House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling will not run for re-election in 2018
- Rep. Jeb Hensarling said he will not seek re-election in 2018.
- The House Financial Services chairman said he wants to spend more time with family.
- He is the latest GOP lawmaker to announce a decision to not run for re-election.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling announced Tuesday that he will not seek re-election in 2018.
Hensarling said in a statement that he decided to time his retirement from Congress with the end of his term as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. The 60-year-old Republican from Texas also said he wanted to spend more time with his family.
First elected to Congress in 2002, Hensarling said, "I never intended to make it a lifetime commitment, and I have already stayed far longer than I had originally planned."
The congressman said there is still plenty left on the agenda at the House Financial Services Committee, such as housing finance reform and deregulation.
Hensarling has been a proponent of rolling back Dodd-Frank, the reform package designed to limit the high-risk practices that triggered the financial crisis. The House passed a bill in June that would gut many of the key elements of those banking reforms.
For the remainder of his term, Hensarling said, he looks forward to working with the rest of Congress on overhauling the tax code. GOP lawmakers are expected to unveil their draft of a tax reform bill this week.
Hensarling is the latest Republican lawmaker to announce his retirement from Congress.
Last week, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake also said he would not seek re-election next year in a sharp rebuke to a Republican Party that he said has given into a "more viscerally satisfied anger and resentment" under President Donald Trump.
But unlike Flake, Hensarling was not in danger of losing his seat. In the 2016 election, the Texas Republican won his House seat handily, with about 81 percent of the vote in his district. That margin is far greater than the 50 percent of ballots cast that won Flake his Senate seat.
In September, Republican Sen. Bob Corker said he would not be running for re-election in 2018. The president subsequently taunted the Tennessee senator, who responded by saying, "It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center."
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