Henry Arnold Waxman (born September 12, 1939) is an American politician and lobbyist who was a U.S. representative from California from 1975 to 2015. He is a member of the Democratic Party.
He is currently chairman at Waxman Strategies, a D.C.-based lobbying firm,[6] Regent Lecturer for the University of California, Los Angeles, and lecturer at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.[7]
Early life, education, and early career
Waxman was born to a Jewish household in Los Angeles, California, the son of Esther (née Silverman) and Ralph Louis Waxman. His father was born in Montreal, Canada; his mother was from Pennsylvania. All of his grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia.[8] He attended college at UCLA, earning a bachelor's degree in political science in 1961 and a J.D. degree from UCLA School of Law in 1964. After graduating, he worked as a lawyer. He was elected to the California State Assembly in 1968, and served three terms. Along with U.S. Representative Howard Berman, whom he studied with at UCLA, Waxman co-founded the Los Angeles County Young Democrats.[9]
U.S. House of Representatives
Elections
In 1974, Democratic U.S. Representative Chet Holifield retired after 16 terms in Congress. Waxman gave up his state assembly seat to run for the district, which had been re-numbered from the 19th to the 24th in a mid-decade redistricting. Waxman won the Democratic nomination for the district, and easily won the general election, as this was tantamount to election in this heavily Democratic district. He was re-elected 17 times, with no substantive opposition. He faced no major-party opposition in 1986, and was completely unopposed in 2008. His district changed numbers four times in his tenure — from the 24th (1975–1993) to the 29th (1993–2003) to the 30th (2003–2013) to the 33rd (2013-2015). At the time of his retirement, he was one of the last two members, along with George Miller of California, of the large Democratic freshman class of 1975.
Before the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in 1995, Waxman was a powerful figure in the House as chair of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and the Environment from 1979. In this role, he conducted investigations into a range of health and environmental issues, including universal health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid coverage, AIDS, and air and water pollution. In 1994, Waxman forced the chief executives of the seven major tobacco companies to swear under oath that nicotine was not addictive.[12]
Waxman's stated legislative priorities are health and environmental issues. These include universal health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid coverage, tobacco, AIDS, air and water quality standards, pesticides, nursing home quality standards, women's health research and reproductive rights, the availability and cost of prescription drugs, and the right of communities to know about pollution levels. As an example of Waxman's thoughts regarding tobacco, on April 13, 2010, he requested that Major League Baseball ban smokeless tobacco in all its various forms - snuff, dipping tobacco, chewing tobacco, snus, etc.[13]
Waxman at a bill signing ceremony with President George W. Bush in September 2006
With the Democrats' victory in the 2006 midterm elections, Waxman became chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the principal investigative committee of the House. He was the committee's ranking Democrat from 1997 to 2007. In 1998, while he was still ranking member, he created a "Special Investigations Division" to investigate matters that he felt the full committee had neglected. This was possible because the committee has broad powers to investigate any matter with federal policy implications, even if another committee has jurisdiction over it.[14] He has also harshly criticized the Republicans for ignoring their "constitutional responsibility" to conduct oversight over the government.[15]
On March 16, 2004, at Waxman's request, the Committee on Government Reform Minority Office published "Iraq on the Record, the Bush Administration's Public Statements on Iraq",[16] a detailed and searchable collection of 237 specific misleading statements made by Bush Administration officials about the threat posed by Iraq. It contains statements that were misleading based on what was known to the Administration at the time the statements were made. It does not include statements that appear mistaken only in hindsight. If a statement was an accurate reflection of U.S. intelligence at the time it was made, it was excluded even if it now appears erroneous.
In 2006, Project On Government Oversight, a government watchdog group, presented Waxman with its Good Government Award for his various contributions to government transparency and oversight.[17]
On the day after the 2006 elections, Waxman directed his aides to draw up an "oversight plan" for the panel. He had already let it be known that he wanted to investigate Halliburton, as well as its alleged malfeasance related to government contracts in Iraq. It is very likely that he could also investigate the numerous scandals surrounding Jack Abramoff. This led to concerns among Democratic aides that the Government Reform Committee under Waxman would stage a repeat of the committee's performance under the Clinton administration, when it issued over 1,000 subpoenas. However, Waxman told Newsweek that he is interested in accountability and not retaliation.[18]
In 2009, he began serving as the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, after defeating Chairman John Dingell in a 137–122 secret vote of House Democrats on November 20, 2008.
