Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) announced yesterday he will retire from the Senate next year at the end of his term, after working in the Senate and on the Pentagon-oversight panel since 1979.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) follows Levin in seniority on the SASC’s Democratic roster and could assume the committee chairmanship in two years.
“I have decided not to run for re-election in 2014,” Levin said in a statement issued late yesterday, in which he said the decision was “was extremely difficult.” As he and his wife weighed whether he should run for a 7th term, he said, they focused on their “belief that our country is at a crossroads that will determine our economic health and security for decades to come.”
“We decided that I can best serve my state and nation by concentrating in the next two years on the challenging issues before us that I am in a position to help address; in other words, by doing my job without the distraction of campaigning for re-election,” he said.
Those issues include “dealing with fiscal pressures on our military readiness,” he said.
“As chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I am determined to do all I can to address that issue,” Levin said. “I also believe we need to pursue the rapid transfer of responsibility for Afghan security to the Afghans. And, as our troops come home, we must do a better job of caring for those who bear both the visible and invisible wounds of war.”
Levin was first elected to the Senate in 1978 and was reelected five times since then. He has been a member of the SASC his entire time in office, serving as its chairman from 2001 to 2003 and then again from 2007 to present, according to his Senate website.
Rick DeBobes, a longtime Levin confidante, retired from his position as SASC staff director last month after working for the committee for two decades.
Reed will likely become SASC chairman in 2015, if he wins reelection next year and Democrats retain control of the Senate. A former Army Ranger, Reed now chairs the SASC’s Seapower subcommittee.