WASHINGTON — Warren Rudman, who warned against soaring federal deficits as a pugnacious two-term senator from New Hampshire and who became the strongest Republican critic of the Reagan administration during the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, died Monday at George Washington University Hospital. He was 82.
He had complications from lymphoma, said his former communications director Bob Stevenson.
Rudman, an Army combat veteran of the Korean War and former New Hampshire attorney general, was first elected to Congress in 1980.
After not seeking re-election in 1992, Rudman remained a presence in Washington as a member of several blue-ribbon panels investigating terrorism and financial irregularities. In February 2001, seven months before the Sept. 11 attacks, a panel led by Rudman and former Sen. Gary Hart, D-Colo., warned of a probable terrorist strike on U.S. soil within 25 years. The panel called for the creation of a “homeland security agency,” which occurred in 2002.
During his first years in the Senate, Rudman was a reliable supporter of the policies of President Ronald Reagan. But the senator soon began to exhibit an independent streak not limited by partisan loyalty.
He was a sponsor of the landmark budget-cutting legislation known as the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act. He grilled Oliver North and other Reagan administration operatives involved in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deal; questioned fellow senators involved in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal; and successfully promoted the nomination of his New Hampshire protege, David Souter, to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1990.
Rudman was among the first members of Congress to speak out about the rising federal debt and joined Sens. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, and Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., as principal sponsors of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act of 1985.
The act called for a balanced federal budget within six years and was the first substantive effort by Congress in modern times to compel reductions in the federal deficit.
Under Gramm-Rudman, automatic budget cuts would be imposed if certain spending limits were not met.
The bill passed but in 1986 was struck down by the Supreme Court on the grounds that it violated the separationof-powers doctrine of the Constitution.
An amended version of Gramm-Rudman was passed in 1987 and signed by Reagan. It was replaced by another bill in 1990 but, nonetheless, was considered a major step in drawing attention to the rising federal debt and the growing cost of entitlement programs.
Warren Bruce Rudman was born May 18, 1930, in Boston and grew up in Nashua, N.H.
His wife of 57 years, Shirley Wahl Rudman, died in 2010. A son, Alan Rudman, died in 2004.
Survivors include his wife since 2011, Margaret Shean Rudman of Washington; two daughters from his first marriage, Laura Rudman Robie of Amherst, N.H., and Debra Gilmore of Wayland, Mass.; two sisters, Jean Gale of Cape Neddick, Maine, and Carol Rudman of Washington; and three grandchildren.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 11/21/2012