Waxman stands behind President Obama at an October 30, 2009, bill signing ceremony
Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming once described Waxman as being 'tougher than a boiled owl.'[19]
Waxman is proud of his "strong Jewish identity" and has drawn political conclusions from his exploration of the religion.[20] "Judaism is about acting and doing the right thing, not simply believing in it or mindlessly following ritual," he said in a speech presented by the University of Southern California's Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life.[20] Waxman said he applies Jewish ethical values to his congressional service. He further said that the "Jewish values" of "human rights, social justice, and equal opportunities ... are synonymous with American values," and that such values "are in my opinion closer to a Democratic position." Waxman supported fellow representative Jane Harman during her primary challenge from Marcy Winograd when Winograd said she would support a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, instead of the two-state resolution endorsed by Waxman and Harman. Saying it suffers from "a culture of corruption" and "has become obsessed with secrecy," he accused the American government of having abandoned these values. "(The) Republican leadership ignores presidential rules and norms and has no consideration for custom," he said.[21]
Abortion
Waxman was strongly critical of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which places limits on taxpayer-funded abortions in the context of the November 2009 Affordable Health Care for America Act. Instead of this version, it was reported that many Democrats supported a version that would find "common ground."[22]
1985 subway opposition
In 1985, Waxman sponsored a bill supported by affluent homeowners groups in his district to ban federal funding for the Red Line subway after a methane gas explosion in the Fairfax District.[4] Prior to that, Waxman had privately expressed concerns about "gentrification" of his affluent district.
Waxman maintains that the 1985 bill was sponsored in the interest of public safety and not, as some allege, to hinder access of the working classes in South and East Los Angeles to his affluent district. In a letter to the Los Angeles Times, Waxman cites the 2005 study: "The panel concurred as well that in 1985, the decision to hold further tunneling in abeyance was prudent, given the circumstances and extent of information and technology at that time. Much has changed since then to significantly improve tunneling and operation safety."[23]
In 2005, a robust real estate market, multi-dwelling construction boom, and lack of public mass transit planning on the westside caused by Waxman's bill resulted in gridlock throughout Waxman's district.[24] At the request of Los Angeles Mayor and LA Metro Board President Antonio Villaraigosa, Waxman agreed to lift the ban if a panel of five engineers found tunneling under the Miracle Mile stretch of Wilshire Boulevard to be safe. In October 2005, the panel decided that tunneling was possible, and on December 16, Waxman responded by announcing he would introduce a bill to the U.S. House that would lift the ban on federal money for subway tunneling in the district. This bill passed the House via unanimous vote on September 20, 2006.[25]
Solyndra
Waxman, as the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, oversaw the case of Solyndra, a solar company that filed for bankruptcy after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the DOE. Waxman recounted meeting with Solyndra's CEO two months before they filed for bankruptcy, who assured him that "Solyndra’s future was bright with sales and production booming."[26] Waxman was accused of being involved with the Solyndra loan by Darrell Issa. Waxman responded, saying he had no involvement in the selection of the loan.[27][28]
Once hailed in the media as a "lobbyist's worst nightmare," Waxman became a successful and influential lobbyist when he opened his own firm after retiring from Congress.[33][34][35]
In popular culture
In 1993, a news clip of Waxman was used for the movie And the Band Played On, and in 2021, Waxman was praised by television host Bill Maher on his HBO Talk Show Series Real Time with Bill Maher. In discussing the concept of political "work horses", as compared to "show horses", Maher described Waxman's legislative achievements and emphasized that Waxman's tenacity and low public profile as a "work horse" allowed him to effect substantial change in the United States, specifically through updates to programs and policies including food safety, clean air, HIV research, and the social safety net. In Waxman's honor, Maher introduced a segment titled "The Baldy Awards", to recognize the achievements of Waxman and other "work horse" politicians.[36][37][38]
↑ "Special Investigations". Archived from the original on December 15, 2005. Retrieved April 1, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). democrats.reform.house.gov. Retrieved on November 22, 2011.
↑ "Committee on Government Reform Minority Office". Archived from the original on December 26, 2005. Retrieved April 1, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). democrats.reform.house.gov. Retrieved on November 22, 2011.
↑ Henry A. Waxman "Iraq on the Record". Archived from the original on August 13, 2007. Retrieved November 22, 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). oversight.house.gov
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