Advisor Senator Burns served 18 years in the United States Senate as a recognized leader in the areas of natural resources, energy, telecommunications, aviation, defense, and agricultural policy. Senator Burns brings to Mongolia Forward a strong and varied background based on his senior positions on the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

Senator Burns first visited Mongolia in the early 1990’s and was immediately enamored with both the landscape and people. As a Senator he worked to establish strong bilateral relationships between the United States and Mongolia and advocated on behalf of Mongolia in the United States Senate.

While Senator Burns was a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee, he was responsible for overseeing federal spending for the entire United States Government. He served as Chairman of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee where he had jurisdiction over the Department of the Interior and agencies such as the Office of Surface Mining, Bureau of Land Management, Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Forest Service, Minerals Management Service, National Park Service, and US Fish and Wildlife Service. He had oversight over land and water that produces 30 percent of the United States’ energy supply and was a strong advocate for increased domestic production and research in clean energy technology.

As a member of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Senator Burns’ was responsible for the following major policy areas: energy resources and development, including regulation, conservation, strategic petroleum reserves and appliance standards; nuclear energy; Indian affairs; public lands and their renewable resources; surface mining, Federal coal, oil, and gas, other mineral leasing; territories and insular possessions; and water resources. This Committee was also responsible for crafting the National Energy Policy which included international energy affairs, nuclear waste policy, and privatization of federal assets. As a member of the Commerce Committee, Senator Burns had oversight responsibility for such agencies as the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, the as well as over the Commerce and Transportation Departments. He served as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications during the most sweeping change in telecommunications history.

Senator Burns has been praised by Yahoo as “one of the fathers of the modern Internet,” and was a strong advocate for broadband in rural areas as well as new internet and mobile phone technologies. Other areas he held jurisdictional responsibility included interstate commerce, regulation of interstate common carriers, including railroads, buses, trucks, vessels, pipelines, and civil aviation.