The Committee

Ranking Member Joe Barton's Biography

Joe Barton was first elected to Congress by the people of Texas' Sixth Congressional District in 1984. In 2004, he was selected by his House colleagues to be the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the oldest standing legislative committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. Among his remarkable predecessors is the late House Speaker Sam Rayburn of Bonham, the third Texan to lead the committee since it was created in 1795.

The Energy and Commerce Committee of today has accumulated the broadest non-tax jurisdiction of any committee in Congress. It is vested by the House with primary responsibility over matters relating to energy, public health and safety, and the national and international marketplace. The congressman currently serves as its Ranking Republican.

Called the "House GOP's leading expert on energy policy" by The Wall Street Journal, Barton's tenure in the chair during Republican control of the House was highlighted by the creation and passage of the most comprehensive bipartisan national energy legislation since the 1930s. "It couldn't be done. It hadn't been done. In the end, Joe Barton did it," observed The Dallas Morning News. A proponent of competition, Barton also is responsible for both the first electricity deregulation legislation to pass a House subcommittee, and for legislation which deregulated the natural gas industry. The congressman supports energy policies that yield a reliable supply at affordable prices while also protecting the environment.

Barton's determined commitment to individual freedoms earned him early notice from National Journal as one of the magazine's "Republicans to Watch." In his first legislative victory as a committee chairman, the House overwhelmingly passed legislation to limit indecency on the public airwaves. As a founding co-chairman of the Congressional Privacy Caucus with Congressman Ed Markey, D-Mass., he is an innovative protector of Americans' financial and medical privacy, with a particular concern for issues ranging from identify theft to the hazards to privacy and child safety that exist on the Internet.

As founding co-chairman of Asthma Awareness Day on Capitol Hill, Barton works to achieve common-sense clean air policy at the local, state and national level. His success in reauthorizing the National Institutes of Health was a milestone in the fight to advance research into diabetes, cancer, HIV, mental health and other diseases, and his work in winning passage for landmark reforms at the Food and Drug Administration dramatically improved the way that the safety of medical devices is ensured.

Joe Linus Barton was born on September 15, 1949 in Waco, Texas, where he lived on a Central Texas farm and grew into a hard-throwing baseball pitcher. He also excelled at academics, and earned a competitive, four-year Gifford-Hill Opportunity Award scholarship to Texas A&M University. Texas A&M named him the outstanding industrial engineering student for the Class of 1972. He then earned his Master of Science degree in Industrial Administration from Purdue University and, in 1981, was selected for the prestigious White House Fellows Program. He was assigned to the Department of Energy and served as aide to then-Energy Secretary James B. Edwards. Barton returned to Texas in 1982 as a natural gas decontrol consultant for Atlantic Richfield Oil and Gas Co. Successful in his first bid for Congress, he became only the second Republican to serve the Sixth District in its century-long history.

The congressman and his wife, Terri, have homes in Ennis and Arlington, Texas. He has four children, two stepchildren and four grandchildren.