User Profile for Sen. Jeff Merkley (jmerkley)

Bio: U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley is the son of a millwright and the first in his family to attend college. After earning an undergraduate degree from Stanford and a graduate degree in public policy at Princeton, he worked as a national security analyst at the Pentagon and at the Congressional Budget Office. In 1991, Merkley returned to Oregon to lead Portland's Habitat for Humanity. He entered the Oregon House of Representatives in 1998 and became Speaker of the House in 2007. Merkley was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2008. He serves on the Environment and Public Works Committee; the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; the Banking, Housing and Urban Development Committee; and the Budget Committee.

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