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Cochran is leaving April 1: “I regret my health has become an ongoing challenge.”
Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced he will resign from the Senate on April 1, amid widespread reports of his deteriorating health.
Having been in and out of the Senate in the last year due to a string of health issues, including a nose lesion and a series of urinary tract infections, Cochran has increasingly come to represent what has become that oldest Senate in history. Until now, the Republican senator had said he intended to remain in Congress until the end of his term in 2020.
But under increased scrutiny, Cochran changed course.
“I regret my health has become an ongoing challenge,” Cochran said in a statement. “I intend to fulfill my responsibilities and commitments to the people of Mississippi and the Senate through the completion of the 2018 appropriations cycle, after which I will formally retire from the U.S. Senate.”
A recent Politico article called Cochran, who chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee and oversees billions of dollars in government spending, “frail and disoriented.” The senator, who turned 80 last December and has served in the Senate since 1978, “hasn’t presided over a hearing since early September,” Politico’s John Bresnahan and Anna Palmer wrote.
“It is now clear that the large number of older senators in positions of power is taking a toll on the operations of Washington,” Paul Kane wrote in the Washington Post, after Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who is battling brain cancer, and Sen. Cochran were absent from a series of crucial votes.
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