Daniel patrick moynihan children

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

American politician (1927–2003)

This article is about the U.S. senator from New York. For the U.S. representative from Illinois, see P. H. Moynihan.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Moynihan in 1998

In office
January 3, 1977 – January 3, 2001
Preceded byJames Buckley
Succeeded byHillary Clinton
In office
January 3, 1993 – January 3, 1995
Preceded byLloyd Bentsen
Succeeded byBob Packwood
In office
September 8, 1992 – January 3, 1993
Preceded byQuentin Burdick
Succeeded byMax Baucus
In office
June 30, 1975 – February 2, 1976
PresidentGerald Ford
Preceded byJohn Scali
Succeeded byBill Scranton
In office
February 28, 1973 – January 7, 1975
PresidentRichard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Preceded byKenneth Keating
Succeeded byBill Saxbe
In office
November 5, 1969 – December 31, 1970
PresidentRichard Nixon
Preceded byArthur F. Burns
Succeeded byDonald Rumsfeld
In office
January 23, 1969 – November

Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York left college teaching to address a larger public audience as an elected official. Following a varied career as a social scientist, presidential aide, and ambassador, Moynihan came to the Senate in 1976 and served 24 years. A skilled legislator, he excelled at both floor debate and committee negotiation. The New York Democrat promoted policies to aid families and to provide stricter child support enforcement. He worked closely with Republican senator Robert Dole to author legislation to stabilize Social Security. He also became a vocal critic of Cold War-era military buildup and criticized the Reagan administration’s support for the Nicaraguan Contras. As chair of the Finance Committee in the 1990s, Moynihan criticized the Clinton administration’s proposal to expand health care and voted against welfare reform. In his later Senate years, Moynihan battled government secrecy and was instrumental in opening up thousands of previously classified files, among them the FBI’s “Venona” files regarding Soviet espionage. Moyni

Daniel Patrick Moynihan—Cabinet officer, diplomat and four-term United States Senator—was one of the foremost public servants and public intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century.

Moynihan was born in 1927 to an Irish-Catholic family in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The family plunged into poverty and moved to New York City when Moynihan’s father abandoned them. Moynihan grew up largely in New York City during the Great Depression, shining shoes in Times Square and then finding employment as a longshoreman. He attended the City College of New York for a year before joining the United States Navy in 1944. During his officer training, Moynihan enrolled at Tufts University, receiving an undergraduate degree in sociology and eventually a doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he wrote his dissertation on the International Labor Organization.

Moynihan served on the staff of Governor W. Averell Harriman, Democrat of New York, in whose office he met his future wife and campaign manager, Elizabeth Brennan Moynihan. He left a tenure-track position at Syracuse U

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