California's Henry Waxman
Stepping Down After 20 Terms in House
Thursday, 30 Jan 2014 11:06 AM
By Newsmax Wires
Rep. Henry A. Waxman, a liberal icon whose 4-decade-long legislative
record has made him one of the country’s most influential lawmakers, announced
Thursday that he will retire from his California seat, the latest in a wave of
departures that could prove pivotal for Democrats this year.
"In 1974, I announced my
first campaign for Congress," Waxman, 74, said in a statement.
"Today, I am announcing that I have run my last campaign. I will not seek
re-election to the Congress and will leave after 40 years in office at the end
of this year."
As chairman of the House Energy
and Commerce Committee in 2009 and 2010, Waxman worked with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also a
California Democrat, to steer Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act through the chamber.
“In all my years in politics, I
felt the moral claim that this country has failed in not providing every
American access to health care,” Waxman said in March 2010, the month Obama
signed the legislation into law.
Waxman was elected in 1974 as part
of a wave of Democrats who won their seats three months after Republican
Richard Nixon resigned the presidency amid the Watergate scandal. The other
remaining member of that group serving in the House continuously since then,
Representative George Miller, also of California,
announced his retirement earlier this month.
Waxman took the helm of the Energy
and Commerce panel by unseating, in a vote among House Democrats,
Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat and an ally of auto companies.
An advocate of environmental
regulation, Waxman as chairman pushed for a cap-and-trade system to curb
greenhouse-gas emissions. The House narrowly passed the legislation in June
2009 and sent it to the Senate, where it stalled.
Under his leadership the committee
also investigated the circumstances surrounding the April 2010 explosion on a
BP Plc- operated well in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers and created
the worst oil spill in U.S.
history.
Steroid Probe
Waxman lost the Energy and
Commerce chairmanship after Republicans won the House majority in the 2010
elections. Since then, he has served as the committee’s top Democratic member.
As the chairman of the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2007 and 2008, Waxman led
investigations into steroid use in professional baseball and held hearings
after the collapse of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
In 1994, as chairman of Energy and
Commerce’s health subcommittee, Waxman held hearings that put the tobacco
industry under the spotlight. At one session that gained wide coverage, tobacco
company executives testified under oath that nicotine wasn’t addictive.
The hearings were credited with
laying the groundwork for lawsuits that led in 1998 to a settlement in which
major tobacco companies agreed to make payments to U.S. states to resolve claims that
cigarettes caused public-health dangers.
‘Boiled Owl’
Waxman is “tougher than a boiled
owl,” then-Senator Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican, said in 1990 after the
two helped negotiate an agreement to revise clean-air laws.
Waxman was born in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights.
On both sides of his family, his grandparents had emigrated from what is now Moldova to avoid
anti-Jewish pogroms in the early 1900s.
Prior to taking his House seat in
January 1975, Waxman served six years in the California Assembly. He forged a
political alliance there with Democrat Howard Berman, a friend from their days
as students at UCLA who served in the House with Waxman from 1983 to 2013.
He and Berman headed a political
network named after them that for many years determined who held office in
parts of Los Angeles
and was fueled by wealthy donors in the city’s heavily Democratic Westside.
Waxman’s Tally
Democrats are favored to keep
control of Waxman’s 33rd District, which includes parts of the Westside and all
of Beverly Hills, Santa
Monica, Malibu and Redondo Beach. Obama won 61 percent of the
district vote in the 2012 election.
Waxman took a career-low 54
percent of the vote that year against a wealthy political independent who spent
about $8 million in a district reshaped by the congressional line-drawing
process.
Waxman is the 30th House member
who’s announced plans to retire at the end of the year or seek a different
political office. Most of those congressional districts lean heavily to one
party.
Miller, 68, the other “Watergate
Baby” giving up his seat in the 2014 election, represents a San Francisco-area
district. The other Democrat in the House first elected in 1974, Representative
Richard Nolan of Minnesota,
served three terms and then left the chamber. He then returned after winning a
seat in 2012.
Waxman’s former chief of staff,
Phil Schiliro, recently returned to Washington
to help Democrats tout the health law measure -- hurt by a flawed rollout late
last year -- to voters before November’s elections. Schiliro, who had moved
with his family to New Mexico,
previously served as the Obama administration’s congressional liaison.
Henry Waxman
Henry
A. Waxman is a house member for the CA
congressional delegation, and Christopher
P. Lu was his deputy chief counsel.
Note: Christopher P. Lu
was Henry A. Waxman’s deputy chief
counsel, a litigation associate for Sidley
Austin LLP, Barack Obama’s
legislative director, is married to Kathryn
B. Thomson, and the White House cabinet secretary for the Barack Obama administration.
Kathryn B.
Thomson is married to Christopher P.
Lu, and was a partner at Sidley
Austin LLP.
Barack
Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin
LLP.
Michelle
Obama was a lawyer at Sidley Austin
LLP.
Newton
N. Minow is a senior counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP, and a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
R.
Eden Martin is counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP, and the president of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
Rahm
I. Emanuel is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, the Chicago (IL) mayor,
was the White House chief of staff for the Barack
Obama administration, and a director at Freddie Mac.
Kathleen
Brown is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, Jerry Brown’s sister,
and was the California state government treasurer.
Jerry
Brown is Kathleen Brown’s
brother, and the California state government governor.
California
state government is the State of California
government.
CA
congressional delegation is the delegation for the State of California.
Henry
A. Waxman is a house member for the CA
congressional delegation, and Christopher
P. Lu was his deputy chief counsel.
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