The Environment

Since coming to the Senate, Stabenow has fought for Michigan environmental concerns - namely Canada's arrangement with the state to dump Toronto's trash in Detroit's backyard. What began in 2003 as 180 truckloads of garbage a day, had grown by 2004 to 415 truckloads, totaling - 1.1 million tons a year.

Arguing that this arrangement violated an international treaty, Stabenow began a campaign that gathered over 165,000 signatures demanding the Environmental Protection Agency enforce the treaty. The EPA resisted, claiming the waste was non-hazardous and therefore not in violation of the treaty, but Stabenow remained vigilant. By 2006, she and Michigan's senior senator, Carl Levin (D), forged an agreement with Canada to end shipments of garbage by 2010.

Prescription Drugs

With prescription-drug reform a major platform of her 2000 Senate campaign, Stabenow headed the Senate Democrats prescription- drug task force in 2002. ''We have an industry that is the most profitable in the world,'' said Stabenow of the pharmaceutical industry. ''And I don't begrudge that in any way. But when an industry is allowed to make 18 to 20 percent a year, at the same time it's raising prices three times the rate of inflation, and people who need life-saving medicine cannot afford it, I think it's time to ask where the corporate responsibility is.''

In 2003, she voted for the Prescription Drug and Medicare Improvement Act, which passed, providing Medicare recipients over $400 billion in prescription-drug aid over ten years. Stabenow has been a proponent of negotiating drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies, and in 2005 voted to allow the federal government to haggle on bulk drug purchase for medicare recipients. She also voted to expand prescription drug benefits in Medicare Part D in 2007.

Stabenow has organized bus trips of U.S. seniors to Canada to purchase cheaper prescription drugs and in 2006 proposed a successful trade measure that barred U.S. trade negotiators from including drug- patent provisions in trade deals.

The Economy

In February 2009, Stabenow voted for Obama's $787 stimulus plan, encouraged that the plan would help the flagging Michigan housing market. In October 2008, Stabenow voted against the financial bailout formulated by the Bush administration, a move that put her at odds with the auto industry of her home state.

After the 2008 elections, however, Stabenow set to work on a new auto bailout. She was one of the principle architects of the failed $25 billion auto bailout proposed in the Senate in November 2008.

"What is being talked about now is bankruptcy," said Stabenow of domestic auto-makers. Though the proposal had the support of Democratic Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), it failed to garner enough votes to win.

In April 2009, Stabenow again went to bat for the auto industry, dissecting Obama's plan for auto restructuring General Motors. "We must support the generation of people who built the auto industry in America, and I am committed to fighting for them," Stabenow said in a statement after Obama announced his plan.

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