A native of Midland, Camp quickly earned a reputation as a hardworking, common-sense conservative. He pays close attention to the needs of his district signing each of the nearly 30,000 constituent letters that leaves his office every year often with a personal note. His dedication and strong Midwestern values earned him a spot on the Ways and Means Committee, which is the most powerful committee in Congress with jurisdiction over taxes, trade, Social Security, Medicare, health care and welfare. A major national legislative journal called Camp one of the most effective congressmen in the nation.

Camp is one of the most senior members of the committee and is presently running a campaign to become the highest ranking Republican on Ways and Means. On the committee, Camp has been a staunch supporter of lower taxes, retirement security and reforming health care to make it affordable and portable for all Americans. He is credited with the 1996 welfare reform breakthrough that was one of the most spectacular legislative accomplishments of the 1990s. He was also a key negotiator in modernizing Medicare to require government to pay for prescription drugs and mandate cholesterol screening for early detection of heart disease. He also wrote legislation to assist patients with kidney disease. He has advocated for changes to the federal Hope scholarship to direct more benefits to low-income students so they can attend college. In 2007 Camp became the top Republican on the Health Subcommittee.

Camp has also been influential on many other issues important to his constituents. As Congress’ leading adoption expert, Camp authored the International Adoption Act, which instructs the State Department to help adopting families deal with officials in other countries to the benefit of thousands and thousands of families since his legislation was signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000. He has also pushed for ratification of a Senate treaty on international adoption to further remove obstacles to adoption. He wrote the Organ Donor Act under which 70 million Americans receive organ donor information with their tax returns. He fought for the expansion of trade adjustment assistance for Michigan workers and authored tax cuts to help manufactures in a tough economy. He forever secured the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and has won enactment of his bill to protect the state’s 120 lighthouses, the most in the country. He is a strong conservationist and has supported a cleaner, safer environment by winning authorization of tax credits for solar and wind energy as well as high mileage, low pollution fuel cells and electric hybrid vehicles.