Todd Kirkpatrick

Todd Kirkpatrick (born August 7, 1944) is an American politician and economist who is currently the senior United States Senator from Oklahoma since 2003. He was previously the Oklahoma Secretary of Finance and Revenue and the Oklahoma Director of State Finance from 1995 to 2003. He was a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 2016 election.

Early life and early career
Todd Kirkpatrick was born on August 7, 1944 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His father was a minister and farmer. He earned his bachelor's degree in economics from Oklahoma State University (OSU) in 1967 and received his M.B.A. from the University of Oklahoma in 1970. He was a consultant for the World Bank from 1971 to 1981 and Senior International Advisor to Goldman Sachs from 1981 to 1994.

Oklahoma State Government
Republican Oklahoma Governor David Rowland appointed Kirkpatrick as his budget director in April 1995. In that position, Kirkpatrick was responsible for overseeing the developing and implementation of the Rowland's annual state budget. Concurrent with his service as State Finance Director, Rowland appointed Kirkpatrick as Oklahoma Secretary of Finance and Revenue. As Finance Secretary, Kirkpatrick was responsible for developing Governor Rowland's economic and tax policies as well as providing oversight to the State's finance agencies, including the Oklahoma Tax Commission, the Oklahoma State Banking Department, the Oklahoma Department of Consumer Credit, the Oklahoma Department of Securities, and the Oklahoma Department of Insurance. He served for the eight years of the Rowland administration from 1995 to 2003.

United States Senate
Kirkpatrick was elected to the United States Senate in the 2002 election facing Democratic nominee, Congressman Stuart Collins of Oklahoma's 2nd congressional district. Kirkpatrick defeated Collins by 57%–43%. He was sworn in on January 3, 2003. He supported congressional approval for military action in the Middle East in 2004 and a bipartisan energy policy bill in 2006 known as the Energy Security, Affordability, and Reliability Act of 2006. Senator Kirkpatrick was a leading co-sponsor of the National Right to Work Legality Defense Act with fellow Republican Senator Bruce Owens III of Nebraska in 2007. If the bill had become law it would have prohibited union security agreements between employers and workers' unions nationwide.

Senator Kirkpatrick as well as the unified Republican caucus opposed the National Healthcare Act of 2010 that failed in the Republican-controlled House that passed in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Kirkpatrick has stated he would support a free-market approach to health care, including tax deductions for medical expenses. He opposes federal regulations discouraging businesses from providing coverage. He supports Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and changing Medicare from a publicly run social insurance program with a defined benefit, for which there is no limit to the government’s expenses, into a program that offers "premium support" for enrollees. This position was articulated through a bill known as the Medicare Reform and Premium Support Act that Kirkpatrick introduced as the ranking member of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care in 2010.

Senator Kirkpatrick has long been at the forefront of the fiscal policymaking of the Senate Republican Caucus and has long been described by colleagues on both sides of the aisle as one of the Senate’s most vocal deficit hawks, advocating for severe cuts in government spending and well as the abolishment of taxes such as the estate tax. He has long been a critic of earmarks and pork barrel spending by both Democrats and Republicans stating that those practices were “Patronage, fiscally irresponsible if not blatantly corrupt”.

Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee
After the Republicans won control of the Senate during the 2014 midterms, Kirkpatrick became Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. As Chairman he has continued his reputation as a deficit hawk and was key in the the the Republican Party's budget proposal for the United States federal government in the fiscal year 2015. He has advocated the abolishment or consolidation of the Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, and Energy to reduce federal spending. He has also supported the replacement of all federal income taxes (including the alternative minimum tax, corporate income taxes, and capital gains taxes), payroll taxes (including Social Security and Medicare taxes), gift taxes, and estate taxes with a single broad national consumption tax on retail sales as outlined in the Republican economic proposal known as the Fair Taxation and Deficit Reduction Act.

2016 Presidential Campaign
As early as 2013, Kirkpatrick was widely expected to run for the presidency in 2016. On March 14, 2013, he gave the keynote speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington DC, where he won the 2016 Presidential straw poll. He went on to win the straw poll for the next two years as well, leading to some considering Kirkpatrick to be a front runner for the nomination, although CPAC attendees are typically considered younger and more libertarian-minded than average Republican voters.

On March 23, 2015, Kirkpatrick announced his 2016 presidential candidacy for the GOP primaries and caucuses, in a morning speech delivered at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. He was the first announced major Republican presidential candidate for the 2016 campaign. During the primary campaign, his base of support was mainly among social conservatives, though he had crossover appeal to other factions within his party, including in particular libertarian conservatives.

During his campaign Senator Kirkpatrick positioned himself as a conservative firebrand supporting staunch socially and fiscally conservative viewpoints. His campaign platform included support for constitutional amendments to make flag burning illegal, ban same-sex marriage, and require the federal government to have a balanced budget. He also supports amending the Immigration and Nationality Act to allow only the immediate family of legal immigrants (not extended family members) priority consideration in the immigration process, congressional term limits, privacy reform, and a single broad national consumption tax on retail sales. He believes that legal personhood begins at fertilization and that abortion should be banned under all circumstances. During the primaries Kirkpatrick was highly critical of and supported abolishing the Department of Education, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Department of Energy. He has called for the decentralization of education policy to the states along with school vouchers, the transfer of the Department of Energy’s responsibilities to the Department of the Interior, and has stated that “HUD and the Federal Housing Administration walk a fine line between fair housing and free speech. The FHA is also diverting housing stock from first-time homebuyers, the very group it was formed to serve”.

Senator Kirkpatrick won fifteen contests and took 47.7% of the popular vote, making him the runner up for the nomination behind nominee, Governor Don Delaney of Missouri. After losing the Indiana primary on May 3, 2016 he became mathematically disqualified from achieving a majority of delegates prior to the first convention vote, he suspended his campaign the same night. Kirkpatrick endorsed Delaney and served as a senior economic adviser to the Delaney campaign. His name was floated for Vice President, Treasury Secretary, and Director of the Office of Management and Budget in a potential Delaney administration. Governor Carter Soto of Florida was chosen as the Republican nominee for Vice President.