Utah paper tells Hatch to 'call it a career' in blistering editorial
Utah's largest newspaper slammed Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah) in a Christmas Day editorial on Monday while calling on the senior GOP senator to retire. The Salt Lake Tribune's editorial board named Hatch their 2017 "Utahn of the Year," a designation the paper says is given to someone who has "had the biggest impact. For good or for ill.
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After 42 years in the Senate, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch is announced his retirement on Jan. 2, effective at the need of the year. In a video statement, he said, ‘"When the president visited Utah last month, he said I was a fighter. I've always been a fighter. I was an amateur boxer in my youth, and I brought that fighting spirit with me to Washington. But every good fighter knows when to hang up the gloves. And for me, that time is soon approaching."
We take a look at some highs and lows of his long career in the Senate.
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1976
Orrin Hatch was elected as a conservative Republican Senator from Utah in 1976. It was his first political race.
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1980
Hatch surprisingly maintained a lifelong friendship with liberal Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy.
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1983
A staunch pro-life Senator, he sponsored a constitutional amendment to empower Congress and the states to ban abortions in 1983, which failed.
(Pictured) Hatch left, poses with Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), just after the Senate vote, rejecting a constitutional amendment to empower Congress and the states to ban abortions, June 28, 1983 in Washington. Hatch was the move's chief sponsor and Packwood its principal opponent.
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1987
Hatch has always wanted to serve on the US Supreme Court and he was on Ronald Reagan’s short list to succeed Justice Powell in 1987. Ultimately, that seat went to Anthony Kennedy.
Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch says he is retiring after four decades in Senate
WASHINGTON — Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch says he is retiring after four decades in Senate.Hatch, 83, says he's always been a fighter, "but every good fighter knows when to hang up the gloves.
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1999
Hatch ran for President in 1999, but lost the nomination to George W. Bush.
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2001
Along with Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, he introduced the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act" or "DREAM Act."
(Pictured) During the Senate Judiciary Committee markup, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, and Chairman Orrin G. Hatch, listen as Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., left, makes a statement opposing S1545, the DREAM Act of 2003.
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2005
He has been known to support causes generally not favored by conservatives like himself. In 2005, he supported legislation for stem cell research and was one of the few Republican leaders to support federal programs for AIDS education in 1988.
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Mitt Romney was mum on whether he plans to run for Senate after Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah announced he’ll retire after 2018. But Romney’s Twitter profile may give a hint about his thinking. As of 3:12 p.m. East Coast time, it read "Massachusetts," where Romney formerly served as governor. By 5:45 p.m., it was tweaked to Holladay, Utah. Romney is thought to be a potential contender for that Senate seat.Mitt Romney Twitter profile at 3:12p.m. EST and at 5:45p.m. EST.
(Pictured) Hatch, Michael J. Fox, actor and founder of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., Rep. Michael N. Castle, R-Del., and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, during a news conference/rally urging a vote on the Senate floor on HR 810 for stem cell research legislation.
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2007
In 2007, he became Utah’s longest-serving Senator. At his retirement in 2017, he would have been the longest serving Republican Senator, having held the position for 42 years.
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2014
As of 2014, Hatch had the distinction of being one of the senators who had passed the most laws in their tenure. He had sponsored or co-sponsored 742 bills that became law. Some of these laws include the Comprehensive Smoking Education Act (1984) which required cigarette makers to put warning on their packaging and he helped draft 2001’s controversial Patriot Act.
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2014
One of those laws was the Songwriter Equity Act in 2014, allowing songwriters to be paid fairly. Hatch himself writes songs in his spare time.
I’m a Trump supporter and I hope Mitt Romney becomes Utah’s next senator
With the retirement of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, it is almost certain that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will be running for and likely win Hatch’s seat in November. Recent polling has shown that Romney has an over a 69 percent approval rating in the state, including over 81 percent among Republicans, and would defeat the presumptive Democrat in the general election by over 50 points.I voted for and support President Trump.
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2016
He originally supported Jeb Bush for the Republican nomination for President, then backed fellow Senator Marco Rubio after Bush left the race. Ultimately, he went on to endorse Trump for President.
