Prescott S. Bush Papers

Prescott S. Bush was born on 15 May 1895 to Samuel Prescott Bush and Flora Sheldon Bush and was raised in Columbus, Ohio. He received a B.A. from Yale University in 1917 and completed his Army career in 1919. Bush joined the firm of Brown Brothers and Company became a partner in 1930. In 1921 he married Dorothy Walker. The couple had five children, one of whom, George Herbert Walker Bush, would become the forty-first President of the United States.

A resident of Greenwich, Connecticut, Bush was elected as a member of its representative town meeting. In 1933 he was elected as moderator, a post to which he was re-elected until his election to the United States Senate in 1952. In 1947, he served as Chairman of the Connecticut Republican State Finance Committee and as Delegate-at-Large to the 1948 Republican National Convention.

Two years after experiencing a close loss in Connecticut's 1950 senatorial election, Bush defeated Abraham Ribicoff in a run to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Senator Brien McMahon. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1956. During his senatorial career, Bush served as a member of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, the Senate Committee on Public Works, the Committee on Armed Services, a congressional Joint Economic Committee, and the Special Committee on Aging.

Bush received national recognition as an advocate of fiscal responsibility in government, and sponsored a price stability amendment to the Employment Act of 1946. He also proposed to give the President the power to veto individual items in appropriations bills, and in bills authorizing federal departments and agencies to borrow from the Treasury. He took special interest in the national urban renewal program, and, following enactment of the Housing Act of 1954, convened a Connecticut Conference on Urban Renewal in Hartford. His work on this issue resulted in twenty-six Connecticut communities receiving over $150 million in federal grants, which gave Connecticut the highest per capita renewal program in the United States.

Another of Senator Bush's major legislative interests was flood and hurricane protection for New England communities. He drafted Public Law 71, the Bush Hurricane Survey Act, enabling Army engineers to develop a new program of community protection against hurricane tidal flooding. Along with Congressman John W. McCormack, the Democratic House Majority Leader, Bush cooperated to enact Public Law 685, the Bush-McCormack Act, which expedited the construction of local flood protection works. In addition, Bush played a leading role in the drafting of the Federal Highway Aid Act of 1956, which authorized the construction of the national system of interstate and defense highways.

While Senator, Bush remained active in the Republican party. In 1956, he served as Chairman for the Resolutions Committee of the Republican National Convention. Four years later, he chaired a subcommittee which drafted the widely acclaimed platform planks on economic growth, business and labor.

During his career, Prescott Bush served as director of several nationally known corporations, including the Columbia Broadcasting System, the Wanadium Corporation of America, and Prudential Insurance. For eight years, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the United States Golf Association, serving successively as Secretary, Vice President and President from 1928-1935.

Bush announced his intention not to run for re-election in 1961. He died in 1972.