Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana announced plans Tuesday to retire at the end of his term after a career of enormous power and notable independence, producing both collaboration and conflict with fellow Democrats on major tax and health care legislation.
“I don’t want to die here with my boots on. There is life beyond Congress,” the 71-year-old Baucus said in a telephone interview.
He became the eighth senator to announce retirement plans for 2014, and the sixth Democrat. One public poll recently suggested he would have faced a difficult challenge if he had sought a seventh term.
Republicans must gain six seats in 2014 to win a majority, and they said the retirement enhanced their prospects.
Yet Democrats were cheered when former Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who recently stepped down after two terms, swiftly expressed interest in the race.
In a brief statement, President Barack Obama said Baucus “has been a leader on a broad range of issues that touch the lives of Americans across the country.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and Baucus’ frequent legislative partner, was complimentary, too. “We ran the Finance Committee for 10 years together, and every bill except for three or four was bipartisan,” he said in a statement. “The Senate will be worse off as a deliberative body when Senator Baucus leaves.”
In a written statement, Baucus sketched an ambitious agenda for the rest of his term, topped by an overhaul of the tax code.
“Our country and our state face enormous challenges — rising debt, a dysfunctional tax code, threats to our outdoor heritage and the need for more good-paying jobs,” he said, adding several Montana-specific priorities as well.
Baucus, a fifth-generation Montanan, was elected to the Senate in 1978 after two terms in the House. He became the top Democrat on the Finance Committee in early 2001. He has held the position ever since on the panel — which has jurisdiction over taxes, Medicare, Medicaid, health care and trade — as chairman when his party held a majority and as senior member of the minority when Republicans were in power.
The panel has a long tradition of bipartisanship, but Baucus ascended to power in an era of increasing partisanship in Congress.
Many Democrats were unhappy when he worked with Republicans to enact the tax cuts that President George W. Bush won in 2001. And then again in 2004 when Congress pushed through a GOP plan to create a new prescription drug benefit under Medicare, a measure that most Democrats opposed as a giveaway to the large drug companies.
Baucus stood with fellow Democrats in 2005 when Bush proposed legislation to partially privatize Social Security, an epic battle that ended in defeat for the president’s effort.
He played a central role in the enactment of Obama’s watershed health care legislation in 2010, although some inside his party complained that precious momentum was lost while he spent months on bipartisan negotiations that ultimately proved fruitless.
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said he learned of the retirement plans Monday. He said Baucus told him he wanted to return to Montana, and noted that if he waited until the end of his next term he would be nearly 80.
Baucus said: “Been here 40 years. No regrets. It is time to do something different.”
Baucus joined Democrats Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Carl Levin of Michigan in announcing his retirement plans.
Republicans Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Mike Johanns of Nebraska also have decided not to seek re-election next year.
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