Alexander elected chair of Senate Health, Education, Labor, Pensions Committee

Senate Republicans on Wednesday elected U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, to be the chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

“The work of no Senate committee affects the daily lives of more Americans more than this one—whether we are fixing No Child Left Behind, or reducing federal paperwork to make it easier for students to attend college, or making it simpler for medical treatments and cures to make their way through the Food and Drug Administration to patients who need the help,” Alexander said in a press release.

Before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002, Alexander served as governor of Tennessee, president of the University of Tennessee, United States Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush, and professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

In private life, he helped found what has become the nation’s largest provider of worksite day care, the release said.

Three times, his colleagues elected him chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.