Biography

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.

His district included much of the western part of the city of Los Angeles, as well as West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills, and was numbered the 24th district from 1975 to 1993, the 29th district from 1993 to 2003, and the 30th district from 2003 to 2013, changing because of redistricting after the 1990, 2000, and 2010 censuses.

Waxman was an influential liberal member of Congress, and was instrumental in passing laws including the Infant Formula Act of 1980, the Orphan Drug Act of 1983, the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, the Clean Air Act of 1990, the Ryan White CARE Act of 1990, the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the State Children's Health Insurance Program of 1997, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. In 1985, he played an instrumental role in banning federal funding for the Red Line subway in Los Angeles so that it would not go into his affluent Westside district.

He is currently chairman at Waxman Strategies, a D.C.-based lobbying firm, Regent Lecturer for University of California, Los Angeles, and lecturer at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.