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Henry Clay
Born
'The Great Compromiser' built the Missouri Compromise of 1820 as Speaker and, as a senator, the Compromise Tariff of 1833 that ended the nullification crisis and the Compromise of 1850, an omnibus package that Stephen Douglas finally passed in separate bills after Clay's version failed. Clay's method, bundling concessions to North and South, postponed civil war for decades. The counterargument is moral: each compromise preserved and extended slavery, and the 1850 deal included the Fugitive Slave Act.
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George W. Norris
Born
A Nebraska Republican progressive who later sat as an independent, Norris wrote the Twentieth Amendment, ratified in 1933, which ended long 'lame duck' sessions by moving inaugurations and the start of Congress to January. He fought for a decade to keep the Muscle Shoals dams in public hands, which became the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933, and co-sponsored the Norris-La Guardia Act of 1932 limiting injunctions against strikes. He worked across party lines to get all three.
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Robert F. Wagner
Born
The New York Democrat was the New Deal's legislative engine in the Senate. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, still known as the Wagner Act, guaranteed private-sector workers the right to organise and bargain collectively and created the National Labor Relations Board; he also co-sponsored the Social Security Act and the Housing Act of 1937. Roosevelt was initially lukewarm on the labour bill, and Wagner drove it through. Employers' criticism of the act's one-sidedness led to the Taft-Hartley amendments of 1947.
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Arthur Vandenberg
Born
A pre-war isolationist, the Michigan Republican announced his conversion in a 1945 Senate speech and, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in a Republican Congress, delivered votes for a Democratic president: ratification of the UN Charter, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan in 1948 and the Vandenberg Resolution that paved the way for NATO. His principle that 'politics stops at the water's edge' became shorthand for bipartisan foreign policy. Critics on the right saw it as surrender to an expanding executive.
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Robert A. Taft
Born
'Mr Republican' co-wrote the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which banned closed shops, allowed states to pass right-to-work laws and let the president seek injunctions against strikes; Congress passed it over Truman's veto, and it still shapes American labour law. Less remembered, Taft also co-sponsored the Housing Act of 1949, which funded public housing and slum clearance. Unions called Taft-Hartley a 'slave labour bill', and its right-to-work provision is still the central fight in labour politics.
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Margaret Chase Smith
Born
The Maine Republican, the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress, had already pushed through the Women's Armed Services Integration Act of 1948 as a House member, giving women permanent status in the military. In the Senate her 1950 'Declaration of Conscience' speech, co-signed by six Republican colleagues, was the first major challenge from within his own party to Joseph McCarthy's methods. Her influence came less from bill-writing than from setting limits others then followed.
More about Margaret Chase Smith7
Lyndon B. Johnson
Born
Before the presidency, Johnson was the most effective Senate majority leader of the century, using 'the treatment' of personal persuasion, committee assignments and a mastery of rules. His landmark was the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first since Reconstruction, which he passed by weakening it enough to avoid a Southern filibuster. Liberals called it a sham; Johnson argued that breaking the filibuster's hold mattered more than the contents. It created the Civil Rights Commission and the Justice Department's civil rights division.
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Everett Dirksen
Born
The Republican minority leader from Illinois delivered the votes that broke the months-long Southern filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the first successful cloture vote on civil rights. Dirksen negotiated amendments in his office that let conservative Republicans support the bill, then declared on the floor that it was 'an idea whose time has come'. He did the same for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Without his bargaining the bills would have lacked the two-thirds then needed for cloture.
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Hubert Humphrey
Born
As Democratic whip, Humphrey was floor manager of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, running a daily organisation to keep enough senators present to defeat quorum calls and courting Dirksen patiently rather than attacking him. His earlier proposals for health insurance for the elderly and a volunteer peace corps became Medicare and the Peace Corps. Since 1948, when he pushed a civil rights plank through the Democratic convention, he had been the party's leading civil rights legislator. Vietnam later overshadowed this record.
More about Hubert Humphrey10
J. William Fulbright
Born
Fulbright's 1946 amendment funding international educational exchange from surplus war property created the Fulbright Program, which has since sent hundreds of thousands of students and scholars abroad. As Foreign Relations chairman his televised 1966 hearings on Vietnam gave respectability to opposition to the war. The counterargument is his domestic record: the Arkansas senator signed the Southern Manifesto against school desegregation and voted against the Civil Rights Acts, which has prompted a long debate at the University of Arkansas over his statue.
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Frank Church
Born
The Idaho Democrat chaired the 1975 to 1976 select committee that exposed CIA assassination plots, the FBI's COINTELPRO surveillance of activists and NSA interception of Americans' telegrams. The Church Committee's findings led to the permanent Senate and House intelligence committees and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which required court warrants for domestic intelligence wiretaps. Critics argued it damaged intelligence capabilities; supporters point to every later surveillance debate starting from its framework.
