Senate tenure
A member of the Democratic Party's relatively conservative Blue Dog faction while in the House, Gillibrand has moved her political positions and ideology toward a liberal, progressive position since her appointment to the Senate.
Gillibrand made national headlines in February 2009 for stating that she and her husband kept two guns under their bed. Her staff later indicated that Gillibrand no longer stored guns under her bed.
On April 9, 2009, a combined Schumer–Gillibrand press release said that the two strongly supported a Latino being nominated to the Supreme Court at the time of the next vacancy. Their first choice was Sonia Sotomayor. The two introduced her at Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearing in July 2009.
During the lame duck session of the 111th Congress, Gillibrand scored a substantial legislative victory with the passage of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. The military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, which barred openly gay and lesbian people from service, was responsible for the discharge of an estimated 14,500 service members since its creation in 1993. Gillibrand was at the forefront of the effort to repeal the ban and her advocacy was recognized as a major force behind the repeal's passage.
In January 2011, Gillibrand secured another significant win with the passage of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. The Zadroga Act reopened the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) and established the World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP), which provides health benefits and medical monitoring to 9/11 first responders and survivors. After these legislative accomplishments, Gillibrand gained a more prominent national profile. In 2015, Gillibrand was the Senate lead on the successful reauthorization of the Zadroga Act, which effectively made the WTCHP permanent by renewing it for 75 years and extended the VCF for 5 years. In 2019, Gillibrand helped lead the effort to pass the Never Forget the Heroes: James Zadroga, Ray Pfeifer, and Luis Alvarez Permanent Authorization of the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund Act. The bill permanently funded the VCF, allowing individuals and families of individuals who were injured, sickened, or killed at a 9/11 crash site to file claims for compensation through 2090. President Trump signed the bill into law in July 2019. In the following years, the WTCHP faced growing costs due to medical inflation and increased participation by 9/11 responders and survivors, leaving the program with a projected shortfall of roughly $3 billion. Between 2022 and 2023, Gillibrand helped secure over $1.6 billion to narrow the WTCHP funding gap, as well as extend enrollment to previously excluded 9/11 first responders at the Pentagon and Shanksville crash sites.
In 2012, Gillibrand authored part of the STOCK Act, which extended limitations on insider trading by members of Congress. A version of the bill, merged by Senator Joe Lieberman with content from another bill by Senator Scott Brown, was passed by Congress and signed into law by Obama in April. In July 2023, Gillibrand introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Josh Hawley to ban stock ownership outright for members of Congress, senior members of the executive branch, and their spouses and dependents.
In 2013, Gillibrand began a nearly decade-long fight to reform and professionalize the military justice system. She proposed bipartisan legislation to remove the prosecution of sexual assault cases from the military chain of command and give that responsibility to independent military prosecutors. The bill failed to gain enough votes to break a filibuster in March 2014, but after years of advocacy with her colleagues, Gillibrand's bill garnered the support of a bipartisan, filibuster-proof majority of senators. In 2022, Gillibrand successfully secured provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act to shift the authority for prosecuting sexual assault and certain other serious, non-military crimes from commanders to independent, trained military prosecutors called special trial counsels.
In December 2013, Gillibrand introduced the Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act. This bill would have established a national paid family and medical leave program, allowing workers to take 12 weeks of paid time off to care for a newborn, recover from a serious illness, or care for a sick family member. After it failed to pass, Gillibrand reintroduced it multiple times over the following years, earning recognition as one of the Senate's most fervent advocates for paid family leave. In December 2023, she and Bill Cassidy co-founded the Senate Bipartisan Paid Family Leave Working Group, aiming to develop bipartisan proposals for a federal paid leave policy.
By 2013, Gillibrand had "skillfully aligned herself with causes with visible, moving human characters who have helped amplify her policy goals". For example, in campaigning for the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, she established a website with videos of gay and lesbian veterans telling their personal stories. She was less deferential to Senate seniority protocols and more uncompromising in her positions—such as combating sexual assault in the military—than most freshman senators, which sometimes caused friction with her Democratic colleagues. Senator Charles Grassley contrasted her approach with other New Yorkers of both parties, saying she was distinguished by "her determination and knowledge and willingness to sit down one on one with senators and explain what she is up to". Her fund-raising ability—almost $30 million from 2009 through 2013—helped her become a mentor to female candidates nationwide during that period.
In 2014, Gillibrand was included in the annual Time 100, Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
In 2018, Politico named Gillibrand part of the "Hell-No Caucus", along with Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders, for voting "overwhelmingly to thwart [Trump's] nominees for administration jobs", such as Rex Tillerson, Betsy DeVos, and Mike Pompeo; all the senators were considered potential 2020 presidential contenders at the time, and all five ran for president in 2020.
According to a FiveThirtyEight study, 12% of Gillibrand's votes matched Trump's position during his first term, the lowest among all senators.
In 2022, Gillibrand shepherded two pieces of legislation through Congress that enacted significant workplace reforms. The first, the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, voided forced arbitration clauses in cases of sexual assault and sexual harassment, allowing workplace sexual misconduct survivors to bring their cases to court rather than be forced into the often secretive and employer-friendly arbitration process. The second, the Speak Out Act, prohibits companies from enforcing non-disclosure agreements in cases of sexual harassment or sexual assault if those agreements were signed before the incident occurred, giving victims the ability to speak publicly about any alleged misconduct. Both bills passed the Senate unanimously and received broad bipartisan support in the House.
In June 2022, after more than a decade of advocacy, Gillibrand succeeded in passing legislation to make gun trafficking a federal crime. She first introduced the Gun Trafficking Prevention Act in 2009 after meeting the mother of Nyasia Pryear-Yard, a 17-year-old from Brooklyn who was killed by a stray bullet, and pledging to take action on guns. Gillibrand reintroduced the bill in every subsequent Congress after it failed to pass, ultimately renaming it the Hadiya Pendleton and Nyasia Pryear-Yard Gun Trafficking and Crime Prevention Act. In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Gillibrand helped craft bipartisan anti-gun trafficking legislation similar to her own, but it failed to pass the Senate after receiving 58 votes—not enough to overcome the 60-vote threshold. The core of Gillibrand's legislation passed in 2022 as part of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA).
In August 2022, Gillibrand helped secure the passage of the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act, which included her bill to extend presumptive health benefits to veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits. She initially introduced the legislation in 2020 to provide care and benefits to veterans who were present at burn pit sites during their military service and subsequently developed certain serious illnesses, removing the need for them to prove that their conditions were definitively burn pit-related.
Since the return of congressional earmarks in 2022, Gillibrand has ranked among the top members of Congress in terms of earmark funds secured. She obtained $230.6 million in earmarks for New York-based projects in 2022 and $267 million in 2023.
