"Former Wisconsin Sen. William Proxmire, a political maverick who became Congress' leading scourge of big spending and government waste, has died, a congressional official said Thursday."
"Over the years, the rebel Democrat developed an image of penny-pinching populism that played well with his homestate voters. But his support of the expensive system of dairy price supports -- widely criticized by others as symbolic of government largess gone amuck -- won him strong backing from his state's dairy farmers."
"Proxmire, who also became a familiar face on the television network Sunday news shows, was elected to the Senate in 1957 in a special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. He was re-elected in 1958 to his first six-year term and was returned to the same post in 1964, 1970, 1976 and 1982." [Tribune]
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