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Ted Kennedy
Born
Over 47 years Kennedy became the Senate's most prolific legislator, and much of it was done with Republicans: the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Children's Health Insurance Program with Orrin Hatch, the Kennedy-Kassebaum health insurance portability law, No Child Left Behind with George W. Bush and the 1965 immigration reform he managed as a freshman. His Massachusetts staff were renowned for drafting. The Chappaquiddick incident of 1969 ended his presidential prospects and remains part of his record.
More about Ted Kennedy13
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Born
A social scientist turned New York senator, Moynihan sat on the 1983 Greenspan Commission whose compromise on payroll taxes and retirement ages kept Social Security solvent for decades, and he shaped the 1991 transport law that let states spend highway money on public transit. His 1965 report on the Black family, written as an official, provoked fierce criticism. He also opposed Clinton's 1996 welfare law, predicting harm to children, a warning that is still debated.
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Robert Byrd
Born
Byrd served over 51 years and became the Senate's guardian of its own rules and the power of the purse. The 'Byrd rule' of 1985 limits budget reconciliation, which cannot be filibustered, to provisions that directly affect spending or revenue, and it shapes every major tax and health bill passed that way. As Appropriations chairman he steered spending to West Virginia on a vast scale. He had been a Ku Klux Klan organiser in his youth and filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which he later called his greatest mistake.
More about Robert Byrd15
Bob Dole
Born
Dole, a disabled Second World War veteran, was the Republican leader whose votes passed the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and earlier he worked with George McGovern to expand food stamps and school meals. He served on the 1983 Social Security commission and helped pass the rescue package. He was known as a dealmaker who could deliver his caucus, a skill that faded from the Senate after his era. His partisan edge, seen in his 1976 vice-presidential debate, was the other side of the record.
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Orrin Hatch
Born
The Utah conservative's name is on two laws that reshaped American health care: the Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984, which created the modern generic drug approval system, and the Children's Health Insurance Program of 1997, co-written with Ted Kennedy. He also co-wrote the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. As Judiciary chairman he shaped judicial confirmations for decades. His friendship with Kennedy is the classic case of ideological opponents legislating together.
More about Orrin Hatch17
Sam Nunn
Born
The Georgia Democrat was a central figure in the Armed Services Committee's work on the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, which reorganised the military command structure around joint operations, and co-wrote the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programme of 1991 with Richard Lugar, which paid to secure and dismantle former Soviet nuclear weapons. His opposition to allowing gay people to serve openly helped produce 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' in 1993, the part of his record that has aged worst.
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Richard Lugar
Born
The Indiana Republican's partnership with Sam Nunn produced the 1991 programme that funded the deactivation of more than 7,500 nuclear warheads in the former Soviet Union, among the most consequential arms control efforts of the era, achieved through appropriations rather than treaties. As Foreign Relations chairman he also broke with Reagan in 1986 to back sanctions on apartheid South Africa, overriding a presidential veto. He lost a 2012 primary to a challenger who attacked his bipartisanship.
More about Richard Lugar19
Chuck Grassley
Born
The Iowa Republican, in the Senate since 1981, wrote the 1986 amendments to the False Claims Act that revived its whistleblower provisions; the law has since recovered tens of billions of dollars in fraud against the government, much of it from healthcare and defence contractors. He also championed the Whistleblower Protection Act and oversight of the executive by presidents of both parties. As Judiciary chairman he blocked Merrick Garland's Supreme Court nomination in 2016, the episode critics cite against him.
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John McCain
Born
McCain's Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, written with the Democrat Russ Feingold, banned unlimited 'soft money' donations to national parties; the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision of 2010 later undid much of its effect on outside spending. He also wrote the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act banning cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners, drawing on his own torture as a prisoner of war. In 2017 his vote sank the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the last major act of a famously independent career.
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Dianne Feinstein
Born
Feinstein wrote the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, and as chair of the Intelligence Committee she drove the six-year investigation into the CIA's post-9/11 detention and interrogation programme, publishing its damning summary in 2014 over the agency's resistance. The report led to the 2015 amendment, co-sponsored with McCain, restricting interrogation to the Army Field Manual. Her support for broad NSA surveillance put her at odds with civil liberties groups.
More about Dianne Feinstein22
Mitch McConnell
Born
The longest-serving party leader in Senate history, McConnell's influence is procedural rather than legislative. He blocked Merrick Garland in 2016, removed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in 2017 and confirmed three justices and over 200 federal judges in Trump's first term, reshaping the courts for a generation. He also passed the 2017 tax cuts through budget reconciliation. To supporters it was disciplined institutional strategy; to critics it hollowed out Senate norms. He did not seek re-election in 2026.
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