CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Dec. 27, 2008 – 10:41 a.m.
CQ Profile: Henry Waxman, Savvy Operator with New Power Base
Rep. Henry A. Waxman , D-Calif., is one of Washington’s shrewdest operators. Friends and enemies describe him — with varying degrees of admiration — as dogged and tenacious, and he has extensive knowledge of a broad policy portfolio and the ability to be both partisan and patient.
In the 111th Congress (2009-10), he will get a chance to draw on those skills as the new chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, where he will be a major player on several of President-elect Obama’s chief priorities: energy, global warming and health care. Waxman also will have purview over telecommunications policy and is likely to push for institutional change at the Federal Communications Commission.
With his toppling of longtime chairman John D. Dingell of Michigan, he will seek to confront business interests on legislation in each of those areas. He has called himself a “proud, self-confessed, unapologetic liberal.”
He will enjoy several advantages in getting what he wants, including a like-minded ally in fellow Californian and Speaker Nancy Pelosi . His longtime aide, Philip Schiliro, was tapped as Obama’s congressional relations director.
The 5-foot-5 Waxman — with his mustache, wire-rimmed spectacles, thick black eyebrows and bald pate — is not a physically intimidating figure; Time magazine described him as having “all the panache of your parents’ dentist.” But Republicans have learned to respect him. Former Wyoming GOP Sen. Alan Simpson once griped that he was “tougher than a boiled owl.”
Waxman is single-mindedly focused on his job; he has few hobbies and avoids socializing with colleagues. He also does not evince much of an ego. “I don’t care whether the world knows about me,” he told The Washington Post in 2002. “I just want the world to care about some of these issues and care about some of these things that I care about.”
Waxman ousted Dingell — the House’s longest-serving member and Energy and Commerce’s top Democrat since 1981 — from the chairmanship by taking a page from Obama’s playbook and casting himself as an agent of change. In a methodical campaign that flew in the face of the chamber’s tradition of seniority, Waxman appealed to younger Democratic members who want to push an aggressive agenda on environmental and energy issues. They had criticized Dingell, an ardent defender of his home state’s auto industry, for moving too slowly on legislation to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.
“Seniority is important, but it should not be a grant of property rights to be chairman for three decades or more,” Waxman told reporters after a November 2008 Democratic Caucus vote that gave Waxman the gavel, 137-122.
In addition to making a philosophical appeal, Waxman quietly gave financial help to the campaigns of younger Democrats, using his political action committee to donate two to five times as much as Dingell to individual candidates.
Waxman’s rivalry with Dingell dates to the 1980s, when the two clashed on some environmental issues. An uneasy truce collapsed in 2008 when Dingell revived a proposal to bar Waxman’s home state and others from setting tougher vehicle emissions standards than the federal government. Waxman took it as a personal affront and vowed he and Dingell would “have a fight” over it.
Prior to challenging Dingell, Waxman made the Health and Environment Subcommittee his main base of operations on Energy and Commerce. He chaired the panel for 16 years before the GOP takeover of 1995. His main legislative interests have been health care and environmental issues. He once blocked an effort to weaken the Clean Air Act by filing 600 amendments that were wheeled in on shopping carts.
He has excoriated a provision of the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law that barred the government from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to obtain discounts for seniors. The GOP-sponsored law instead allowed private insurance companies to negotiate prices with the drugmakers. “It’s not surprising that the interests of the drug companies and the health insurers who gave millions of dollars to Republican members of Congress came first — and seniors last,” Waxman said in 2006. “Corruption, incompetence, and an ideology that favors private profits over public programs all played a role.”
Waxman has been a leading congressional crusader against tobacco. In a 1994 hearing, Waxman — a former smoker who had a tough time quitting — grilled the chief executives of the nation’s seven largest tobacco companies. All testified under oath that they did not believe nicotine was addictive. The hearing helped lay the groundwork for multibillion-dollar lawsuits against the industry.
Waxman has drawn the most attention in recent years as chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where he was a constant thorn in President Bush’s side. With a goal of ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse, Waxman relied on a staff of about 70. He conducted hearings on a number of issues, including the huge compensation packages doled out to executives of firms involved in the subprime mortgage crisis; waste and fraud in Iraqi reconstruction; and alleged White House efforts to manipulate climate change science.
Waxman’s aggressiveness is much in keeping with his posturing while his party was in the minority. During Bush’s first six years in office, the Republican Congress exercised oversight of the administration with a light hand. But Waxman, as the Oversight panel’s ranking Democrat, hounded the administration on its prewar assertions about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Halliburton’s contracts in the war zone, national missile defense, Vice President Dick Cheney ’s 2001 energy task force, the cost of drugs under Medicare and the government’s response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Despite his reputation in front of the camera, Waxman can be willing to cut deals with Republicans when necessary. Compromise, he has said, “can further your ideas and even help you improve your ideas.” He and the Oversight committee’s top Republican, Virginia’s Thomas M. Davis III , sent pointed inquiries to federal agencies on such subjects as flu vaccine shortages. They also released a report on former lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s dealings with the executive branch.
Waxman grew up in an apartment above a Los Angeles grocery store run by his father, who was the son of Russian immigrants and a New Deal Democrat who influenced his son’s early thinking about politics and government. Waxman was the first person in his family to go to college. His political career began at UCLA in the 1960s, when he and fellow student — and now House colleague — Howard L. Berman became active in California’s Federation of Young Democrats. In 1968, after a term as chairman of the state federation, Waxman, with Berman’s support, challenged Democratic state Assemblyman Lester McMillan in a primary. Waxman beat him with 64 percent of the vote.
It was the start of the so-called Waxman-Berman machine, an informal network of like-minded politicians who pooled resources to back candidates with money, organization and savvy. The “machine” was functioning so smoothly in 1974 that Waxman had little trouble winning a House seat created with him in mind. Berman waltzed into his own seat eight years later.
Waxman’s district takes in most of the entertainment industry’s geography. His constituents in Beverly Hills and part of West Hollywood are politically involved, and many donated generously to Waxman’s political action committee. His own campaigns are formalities; he has consistently won re-election with more than 60 percent of the vote and ran unopposed in 2008.
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