![Republican China committee chairman Gallagher retiring from US Congress](https://i-invdn-com.investing.com/trkd-images/LYNXNPEK1909D_L.jpg)
© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Chairman U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI) speaks with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former CIA director and former protection secretary Leon Panetta, throughout a listening to of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competitio
By Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher, who chairs the House choose committee on competitors with China, stated on Saturday he won’t run for re-election, 4 days after he was one in all solely 4 House Republicans to buck occasion management and vote in opposition to impeaching President Joe Biden’s prime border official.
Gallagher, 39, a four-term House member and former Marine Corps intelligence officer, issued a press release noting that the authors of the U.S. Constitution had not meant elective workplace to be for a lifetime.
“Electoral politics was never supposed to be a career and, trust me, Congress is no place to grow old. And so, with a heavy heart, I have decided not to run for re-election,” he stated within the assertion.
Gallagher on Tuesday joined three different Republican House members in voting in opposition to impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. As the hassle failed by one vote, Gallagher was surrounded on the House flooring by members of his occasion urging him to flip his vote.
Gallagher stated in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece afterward that impeachment wouldn’t solely fail to resolve issues on the border with Mexico however “also set a dangerous new precedent that would be used against future Republican administrations.”
Gallagher, a member of each the House Armed Services and intelligence committees, has spent a lot of his time this yr chairing the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, a bipartisan panel charged with investigating U.S. relations with China and creating methods to assist enhance the nation’s means to compete with China.
Republicans fashioned the choose committee once they took management of the House in January 2023, a part of an effort to lift consciousness about points behind rising tensions with China. A tough line towards China is without doubt one of the few insurance policies with bipartisan assist within the deeply divided U.S. Congress and Gallagher has been praised for easily working with Democrats on the panel.