The congressman from the 30th District is Henry Waxman, a Democrat first elected in 1974, long one of the ablest members of the House and a shrewd political operator. He is the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, which he chaired before Democrats lost the majority in the 2010 election.
There is no Westside glitz about him. The son of Russian immigrants, Waxman grew up over his family’s store in Watts. He graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles and its law school, where he met Howard Berman, his longtime political ally and colleague from the adjacent 28th District. They became immersed in the Federation of Young Democrats, and Waxman chaired the group for a year. He moved up rapidly in politics by spying openings before others did. He ran against Assemblyman Lester McMillan in the mostly Jewish Fairfax area in 1968, at age 28, and won 64% in the primary. From 1971 to 1972, he chaired the Assembly’s redistricting committee, a good place to make friends. In 1974 he was elected to Congress. Waxman’s biggest break in Congress came after the 1978 election, when he was elected chairman of the Commerce Committee’s Health and Environment Subcommittee. This was one of the first times House Democrats decided to ignore seniority in handing out subcommittee chairs. Waxman argued his case on the issues. And in a move quite unprecedented at the time, though common in Sacramento, he made campaign contributions to other Democrats on the full committee. (The practice is all but expected today of anyone trying to get a committee gavel or role in party leadership in Congress.) Waxman won the post, 15-12, over the widely respected Richardson Preyer of North Carolina.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Waxman and Berman built their own political machine in Los Angeles. Its power came not from patronage but from fundraising and savvy. They raised huge sums on the Westside for favored candidates. They put out carefully targeted direct mail, with customized letters and endorsement slates sent out to different lists of people. In California, where television advertising is exceedingly expensive and political activists are widely dispersed geographically, this made them critical players. But the organization withered in the 1990s. Waxman is less active now in Los Angeles-area politics, though he did endorse former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa in his successful 2005 mayoral race.
From 1978 to 1994, Waxman was part of the Democratic majority in the House and the chairman of an important subcommittee, making him a major national policy maker, usually from behind the scenes. In 1981 and 1982, he prevented the Reagan administration and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., from revising the Clean Air Act, because he wanted tougher pollution controls. Biding his time, Waxman worked to strengthen the law in the 1990 revision. He also had a hand in legislation addressing chemicals in drinking water, radon abatement, and lead contamination. Another Waxman project was expanding Medicaid for the poor. Between 1984 and 1990, he got coverage for all poor children up to 18 and pregnant women living in poverty. This helped raise Medicaid from 9% to 14% of state spending in the 1980s, and explains why Waxman was unpopular with many governors.
Waxman has secured funding for AIDS research, important in a district with a large gay population. In early 1994, in widely publicized hearings, he lined up the chief executive officers of leading tobacco companies and accused them of adding nicotine and other substances to cigarettes and of lying in their testimony. All of this had no immediate legislative result, and when Republican Thomas Bliley of Virginia became Commerce Committee chairman, the hearings stopped. But Waxman brought the tobacco issue into public view, and he helped inspire the lawsuits against tobacco companies that resulted in a massive redistribution of corporate assets—from the tobacco companies to state governments and trial lawyers.
When Republicans took over Congress in 1995, there was no slackening of effort on Waxman’s part, though he was largely shut out of the legislative process. In 1996, he gave up the ranking position on the health subcommittee to become the ranking Democrat on the Government Reform Committee, where he concentrated on holding hearings and publicizing Government Accountability Office reports. Waxman sharply attacked GOP Chairman Dan Burton’s investigation of President Clinton’s fundraising operation, arguing that Burton had given himself unprecedented subpoena power and was misusing it. He emerged as Clinton’s most articulate House defender during the campaign finance scandal. In 2001, with Republican George W. Bush as the new president, Waxman frequently fired off letters to Burton demanding investigations of alleged White House misdeeds. He and Dingell instigated a GAO investigation of company executives who had been consulted by Vice President Cheney’s energy task force. In February 2002, the GAO brought a lawsuit against Cheney, but a federal judge ruled against the agency.
In January 2003, Virginia Republican Tom Davis took over as committee chairman and promised a more constructive relationship with Waxman. Nevertheless, Waxman indefatigably wrote multipage letters with dozens of footnotes and questions, called for GAO investigations, and invoked a 1920s rule that entitles any seven members of the committee to seek information from the executive branch. He assembled a staff of dozens of investigators, squirreled in tiny offices around the Capitol Hill complex. He and Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio demanded that 10 pharmaceutical companies reveal how much they paid in consulting fees and stock options to National Institutes of Health scientists, which led to a stricter NIH policy on ethics and disclosure in 2005. Waxman was a leading critic of Halliburton and other government contractors in Iraq, pointing out tirelessly that Cheney was once Halliburton’s chief executive officer and alleging that State Department documents revealed Halliburton employees tried to extract bribes for fuel contracts. But Waxman and Davis managed to work together on investigations on mad-cow disease and D.C. drinking water.
Democrats took control of the House in 2007, giving Waxman the gavel at the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Davis, who became the ranking minority member, said, “There is no question that life is going to be different for the administration. Henry is going to be tough …and he’s been waiting a long time to do this.” Waxman reduced the number of subcommittees from seven to five and doubled the staff reporting to him. His first hearings were on whether the administration had interfered with the work of climate scientists and on fraud and waste in reconstruction projects in Iraq.
That was only the beginning. Waxman’s bottomless portfolio included hearings into secret agent Valerie Plame’s complaints that the revealing of her name had violated national security and testimony by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on prewar intelligence in Iraq. Few subjects seemed too far afield for a Waxman investigation: He probed the health effects of uranium mines on Navajo lands, the pricing of government contracts with Sun Microsystems, and steroid use in professional baseball. Probably his most publicized hearing came in February 2008, when baseball pitcher Roger Clemens and his former trainer gave conflicting testimony on drug use. In 2008, Waxman turned his focus to the collapse of major financial institutions as a result of shaky lending practices and sought information on the compensation of executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage issuers.
