Byron L. Dorgan is serving his second six-year term representing North Dakota in the U.S. Senate, following six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He serves on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and the Committees on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Energy and Natural Resources, and Indian Affairs. He was re-elected by his Democratic colleagues to serve as chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee-the first North Dakotan to ever hold this position or to serve in the Democratic leadership.
In 1999, Senator Dorgan teamed the University of North Dakota’s Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium (UMAC) with NASA in a new program aimed at providing data collected from the NASA Mission to Planet Earth satellite to the public for agricultural, environmental, educational and other public purposes. As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Dorgan secured $1.5 million Fiscal Year (FY) 2001 to launch the consortium and another $2 million FY2002 to expand the programming at UMAC.