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2017
Hatch supported Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's controversial recommendation to decrease the size of two of Utah’s national monuments: Bears Ears and Grand Escalante.
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2017
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., seated at center with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, right, presents a pen to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, left, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., second from left, watches after signing the final version of the GOP tax bill during an enrollment ceremony at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017.
Photo gallery by photo services
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the longest-serving Republican senator, has announced at age 83 that he will not seek an eighth term. Analysts suggested late last year that he would be vulnerable to a primary challenge should he seek the GOP nomination for another term, and in a poll last summer an overwhelming majority of Utah voters suggested it was time for Hatch to step down.
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As others consider the electoral implications of Hatch’s announcement, consider these implications for the Senate when Hatch retires later this year.
The Senate will remain a geriatric chamber even after Hatch’s departure. As the figure below shows, the average senator is roughly 10 years older than in 1981, making the current Senate “among the oldest” in U.S. history.
© Provided by WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post Eight octogenarians serve in the Senate, The Washington Post’s Paul Kane noted last month. A handful of septuagenarian senators legislate alongside them. That’s unusual historically, though hardly surprising. In the Senate’s first century there were shorter life spans and fewer career lawmakers, which also made octogenarians rare in the body’s second century.
As Kane pointed out, every elderly senator occupies a key committee leadership post. And the chamber has felt the consequences. The Republican policy agenda was slowed in some way this past year by their elderly colleagues’ injuries, illnesses and absences. Hatch’s departure will do little to resolve such problems.
According to new work by political scientists Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman, the number of truly effective Senate lawmakers has dropped markedly in recent years. Hatch’s departure furthers that decline.
Hatch is best known for his legislative partnership with the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. Despite being ideological opposites, they managed a friendship that yielded bipartisan, landmark public health laws: health insurance for children in low-income families known as S-CHIP and aid for low-income, uninsured victims of HIV/AIDS and their families. With then-Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Hatch forged another legislative partnership to produce the Orphan Drug Act and create the modern generic drug industry. Even in the hyperpartisan Senate of recent years, Hatch helped secure Senate passage of a bipartisan, comprehensive immigration bill in 2013.
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For better or for worse, Hatch also excels at exploiting the rules to block major legislation. As a freshman in 1978, the senator launched a filibuster and nearly derailed Democrats’ landmark labor law to modernize the Federal Reserve during an ailing economy. More recently, he has been the strongest defender of the nutritional supplements industry. Scientist and consumer critics of the industry say Hatch has worked for decades to derail legislative and regulatory efforts that would empower the government to block unsafe products from markets that make unproven claims about their health benefits.
Hatch has at times been a constructive legislative partner with Democrats and at other times an ardent partisan foe. Neither is common in today’s more partisan and centralized Senate, where party leaders tend to steer and advance the agenda. That leaves little legislative leeway for senators such as Hatch to make their mark on policy. That perhaps contributes to why Hatch has failed to secure the future of his prized S-CHIP.
If Republicans hold the Senate after the 2018 elections, get ready for a game of musical chairs to fill new openings at the helm of major committees. The Senate GOP imposes term limits on committee chairs, limiting service to three two-year terms. When he retires next year, Hatch opens the Finance Committee chair. Senators overwhelmingly fill their top spots by seniority. This makes Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) first in line to fill that chairmanship. But Grassley now heads the Judiciary Committee, having previously served four years at the helm of finance.
And so, get the music ready. As Roll Call helpfully games out for us, if Grassley moves to the Finance Committee, he must step down as chair after two years, given his four prior years as chair. If he stays at judiciary, Sen. Michael Crapo (R-Idaho) could move to chair the Finance Committee, and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) could capture the Senate Banking Committee chair.
What’s the point? Republicans have a deep bench of older senators with long careers and years of Senate experience. But they’ve made a rule on their committee chairs that likely limits their legislative prowess: Wiseman and Volden show that longer-serving chairs tend to be more effective lawmakers. Imposing term limits on GOP Senate committee chairs might explain the recent decline in their effectiveness.
Such limits could kneecap expertise, weaken institutional memory and further empower party leaders — making it harder for senators to engage in constructive lawmaking at which senators such as Hatch once excelled.
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