David Obey retires; Norm Dicks in line for chairmanship of House Appropriations

If Democrats can hold on to their majority in the House of Representatives later this year, it looks like our very own Norm Dicks could become chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee. That's because the current chair, Representative David Obey, has just announced that he has decided to retire from public life:

[T]here is a time to stay and a time to go. And this is my time to go. I hate to do it. There is so much that needs to be done. But, frankly, I am bone tired. When I first put my name on the ballot for the State Assembly in 1962, I was 23 years old. Now, 48 years later, I will soon be 72. When I went to Congress in 1969, I was the youngest member of the House of Representatives. I’m not anymore. Since that first day in 1962, I have gone through 25 elections and engaged in countless battles.

I’m ready to turn the page, and I think, frankly, that my district is ready for someone new to make a fresh start.

Not someone who poses as a fresh face, but would in reality take us back to the “good old days” of Bush tax cuts for the rich and a misguided Iraq war.

Not someone whose idea of a fresh idea is to say: “Let the market do it,” which translated means: “Let the corporate elites, big banks, and Wall Street big shots and insurance company CEO’s do anything they want with no regulation to protect investors and consumers.” There is nothing fresh about that.

No, what the 7th district deserves and what the country deserves is for someone to step up who can be counted on to put working people first, someone who will bring fresh eyes and fresh energy to the battle, someone who won’t use slick words and an actor’s ability to hide the fact that he is willing to gut and privatize Social Security and Medicare and abandon working people to the arbitrary power of America’s corporate and economic elite.

Republicans, of course, will crow about Obey's retirement as yet another sign that Democrats in trouble. But retirements can be a double-edged sword. If Obey is succeeded by a young Democrat — as he hopes to be — then his seat will likely remain out of the clutches of the Graveyard of Progress Party for many years.

Obey's retirement, as noted at the beginning of this post, has important consequences for Washington, because it sets the stage for the Evergreen State's longest-serving congressman to assume one of the most powerful positions in the House of Representatives. First elected in the 1976 presidential election with Jimmy Carter, Norm Dicks has been Washington's most senior representative since 1995, following George Nethercutt's defeat of House Speaker Tom Foley.

When Democrats took over the House of Representatives in 2006, Dicks became Chairman of the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies. He relinquished the post recently following the death of his colleague Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, when he became chairman of the more powerful Appropriations Subcomittee on Defense. Now he is poised to become chairman of the entire Appropriations Committee.

If he gets the post, it would be his second major promotion within a year, and it would make him an ex-officio member of every Appropriations subcommittee.