U.S. Senator Wayne Allard is a Colorado veterinarian committed to cutting taxes, eliminating the deficit, returning power to state and local governments and assuring the security of America both at home and abroad.

Consistent with his belief that elected officials should be citizen legislators, Senator Allard spends a majority of his time in Colorado. Since 1991, he has conducted more than 700 town meetings across Colorado, visiting each of Colorado’s 64 counties several times, while maintaining a better than 99 percent voting record in the Senate. He also has led by example by being the most frugal member of the Colorado delegation and has returned more than $4.2 million in unspent office funds to the U.S. Treasury since being elected to Congress.

Senator Allard is a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, where he has worked to shape the nation’s spending priorities and to ensure that Colorado’s people and projects receive federal support where it is most needed. In the 110th Congress, he will serve as the Republican leader of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee, in addition serving on the Interior, Energy & Water, Military Construction, Transportation, and Financial Services Subcommittees.

Allard also serves on the Senate Budget Committee. As a fiscal conservative, Senator Allard believes that Congress must reduce wasteful spending and strive for a balanced budget.

As a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Senator Allard is the Ranking member of the Securities, Insurance, and Investment Banking Subcommittee where he continues to advocate for an increased national attention to the importance of savings plans and investments, and small business concerns. He also serves on the Financial Services and Housing & Transportation Subcommittees.

For the 110th Congress, Senator Allard will also serve on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, where he will be actively involved in the upcoming reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act and work to increase access to health care. Allard will serve on two important subcommittees on this Committee: the Children and Families Subcommittee and the Employment and Workplace Subcommittee.

As founder of the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus, and Chairman of the Senate Space Caucus, Senator Allard continues to be a national leader on energy and science related issues.

Born in Fort Collins, Colorado, in 1943 and raised on a ranch near Walden, Colorado, Senator Allard received his Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from Colorado State University in 1968. While completing veterinary school, Allard married Joan Malcolm, a microbiologist and fellow graduate of CSU. They built their veterinary practice in Loveland, the Allard Animal Hospital, from scratch and raised their two daughters, Christi and Cheryl, in Loveland. The Allards have five grandsons.

Senator Allard ran his veterinary practice full-time, while representing Larimer and Weld Counties in the Colorado State Senate, from 1983 to 1990. A long-time supporter of “term-limits,” Allard was best known during his time in the State Senate for sponsoring the Colorado law that limits state legislative sessions to 120 days, preserving the concept of a “citizen-legislator.”

Senator Allard served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Colorado’s 4th Congressional District from 1991 to 1996, when he was elected to the United States Senate. As a Colorado Congressman, Allard served on the Joint Committee on Congressional Reform, which recommended many of the reforms that were incorporated into the Contract with America. These reforms were among the first legislative items passed by the Republican controlled Congress in 1995. Senator Allard was re-elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002.