With the arrival of a Democratic administration in 2009, Waxman could achieve more of his policy goals on the Energy and Commerce Committee than on the oversight panel. He remained particularly interested in issues related to air pollution and global warming. He had co-sponsored bills limiting carbon emissions and supported the bill passed by the California Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. In addition, he had long been eager to advance national health insurance legislation. All of this suggested that Waxman wanted to be chairman of Energy and Commerce. But there was a hitch. An equally savvy and effective Democrat, John Dingell of Michigan, was next in line for the job. But working against Dingell was his rocky relationship with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, by contrast, was a big fan of Waxman’s. And Dingell, who represents a Detroit-area district dependent on auto manufacturing, was less enthusiastic about air-pollution regulation than Pelosi. The long-brewing clash came after the November 2008 elections. House Democratic rules provided for committee chairmen to be chosen by a vote of the Democratic Caucus, and Waxman had quietly sought support and made contributions to Democrats in close elections. Waxman then went public that he was challenging Dingell for the chairmanship.
In the past, some Democratic members had retired before they reached the point where they could be humiliated by being deprived of a gavel because they were seen as less competent than a challenger, but this was not the issue here: Both men were regarded as highly competent. On Nov. 19, 2008, the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee voted 25-22 for Waxman. This was seen as a signal that Pelosi was supporting Waxman, though the margin was pretty small. There were signs that President-elect Obama was leaning Waxman’s way. Obama had just reiterated his support for tougher carbon emissions legislation and had hired Waxman’s longtime chief of staff, Phil Schiliro, as the White House liaison to Congress. The caucus vote was scheduled for November 20. Dingell had the support of many members of the Congressional Black Caucus, of the conservative “Blue Dogs,” and of the moderate New Democrats. He also had the backing of lawmakers from industrial and coal states that would be hit hard by carbon emissions legislation. Waxman had the support of most of the 33 Democrats in the California delegation, and of the bulk of the Democratic freshmen. Waxman won 137-122.
As chairman, Waxman played a key role in much of the major legislation of the 111th Congress (2009-10). In March 2009, he and Democratic Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts proposed a cap-and-trade bill that created an emissions trading system among industries with the aim of reducing carbon dioxide emissions 20% by the year 2020, 42% by 2030 and 83% by 2050. Many emission permits would be auctioned off and utilities would be required to produce 6% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2012. Republicans called it a national energy tax, and even some Energy and Commerce Democrats were dubious. To gain votes, Waxman agreed to changes. He lowered the emissions target to 17% by 2020 and agreed that 35% of emissions credits would be granted free to electric utilities and 15% to producers of steel, aluminum, chemicals and glass. To gain support from Texans, he agreed to provide 2% of emission credits to oil refiners; to get Dingell on board, he agreed to free credits for automakers that produce cars in the United States. The committee approved his bill 33-25, with one Republican voting yes and four Democrats voting no.
As the bill headed for a final floor showdown, Waxman made further concessions. To placate lawmakers from industrial districts, he agreed to tariffs against countries that don’t reduce carbon emissions. He gave Democrat Alan Grayson a $50 million hurricane research center in his Florida district. Amid intensive administration lobbying, the bill passed on June 26, 2009 by 219-212. “Today we have taken decisive and historic action to promote America’s energy security and to create millions of clean energy jobs that will drive our economic recovery and long-term growth,” Waxman said. Despite all of his efforts, the Senate, where opposition to the bill ran deep, never took it up.
Waxman also had a hand in the Democrats’ sweeping health care overhaul in 2009 and 2010. Speaker Pelosi hoped to pass it in the House before the August 2009 recess, but Waxman encountered problems in committee. Negotiations with conservative Blue Dog Democrats were on and off, and when Waxman agreed that a newly created government-run insurer would negotiate fees with providers rather than base them on Medicare rates, liberals complained loudly. Waxman propitiated them with more amendments. It finally passed in committee 31-28 on July 31, too late to come to the floor before the recess. Then, over the recess, some Democrats encountered strong opposition to the bill in town hall meetings. More changes were necessary to secure a majority, including the addition of an amendment by Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak barring any federal involvement in abortions. The bill finally came to the floor on Nov. 7, 2009, and passed 220 to 215. The Senate passed its own version on Dec. 24, 2009, and Congress ultimately approved a final version that was signed by Obama on March 23, 2010.
In addition to major initiatives on energy and health care, Waxman influenced several smaller legislative efforts. He has long worked on drug patent legislation, and the development of biologics raised the issue of their patent life. Companies and universities developing biologics wanted 14 years. Waxman, opposed to patent protection, initially proposed zero but ultimately agreed to a White House-engineered compromise of 10 years. Energy and Commerce also weighed in on the financial regulatory rewrite in December 2009, and Waxman prevailed over Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., in having a board rather than a single chairman run a new consumer protection agency. On other issues, the committee passed a bill requiring black boxes to be installed on cars to provide a record in crashes, voted unanimously to give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission authority to shield the nation’s electric grid from terrorist attacks, and approved a rewrite of the Clean Water Act. The House in 2010 passed Waxman’s “cash for caulkers” bill granting $6 billion in tax rebates for taxpayers installing energy-efficient home improvements. The Senate did not take it up by the close of the 111th Congress.
Waxman has always won re-election easily, and has continued to contribute generously, and strategically, to other Democrats’ campaigns. In July 2009, he published The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works, a memoir written with the assistance of Atlantic staff writer Joshua Green.
