After nearly 30 years in Congress, Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) won’t seek another term in the House, he announced this week.
“After nearly three decades in Congress, I have been reassigned,” Rep. Rush, who has served Illinois’s 1st district since 1992, said in a statement Tuesday. “Let me make it clear that I am not retiring, I am returning. I’m returning home, returning to my church, returning to my family and grandchildren — but my calling to a life of service is stronger than ever.”
Rush, 75, chairs the energy subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
During his tenure as head of the House’s energy panel, Rush in March co-sponsored a bill alongside Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) that would have designated nuclear power a clean energy source alongside renewables like wind and solar power.
Although the measure had yet to hear debate in the House on Wednesday, echoes of that legislation could be heard in the Joe Biden administration’s trillion-dollar infrastructure package made law in November, which included roughly $6 billion in tax credits aimed at propping up nuclear power.
