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| Henry Waxman to retire at end of congressional session - Washington Post Posted: 30 Jan 2014 09:13 AM PST Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), one of the most prolific and successful lawmakers of the modern era, has decided to retire at the end of this congressional session. "Forty years have gone by very quickly. I have a great deal of satisfaction in our legislative accomplishments. There's obviously more to be done," Waxman, 74, said Wednesday in an interview. "But I'm in good health, and my family is in good health. This is a good time to move on and have another chapter if I am to do anything after Congress." The walls of his suite in the Rayburn House Office Building are covered with picture frames holding pens that were used by every president since Jimmy Carter to sign legislation that Waxman played a crucial role in writing. Among that legislation were laws to make infant formula safer and more nutritious (1980), bring low-priced generic drugs to market (1984), clean the air (1990), provide services and medical care to people with AIDS (1996), and reform and modernize the Postal Service (2006). He was also instrumental in the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The secret to effective legislating, Waxman said, is "you outlast [the opposition]. You keep working. You keep looking for combinations." "Everything I ever passed into law, with one exception, had bipartisan support," he added. "And the exception was the Affordable Care Act, where the Republicans should have been working with us but didn't want to give President Obama a victory, even though the law was based on a lot of Republican ideas." (Waxman had once advocated a single-payer, Canadian-style health-care system.) Many Republicans would disagree with the unapologetically liberal Los Angeles congressman's assessment of himself as a builder of bridges across the aisle. For all the finesse he showed at writing laws as he rose on the Energy and Commerce Committee, Waxman was also legendarily aggressive in his role as the Democrats' chief inquisitor on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. With one of the most highly regarded staffs on Capitol Hill, he led investigations that delved into the tobacco-industry marketing practices, the use of steroids in professional sports, the 2008 collapse of Wall Street and the flawed intelligence that was used to justify the Iraq war. Bald, soft-spoken and standing only 5 foot 5, Waxman appears surprisingly unintimidating for one who was dubbed the "Democrats' Eliot Ness" by the liberal Nation magazine. The answer to a 2012 "Jeopardy!" question about him was: "The mustache of justice." The scope and number of legislative achievements that Waxman can claim — through Democrats and Republicans in the White House, and while serving in both the majority and minority in the House — would seem nearly unimaginable in today's gridlocked, polarized Congress. But he insisted that his decision to leave Congress was not the result of frustration or the fact that Democrats appear unlikely to regain the House in 2014. "Things are always difficult," Waxman insisted. "For the most part, those laws have been very important and successful and are now taken for granted," he said of his accomplishments. "People don't realize that it was a big fight over many years to get a Clean Air Act adopted and signed, which is one of the most effective environmental laws that we have ever had in this country. And it took a long time just to get nutritional-labeling information so that people can follow their diets and control what they eat. "Even the HIV/AIDS legislation known as the Ryan White act was not accomplished for almost a decade after we held our first hearings just to find out what was going on when gay men were dying from a rare cancer known as Kaposi's sarcoma, and no one knew why this was happening and seemed to be happening in geometric progression," Waxman recalled. Waxman's departure also marks the end of an era. He and fellow Californian George Miller, who announced his retirement this month — are the last two continuously serving House Democrats from the huge class of "Watergate babies" elected in 1974, just three months after President Richard M. Nixon resigned. Seventy-five Democrats in all and half younger than 40, they were hailed as a reform-minded generation that would upset the old order and remake Washington. In their first years in office, they toppled three change-resistant Democratic committee chairmen, which was a nearly unheard of act of insubordination. They also passed laws, such as the War Powers Resolution and the Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which were designed to give Congress more say in domestic matters and national security. But by Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, the center of political gravity had swung back to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Yet Waxman found ways to expand programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, even as Reagan was cutting taxes and taking aim at social programs. "The sine qua non of Henry's accomplishments came during the Reagan administration," said congressional scholar Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. "It wasn't just holding the line. He managed to get half a loaf here and half a loaf there, and he wound up with a bigger loaf of bread for things he cared about. It wasn't that he had a lot of leverage. He just knew how to negotiate." |
| 'Political football': GOP grapples with immigration reform - NBCNews.com Posted: 30 Jan 2014 09:08 AM PST By Carrie Dann and Luke Russert, NBC News Republicans will mull proposals to overhaul the nation's immigration system Thursday, casting a new spotlight on possible reforms that have been stalled in Congress since last year.  Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Images Speaker of the House John Boehner (R), R-Ohio, speaks during the House Republican Leadership press conference at the House Republican Issues Conference in Cambridge, Maryland, January 30, 2014. House Speaker John Boehner told reporters Thursday morning that the issue of immigration has "been turned into a political football." "I think it's time to deal with it, but how we deal with it is going to be critically important," he said. Thursday is a key day for the reform debate, as GOP House members huddle at a retreat in Maryland to discuss their strategies on immigration and the debt ceiling. Leaders are expected to discuss broad "principles" for immigration reform with Republican members later Thursday afternoon. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said on MSNBC Wednesday that those principles will include allowing undocumented immigrants to receive "probationary status" and the ability to work while border security criteria are being implemented. Rep. Paul Ryan joins Chuck Todd to give his reaction on the State of the Union and talk about the Republican retreat, where they will circulate a framework for legal status, but not citizenship, for undocumented immigrants. "If those things are met -- you satisfy the terms of your probation, you're not on welfare, you pay a fine, you learn English and civics, and the border's been secured and Interior enforcement independently verified -- then you can get a regular work permit," he said. "And if you want to get in line to get a green card, like any other immigrant, you can do that, you just have to get at the back of the line so that we preference that legal immigrant who did things right in the first place." Boehner repeated Thursday that border security is the "first step in meaningful reform." "Listen, you can't begin to process of immigration reform without securing our borders and the ability to enforce our laws," he said. But forging such legislation will be a high-wire act for pro-reform House Republicans, who are mindful that their support from Latinos will likely continue to shrink if they are perceived as jamming an overhaul of outdated laws. A sizable block of conservatives are resisting those proposed changes, saying that such "amnesty" would be unfair to American workers and legal immigrants. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a leading opponent of the Senate-passed immigration bill that stalled in the House last year, distributed a memo to House Republicans this week outlining why the proposal would be a "hammer blow to the American middle class." Opponents like Sessions say that an influx of new legal workers would flood the labor market and drive up American unemployment. And some of the most strident critics of the Obama administration argue that – even if any new law included tough requirements for border security before legalization could go into effect – the federal government can't be trusted to enforce the law. Ryan alluded to that concern Wednesday, saying that Republicans "want to make sure that we write a law that [Obama] can't avoid, meaning with respect to securing the border and interior enforcement." Even if the GOP leadership proposal garners support from a majority of Republicans in the GOP-dominated House, however, it faces an additional test: whether it goes far enough for Democrats. Many longtime Democratic advocates of immigration reform say that any proposal that bars undocumented workers from eventually obtaining citizenship – either directly or by requiring unrealistic border security criteria to be met before the citizenship process can begin -- would be unacceptable. President Barack Obama offered few specifics in his State of the Union address, giving Republicans a wide berth as they begin their discussions. "If we are serious about economic growth, it is time to heed the call of business leaders, labor leaders, faith leaders, and law enforcement – and fix our broken immigration system," Obama said. "Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have acted. I know that members of both parties in the House want to do the same." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also struck an optimistic note this week, telling reporters she believes that Republicans are acting 'in "good faith" while working on the principles for reform. "I'm assured by the speaker that they will be good and acceptable to probably all of us and I hope that is the case," she said. This story was originally published on Thu Jan 30, 2014 11:46 AM EST |
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