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| Affiliation | Democratic |
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1999-01-01 |
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| Name | Gerald D. "Jerry" Kleczka |
| Address | 3268 South 9th St.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | [Link] |
| Born |
November 26, 1943
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| Died | October 08, 2017
(73 years)
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Modifed | RBH
Oct 13, 2017 03:43pm |
| Tags |
Caucasian - Polish - Married - Air Force - Catholic - Christian - Straight -
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| Info | Congressman Jerry Kleczka represents Wisconsin's 4th Congressional District, consisting of parts of Milwaukee and Waukesha counties in southeastern Wisconsin. He was first elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly at age 24, and in 1974 he was elected to the State Senate where he later assumed leadership posts as Assistant Majority Leader and co-chair of the Legislature's powerful Joint Finance Committee.
In 1984 Kleczka was elected to Congress in a special election made necessary by the death of Rep. Clement Zablocki. Kleczka has won 10 consecutive races and was re-elected November 5, 2002 with 87% of the vote.
In the House of Representatives, Kleczka serves on the House Ways & Means Committee and its Subcommittee on Health, and the House Budget Committee. While on that panel, he has worked to push through major health care and spending reforms such as a ban on "drive-through" baby deliveries, and his initiative to limit government disability payments to addicts and alcoholics, both made law. Kleczka continues to fight for an affordable, meaningful prescription drug Medicare program for all senior citizens and reforms to reduce the cost of health care.
In 1992 Kleczka developed legislation to protect elderly residents of high-rise public housing from physical harm. His legislation brought widespread praise and resulted in Milwaukee being the first city in the nation to provide elderly-only public housing.
Congressman Kleczka is pushing for enactment of the Marriage Tax Penalty Relief bill to increase the standard deduction for joint filers. In 1998, he was named a "Deficit Hawk" by the nonpartisan Concord Coalition. In 1999, he was placed on its "Fiscal Responsibility Honor Roll."
A leading advocate of personal privacy issues in Congress, Kleczka co-sponsored legislation signed into law in 1998 that makes identity theft a crime. This year he has reintroduced the Personal Information Privacy Act, which would make it illegal for a business to withhold products or services if a consumer refused to furnish a Social Security number for identification purposes.
Kleczka, 58, was born and raised on Milwaukee's south side. Within his congressional district there are a variety of industries, as represented by Rockwell Automation/Allen Bradley, designer and manufacturer of industrial automation control products, and the global headquarters of GE Medical Systems in suburban Waukesha County. The ethnic makeup of the district is heavily German and Polish American, with the largest populations of Hispanic and Hmong in the state.
Kleczka is a hobbyist wood-worker who completely remodeled his house. He was recipient of the Polish Heritage Award in 1997 and is a relative of John Casimir Kleczka, Wisconsin's first Polish-American congressman elected to the 4th Congressional District in 1918.
He and his wife Bonnie Kleczka, celebrated their 24th wedding anniversary in 2002. The Kleczka's dog, Colby, a Shelty, can sometimes be seen visiting the congressman at his Capitol Hill office.
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