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WASHINGTON -- Democrat George Miller of California, a top adviser to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, said Monday that he will retire from Congress after 20 terms.
Miller is one of the last members from the 1974 Watergate class of lawmakers elected to Congress in the wake of the scandal that toppled Richard Nixon's administration.
An unabashed liberal who supports labor and the environment, Miller is the top Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee and a former chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee.
In an interview Sunday with the Contra Costa Times, Miller said it was time to leave the House and his district based in San Francisco's East Bay communities of Richmond and Concord. Miller began informing his staff of his decision on Monday morning, ahead of his formal news conference.
"About a year ago, my sons started saying, 'C'mon, Dad, it's been 40 years!," Miller told the Contra Costa Times. "It got me thinking about what I have accomplished in partnership with my staff in the past 40 years. I can look back on our body of work and be very proud of it."
In a statement, Miller said he was "proud" of his accomplishments "on behalf of children, working people and the environment, in my district and for our country." Among those achievements, he said, was pushing for President Obama's health care law. He also played an instrumental role in passage of No Child Left Behind, the