Betty McCollum

According to the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, McCollum held a Bipartisan Index Score of -0.1 in the 116th United States Congress for 2019, which placed her 219th out of 435 members. Based on FiveThirtyEight's congressional vote tracker at ABC News, McCollum voted with Donald Trump's stated public policy positions 11.4% of the time, which ranked her average in the 116th United States Congress when predictive scoring (district partisanship and voting record) is used.

In July 2019 McCollum voted against a House resolution introduced by Representative Brad Schneider of Illinois opposing the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement targeting Israel. The resolution passed 398-17.

McCollum is a member of the House Appropriations Committee, where she is the only Minnesotan. At the start of the 111th Congress, she was also appointed to the United States House Budget Committee. House Democrats are not normally allowed to serve on another committee when they also serve on one of the chamber's four exclusive "A" committees—Appropriations, Energy and Commerce, Rules, and Ways and Means—but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and committee chairman Henry Waxman granted McCollum a waiver allowing her to take a second committee slot. McCollum served on the Government Reform Committee during her first term in Congress.

She also introduced amendments in June 2011 and 2012 to cut funding for military bands by $125 million, a proposal opposed by the Fleet Reserve Association and which the National Association for Music Education called "potentially devastating."

McCollum opposes Conceal-and-Carry legislation and voted against Right-to-Carry reciprocity in November 2011.

McCollum advocates shifting America's energy consumption to cleaner, non-carbon-based sources. Along with Al Franken and Kit Bond, she introduced the Renewable Energy and Efficiency Act, a bill to utilize thermal energy sources and create renewable energy production tax credits. She also voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment in 2009.

In 2004 McCollum gained national visibility when she and fellow Democrat Jim McDermott of Washington called for Secretary of Education Rod Paige to resign for claiming the National Education Association was "a terrorist organization."

McCollum is pro-choice and supports Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association. The latter organization aims to provide access to family planning and reproductive health care services and advocates for reproductive freedom. She indicated on the 2002 National Political Awareness Test that she believed abortions should always be legally available, but only within the first trimester of pregnancy.

After 4th District Representative Bruce Vento decided not to seek a 13th term due to illness in 2000 (he died before the election), McCollum won the DFL nomination to succeed him. The district is heavily Democratic; among Minnesota's congressional districts, only the neighboring Minneapolis-based 5th District is considered more Democratic. The DFL has held the seat without interruption since 1949. McCollum's main concern in winning office thus wasn't her Republican opponent, State Senator Linda Runbeck, but Independence Party candidate Tom Foley. Foley had previously been county attorney for Ramsey County (almost all of which is in the 4th District) as a Democrat. Many thought Foley might siphon off enough votes from McCollum to allow Runbeck to win. But McCollum defeated Runbeck by a 17-point margin, with Foley in a distant third place. Foley held McCollum to 48% of the vote, making her the only Democrat not to win at least 50% of the vote since Democrats began their present dominance in the district. The district has since reverted to form, and McCollum has been reelected nine times without serious opposition.

She first won election to the North St. Paul city council in 1986. In 1992 she was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives after she defeated an incumbent state representative in the DFL primary. She served four terms in the Minnesota House before being elected to Congress in 2000.

McCollum was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She graduated from the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1976. McCollum has worked as a high school social sciences teacher and as a sales manager.

Betty Louise McCollum /m ə ˈ k ɒ l ə m / (born July 12, 1954) is the U.S. Representative for Minnesota's 4th congressional district , serving since 2001. She is a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). McCollum's district centers on St. Paul, Minnesota's capital city. She is the second woman elected to Congress from Minnesota.

McCollum is the first woman elected to Congress from Minnesota since Coya Knutson in the 1950s.