The Issues
Kirk is actively involved in issues that most voters do not associate with the Republican Party: He is co-chair of the Task Force on Illegal Guns, a member of the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus and co-chair of the Great Lakes Task Force.
“He is, as we have stated before, one of the most independent members of Congress,” wrote the Daily Herald in an Oct. 24, 2008, electoral endorsement.
All the while, Kirk remains a Republican at heart: He has voted with his party 86.9% of the time during the 111th Congress and 88.3% of the time spanning his Congressional career. But many label him a moderate or centrist.
The Economy
On a trip to China, Kirk stated very bluntly his concern about the growing U.S. debt.
"The budget numbers that the U.S. Government has put forward should not be believed," he told an audience of Chinese officials.
Kirk led efforts to enact a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution and strengthen budget rules using his "12 Consensus Principles to Limit Federal Spending." Among these principles: automatic spending reductions, a line-item veto and accounts for emergency spending.
He has also co-sponsored many tax-cut proposals: removing more than 3.9 million low-income Americans from the tax rolls completely, eliminating the death tax and the marriage penalty, increasing family tax credits and widening the contribution limits for Education Savings Accounts.
Predictably, he opposed President Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus act.
Following the act’s enactment, he opposed the dispensation of stimulus funds to Gov. Rod Blagojevich in light of the governor’s impeachment—though he left the door open for dispensation of funds to Blagojevich’s successor.
"We want to make sure that federal law denies Gov. Blagojevich any chance to provide funds through his office to any one of his friends of allies,” he said.
He holds private businesses to similarly high standards of accountability. While he voted for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout of 2008, he introduced corporate-responsibility proposals to require that corporations immediately disclose investor information—not quarterly, as the previous law had permitted; impose harsher criminal sentences on executives who defraud investors; and allow that government to seize ill-gotten gains and return the proceeds to defrauded investors.
The Environment
Kirk raised conservative ire when he was one of eight Republicans to vote in June 2009 for the cap-and-trade legislation passed by the House. Kirk defended the vote by sayingthat while not perfect, it would "still lower our dependence on foreign oil by diversifying American energy production."
Generally, Kirk has voted to protect the environment. He co-sponsored, with Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), legislation to fine polluters throughout the Great Lakes region and forward the fine proceeds into water cleanup funds and sewer-infrastructure construction. As a co-chair of the Great Lakes Task Force, Kirk works with government and environmental groups to improve protection of the Great Lakes from mercury pollution, sewage runoff, depletion of wetlands, and invasions by non-native species.
In 2006, when developers announced plans to build high-rise condominiums on the Navy-owned lakeshore beaches and bluffs neighboring Fort Sheridan, Kirk helped negotiate a transfer of ownership of the land from the Navy to an environmental trust. The agreement stipulated that the bluffs would become a migratory bird sanctuary and lakefront park open to the public.
Kirk is working to protect the environment beyond the Great Lakes, as well. As a member of the Renewable Energy Caucus, he has co-sponsored bills for raising fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks, and increasing research and development funding for bio-diesel, wind and solar power, and other renewable fuels. He is also working to advance ethanol based gasoline (E-85).
In March 2009, he joined 119 other representatives in writing to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and prevailing upon him to instate a moratorium on logging and development in roadless forest land. He voted to ban logging and phase out snowmobiles in Yellowstone and he has consistently voted against opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
Foreign Policy
Given his extensive international and military background, it should come as no surprise that Kirk has devoted much of his congressional career to U.S. foreign policy.
Israel is one of his greatest areas of interest. After Hamas became the dominant political party in the Palestinian legislature, Kirk cosponsored a bill to restrict funding to the Palestinian Authority until Hamas agreed to recognize Israel, renounce violence, disarm, and accept prior agreements. Concerned that U.S. aid to Palestine via the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) might be funneled to terrorist groups, Kirk co-authored with then-Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) a bill in 2006 that called for an independent audit of UNRWA's $400 million annual budget.
He also authored a letter to Ambassador John Bolton urging him to vote against any United Nations budget that did not include “an end to discrimination against Israel”; a letter to European Union Ambassador John Bruton, urging EU officials and election monitors not to meet with Hamas members; and a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urging him to cancel his trip to Iran in the wake of anti-Semitic and genocidal comments by the Iranian President.
China
Kirk founded the U.S.-China Working Group in June 2005 with co-chair Rick Larsen (D-Wash.). The group seeks to build diplomatic relations with China and to make the Congress more aware of U.S.-China issues, including trade, economic policy and space exploration. Kirk co-sponsored with Larsen legislation in 2006 to increase the availably of Chinese language training for U.S. students, increase exchange programs between the U.S. and China, and promote U.S. exports to China.
Iran
Kirk also co-chairs the Iran Working Group with Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.). The group organizes monthly briefings to members of Congress on Iran's nuclear ambitions, Iran's influence in Iraq, and women's rights in Iran, and other Iran policy issues. Kirk wrote to the Indian and Chinese governments urging them to not oppose the IAEA Board of Governors’ referral of Iran to the United Nations Security Council, and he sponsored a House resolution to demand a quarantine of Iran's oil imports in the event that negotiations over its nuclear program fail.
Kirk introduced a House resolution condemning the Iranian government’s persecution of Bahá'ís and calling for the protection of all religious minorities in Iran. Kirk authored a letter to the President of Eritrea to request the release of independent Eritrean journalists held in secret detention since September 2001. Kirk has also sponsored or co-sponsored bills to provide assistance for torture victims around the globe, increase funding for international HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, increase family-planning funding for the United Nations Population Fund and offer debt relief for developing nations that protect their coral reefs.
Human Rights
As a member of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, he has taken on a smorgasbord of additional human rights issues. When mass killings peaked in Darfur, Kirk cosponsored Caucus Chairman Henry Hyde's (R-Ill.) bill to label them “genocide,” intensify sanctions on the Sudanese government and call for U.S. and international intervention. He later co-sponsored a resolution, authored by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), urging the President to appoint a Presidential Special Envoy to Sudan. And he worked to secure funding for Darfur relief programs.
Kirk led the effort to free Bangladeshi journalist Shoaib Choudhury, whom Bangladeshi authorities had imprisoned and charged with sedition for promoting an inter-faith dialogue between Bangladesh and Israel. Kirk met with Bangladeshi officials and corresponded with State Department diplomats to urge the journalist’s release. Within two months of Kirk's intervention, Choudhury was released on bail.
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