Representative Mac Thornberry

William McClellan “Mac” Thornberry (born July 15, 1958) is an American politician and attorney who served as the U.S. Representative for Texas’s 13th congressional district from January 3, 1995, to January 3, 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he represented what was widely regarded by the partisan voting index as the most Republican district in the United States, covering the Texas Panhandle and stretching between the Oklahoma and New Mexico borders. Over 13 consecutive terms in the House of Representatives, Thornberry participated actively in the legislative process and represented the interests of his constituents during a significant period in modern American political and national security history.

Thornberry’s family roots in Texas date to the late nineteenth century. In the 1880s, his great-great-grandfather, Amos Thornberry, a Union Army veteran, moved to Clay County, just east of Wichita Falls. His family established and has continuously operated a ranch in the Texas Panhandle since 1881. Thornberry is a lifelong resident of Clarendon, located about 60 miles (97 km) east of Amarillo in the heart of the 13th District. Growing up in a ranching family in this rural region shaped his understanding of agriculture, land use, and the economic concerns of farmers and ranchers, perspectives that later informed his work in Congress, particularly on agricultural and energy policy.

Thornberry pursued higher education in Texas, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Texas Tech University in Lubbock. He then obtained his Juris Doctor from the University of Texas School of Law in Austin. After law school, he embarked on a career that combined legal practice, congressional staff work, and service in the executive branch. He served as a staffer to two Texas Republican congressmen, Tom Loeffler and Larry Combest, gaining early experience in legislative procedure and federal policymaking. During the administration of President Ronald Reagan, he was appointed deputy assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs, where he worked on the interface between the State Department and Congress. Thornberry, who has described Reagan as “a great man and a great president, ranking in the top tier of all of our chief executives,” later returned to Texas to join his brothers on the family ranch and practiced law in Amarillo. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, reflecting his longstanding engagement with foreign and defense policy.

In 1994, Thornberry was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas’s 13th congressional district and took office on January 3, 1995. Over the course of his 13 terms, he developed a reputation, as noted by the National Journal Congressional Almanac, for a “solidly conservative voting record” tempered by a pragmatic streak, and he was regarded as “hardly the most ideological Republican in the Texas delegation.” His official communications often emphasized his interest in “continuing to push government to work smarter and more efficiently,” and his voting record reflected both his conservative principles and a focus on institutional reform. From January 1995 to July 2017, he missed only 140 of 15,276 roll call votes, or 0.9 percent, a rate significantly lower than the 2.2 percent median among representatives serving during that period, underscoring his consistent participation in House proceedings.

Thornberry’s most prominent role in Congress was in the realm of national defense. He served for many years on the House Armed Services Committee, becoming vice chair when Representative Buck McKeon of California held the gavel, after losing a 2009 bid to chair the full committee to McKeon due to seniority. From 2015 to 2019, during the 114th and 115th Congresses, Thornberry served as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, becoming the first Texan of either party to hold that position. As chairman and later as ranking member, he oversaw the Pentagon, all military services, and all Department of Defense agencies, including their budgets and policies. He spearheaded a major Department of Defense acquisition reform effort that received bipartisan and bicameral support, working closely with House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D–Washington) and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R–Arizona). Beginning in 2013, he led a long-term initiative to reform the Pentagon’s acquisition programs, and by 2016 he had made acquisition reform a central feature of the annual defense authorization bill, promoting more experimentation with technology, encouraging competition, and clarifying intellectual property rights for Pentagon contractors. Thornberry also previously served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, further deepening his involvement in national security and intelligence oversight.

In foreign and defense policy, Thornberry was often characterized as a defense hawk with a pragmatic approach. He was critical of President Barack Obama’s 2010 arms control agreement with Russia, arguing that it improperly constrained the United States by precluding the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations. At the same time, he supported broader strategic approaches to conflict. In 2007, he served on a bipartisan commission that developed recommendations for winning the war in Iraq using both lethal and non-lethal means, including diplomacy and foreign aid. His work on this commission reflected his view that military power should be integrated with other instruments of national influence to achieve U.S. objectives abroad.

Domestically, Thornberry maintained a conservative economic and regulatory agenda, especially on tax and energy issues. He pressed for repeal of the federal estate tax and supported tax credits to encourage production of oil in marginal wells, reflecting the interests of his energy-producing district. He introduced H.R. 2081 in 2013 to encourage production of all forms of domestic energy, including oil and gas, nuclear power, and alternative energy and fuels. Thornberry voted to open the Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling and supported legislation to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. He opposed tax credits for renewable electricity, arguing for a more market-oriented energy policy. In July 2015, President Obama signed into law a highway funding extension that included a provision based on a liquefied natural gas (LNG) excise tax bill, H.R. 905, which Thornberry introduced with Representative John Larson (D–Connecticut). The measure changed the federal excise tax treatment of LNG so that it would be taxed on an energy-equivalent basis with diesel fuel rather than per gallon, thereby eliminating a roughly 70 percent higher effective tax rate on LNG and “leveling the playing field” with diesel and compressed natural gas.

Thornberry’s legislative interests extended to agriculture, veterans’ affairs, health care, and government communications policy. Representing a heavily agricultural district, he pressed the House to pass a farm bill every five years to provide stability for farmers and ranchers. In 2013, he voted for a five-year Farm Bill that proposed annual cuts of $2 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), which would have constituted the largest change to federal food policy since 1996; the House, however, did not pass that bill. In 2010, he sponsored legislation to expand access to state veterans’ homes to include parents whose children died while serving in the military; that bill was enacted into law, reflecting his focus on the welfare of military families. In January 2011, he introduced a bill to help states establish special health care courts staffed by judges with expertise in medical issues, intended as an alternative to jury trials in malpractice cases, which some Republicans argued tended to produce excessively large damage awards. In 2012, he introduced the Smith–Mundt Modernization Act, which amended the 1948 Smith–Mundt Act’s restrictions on the domestic dissemination of information products created by the U.S. government for foreign audiences, thereby updating Cold War–era rules governing public diplomacy and government broadcasting.

Throughout his congressional career, Thornberry consistently voted in favor of term limits for members of the U.S. House of Representatives, though he stated that he would not unilaterally term-limit himself unless a constitutional amendment imposing term limits on all members of Congress was adopted. On September 30, 2019, he announced that he would not seek reelection in 2020, bringing his 26-year tenure in the House to a close at the end of the 116th Congress. In September 2019 it was publicly reported that he would retire, and in the 2020 election former Physician to the President Ronny Jackson was elected to succeed him as the representative for Texas’s 13th congressional district. After leaving Congress in January 2021, Thornberry remained associated with national security and foreign policy circles, drawing on his long experience in defense oversight, legislative reform, and the representation of a deeply conservative, rural Texas district.