Congressman Tom Lantos
12th Congressional District
Ranking Member, House International Relations Committee
Co-Founder and Co-Chair, Congressional Human Rights Caucus

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Opening Remarks

An American by choice, Tom Lantos was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1928.  He was 16 when Nazi Germany occupied his native country.  As a teenager, he was a member of the anti-Nazi underground and later of the anti-Communist student movement.  In the wake of the war, Tom was awarded a scholarship to study in the United States, and he arrived here in 1947.  He earned a B.A. and M.A. in economics from the University of Washington in Seattle, and later earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

For three decades before his election to Congress, Tom Lantos was a professor of economics, an international affairs analyst for public television, and a consultant to a number of businesses.  He was elected to the House of Representatives in November 1980, and was re-elected for his 14th term in November 2006.

Together with Congressman Kevin Brady (R-TX), Lantos founded the Congressional Pulmonary Hypertension Caucus to call attention to the need for additional research.  The two legislators also have introduced a bill authorizing additional federal funding for such research, and establishing centers for training scientists and health professionals.