U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar is the first woman elected to represent the State of Minnesota in the United States Senate. Throughout her public service, Senator Klobuchar has always embraced the values she learned growing up in Minnesota. Her grandfather worked 1500 feet underground in the iron ore mines of Northern Minnesota. Her father, Jim, was a newspaperman, and her mother, Rose, was an elementary school teacher who continued teaching until she was 70.
Senator Klobuchar has built a reputation of putting partisanship aside to help strengthen the economy and support families, workers, and businesses. In 2019, an analysis by Vanderbilt University ranked her as the “most effective” Democratic senator in the 115th Congress.
The first responsibility of government is to protect its citizens—not only from foreign and domestic threats to our nation’s security, but also from crime, unsafe products, and unscrupulous business practices.
Keeping Minnesotans safe means a commitment to consumer protection. Consumers deserve products that have been tested and meet strong health and safety standards. However, as global commerce has increased, public concern has grown over the safety of many products imported from abroad, whether they are toys or charm bracelets, seafood or pet food, or tires or toothpaste. We need to ensure that the agencies responsible for protecting consumers—such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Food and Drug Administration—have the necessary authority and resources to perform their important duties.
In addition to keeping unsafe products off our shores and out of our stores, we must also remain vigilant in rooting out fraudulent or deceptive practices that impact family pocketbooks, especially when consumers are more vulnerable during crises like the coronavirus pandemic. Our financial and telecommunications markets have undergone rapid changes in recent years. The housing market saw the emergence of predatory lenders that offered risky loans to homeowners and evaded the traditional financial safeguards meant to protect consumers. And the increasing integration of wireless and internet technologies into our lives has resulted in growing concerns over billing, privacy, and security.
There has also been a rise in major data breaches that have exposed the personal information of millions of consumers. The changing nature of technology and increased availability of data have created new opportunities for hackers to commit cyberattacks and steal sensitive information from consumers, companies, and the government. We need better methods for detecting breaches and preventing these attacks from happening in the first place.
As Minnesota’s U.S. senator, I will continue to focus on these priorities:
As Minnesota’s U.S. senator, I’ve been fighting to strengthen our commitment to consumer protection: