Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Rep. Henry Waxman, Leading Jewish Liberal, Retires From Congress

Democratic U.S. Representative Henry Waxman of California, a leading liberal who helped craft President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare overhaul, said on Thursday he will retire from Congress at the end of 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 of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee in Obama’s first term, Waxman helped the president develop and enact a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system in a bid to provide insurance to millions of Americans without coverage.

Waxman also took a leading role in advancing White House-backed legislation to stem climate change. The bill passed the House, but died in the Senate.

Waxman’s term as committee chairman ended in 2011 after Republicans won control of the House from Democrats, in part because of voter dissatisfaction with the president’s healthcare program, known as Obamacare.

Waxman is the second key ally of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to announce plans this month to retire, following Representative George Miller, who is also from California.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.