. Lantos’ efforts to protect religious freedom in 2004 resulted in a bill to halt the global spread of
antisemitism.
Lantos was involved with his colleagues on the International Relations Committee on many decisions that affect other aspects of
American foreign policy. Lantos spoke out strongly against waste, fraud and abuse in the multi-billion dollar U.S. reconstruction program in Iraq, and has warned that the U.S. may lose Afghanistan to the
Taliban if the
Bush Administration fails to take decisive action to halt the current decline in political stability there.
Lantos, then the ranking Democrat on the International Relations Committee, tried to disrupt U.S. military aid to Egypt. Lantos argued that the Egyptian military had made insufficient efforts to stop the flow of money and weapons across the Egyptian border to
Hamas in Gaza, and hadn't contributed troops to internationally-supported peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Lantos was a strong advocate of
Israel
1991 Persian Gulf War
Lantos was a strong supporter of the 1991
Persian Gulf War. During the run-up to the war, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, of which Lantos was co-chairman, hosted a young
Kuwaiti woman identified only as "
Nurse Nayirah", who told of horrific abuses by Iraqi soldiers, including the killing of Kuwaiti babies by taking them out of their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold floor of the hospital. These alleged atrocities figured prominently in the rhetoric at the time about Iraqi abuses in Kuwait.
The girl's account was later challenged by independent human rights monitors. "Nurse Nayirah" later turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. MacArthur suggested that Lantos may have materially benefited from his having accommodated Nayirah. Nayirah was later revealed to have connections to a lobbying firm in the employ of a
Kuwaiti activist group, and her story has since come to be regarded as baseless propaganda. In later hearings on the war, Lantos continued his enthusiastic support. At one point he was confronted by witnesses who questioned the likelihood of enthusiastic Baghdadis welcoming the invading Americans; Lantos called this a kind of racism, to suggest the Iraqis might be so ungrateful.
Starting in early 2006, Lantos has distanced himself from the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, making critical statements at hearings, on the House floor and in published media interviews about the conduct of the war. During hearings of the House International Relations Committee, where he was then the ranking member, Lantos repeatedly praised the investigative work of the office of the Special Inspector of Iraq Reconstruction General Stuart Bowen, which uncovered evidence of waste, fraud and abuse in the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars intended to help secure and rebuild Iraq.
Lantos was an immediate and consistent critic of the troop surge advocated by President Bush. On the night in January 2007 that Bush announced his plan, Lantos responded, "I oppose the so-called surge that constitutes the centerpiece of the President's plan. Our efforts in Iraq are a mess, and throwing in more troops won't improve it." And during a joint House hearing on
September 10 2007 featuring General
David Petraeus and Ambassador
Ryan Crocker, Lantos said, "The Administration’s myopic policies in Iraq have created a fiasco. Is it any wonder that on the subject of Iraq, more and more Americans have little confidence in this Administration? We can not take ANY of this Administration's assertions on Iraq at face value anymore, and no amount of charts or statistics will improve its credibility. This isn't a knock on you, General Petraeus, or on you, Ambassador Crocker. But the fact remains, gentlemen, that the Administration has sent you here today to convince the members of these two Committees and the Congress that victory is at hand. With all due respect to you, I must say … I don't buy it." At the same hearing, Lantos drew comparisons between some of the current U.S. activities in Iraq to U.S. support two decades ago of Islamic militants in Afghanistan: "America shouldn't be in the business of arming, training and funding both sides of a religious civil war in Iraq. Did the Administration learn nothing from our country’s actions in Afghanistan two decades ago, when by supporting Islamist militants against the Soviet Union, we helped pave the way for the rise of the Taliban? Why are we now repeating the short-sighted patterns of the past?"
Darfur
On
April 28 2006, Lantos and four other Democratic U.S. Representatives (
Sheila Jackson Lee,
Jim McGovern,
Jim Moran, and
John Olver), along with six other activists, took part in a
civil disobedience action in front of the
Sudanese embassy in
Washington, D.C. They were protesting the role of the
Sudanese government in carrying out
genocide in the
Darfur conflict and were arrested for
disorderly conduct.
Hungarian minorities
Tom Lantos stood up for the rights of
Hungarian minorities several times as a member of the US House of Representatives. In a 2007 letter he asked
Robert Fico, the Prime Minister of Slovakia to distance themselves from the
Benes decrees, a reasonable process in the
Hedvig Malina case, and to treat members of the
Hungarian minority as equal. He indirectly blamed the Slovak government for ethnically motivated attacks on Hungarians because the country's governing coalition included ultra-nationalist parties.
Lebanon
On
August 27 2006, at the
Israeli Foreign Ministry building in
Israel, Lantos said he'd block a
foreign aid package promised by President
George W. Bush to
Lebanon and free the funds only when Beirut agreed to the deployment of international troops on the border with
Syria. Lantos was meeting at the time with
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni after talks with
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Planned Retirement and Death
On
January 2 2008, Lantos announced he wouldn't run for a 15th term in the House due to being diagnosed with esophagus cancer, but planned to complete his final term. Lantos was quoted as saying, "It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a Member of Congress," he said. "I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country." Lantos died on February 11, 2008 of complications from esophageal cancer before finishing his term. A
special election was held to fill his seat on April 8, 2008 and was won by former
State Senator Jackie Speier who Lantos had endorsed as his successor..
Shortly after his death,
Roy Blunt, the House Republican Whip stated that "Chairman Lantos will be remembered as a man of uncommon integrity and sincere moral conviction -- and a public servant who never wavered in his pursuit of a better, freer and more religiously tolerant world."
Congressional scorecards
See also
Project Vote Smart provides the following results from congressional scorecards.
Controversies
During a 1996 Congressional inquiry into the
"Filegate" scandal, Rep. Lantos told witness Craig Livingstone that "with an infinitely more distinguished public record than yours,
Admiral Boorda committed suicide when he may have committed a minor mistake." Boorda, the
Chief of Naval Operations, had recently taken his own life after his right to wear
Combat V decorations had been questioned. Lantos was criticized by some (including fellow Congressman
Joe Scarborough) who interpreted the remark as a suggestion that Livingstone too should kill himself.
On
May 3 2000, Lantos was involved in an automobile accident while driving on Capitol Hill. Lantos drove over a young boy's foot and then failed to stop his vehicle. He was later fined over the incident for inattentive driving.
In 2002, Lantos, who was on the House Committee on International Affairs, took Colette Avital, a
Labor Party member of the Israeli
Knesset, by the hand and, according to Ha'aretz, tried to reassure her with these words: "My dear Colette, don't worry. You won't have any problem with
Saddam. We'll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we'll install a pro-Western dictator, who will be good for us and for you." He later denied saying this, but Avital confirmed it, according to Ben Terrall, an adviser to Maad H. Abu-Ghazalah, a Libertarian Party candidate who ran against Lantos that year.
In
June 2007, Lantos called former German Chancellor
Gerhard Schröder a "political prostitute" at the dedication ceremony of the
Victims of Communism Memorial, which caused a political backlash from the German government. Lantos was referring to Schröder's
ties to energy business in
Russia, and remarked that this appellation would offend prostitutes.
In
October 2007, Dutch parliament members said Lantos insulted them while discussing the War on Terrorism by stating that the
Netherlands had to help the United States, because they liberated them in the Second World War, while adding that the upheaval over
Guantanamo in Europe was bigger than over
Auschwitz at the time.
Electoral history
Further Information
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