was appointed November 29, 1922, as a Republican to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Truman H. Newberry. This appointment was confirmed by his election on November 4, 1924, at which time he was also elected to a full term commencing March 4, 1925. He was reelected in 1930, serving in total from November 29, 1922, until his death on October 22, 1936. He was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1936, the loss generally attributed to Couzens’s support for Roosevelt's New Deal programs. He was chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Civil Service in the Sixty-ninth Congress, the U.S. Senate Committee on Education and Labor in the Sixty-ninth and Seventieth Congresses, the U.S. Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce in the Seventy-first and Seventy-second Congresses. Couzens' actions in Congress generally followed those of the Progressive Republicans, advocating acts such as high graduated income tax and public ownership of utilities. Couzens died in Detroit and is interred in Woodlawn Cemetery there. Philanthropy Couzens established the Children's Fund of Michigan with a $10,000,000 grant. He also gave $1,000,000 for relief in Detroit and began a fund to make loans to the physically handicapped. Under Dr Frank Norton, Dr Kenneth Richard Gibson and their secretary, Kathryn Hutchison, the Children's Fund, among other things, provided free health and dental work for indigent Detroit children. The Fund was set up with a 25-year life span, and the project ended in the mid-1950s. In response to the Bath School Disaster, in which Andrew Kehoe, an embittered school board member and treasurer, killed 38 children by blowing up explosives he had planted in the basement of the Bath Consolidated School in Bath Township, Michigan, Couzens gave $75,000 to fund rebuilding. The new school was dedicated as the "James Couzens Agricultural School". He donated $600,000 to the University of Michigan for the building of a residence hall for female nursing students; it was named Couzens Hall in his honor. In the 1930s, Couzens donated $1 million to Children's Hospital of Michigan, in response to a birthday request from his wife for "a simple box in which to keep my pearls". Couzens complied, including a note within the box describing the $1 million gift, stating "My dear, your new pearls will be all the children who are eventually treated there". Today, Children's Hospital of Michigan is part of the Detroit Medical