Henry Arnold Waxman (born September 12, 1939 in Los Angeles, California) is an American Democrat politician. He is considered to be one of the most influential liberal members of Congress. In 1998, he created a "Special Investigations Division" to investigate matters that he felt the full committee had neglected.
Since 2001, he has launched investigations of White House ties to Enron, contract abuses in Iraq, and the politicization of science. On the day after the 2006 elections, Waxman directed his aides to draw up an "oversight plan" for the panel. He had already let it be known that he wanted to investigate Halliburton, as well as its alleged malfeasance related to government contracts in Iraq.