House of Representatives 1973-1981
In the 1972 primary election, she upset Judiciary Committee chairman Emanuel Celler, the fifty-year incumbent and the House's longest serving member at that time. Celler was 53 years older than Holtzman and had already been serving in the House for 18 years when Holtzman was born.
She served on the House Judiciary Committee. In the summer of 1974 it held impeachment hearings on President Richard Nixon's activities.
She was a member of the House Budget Committee and Chairwoman of the House Immigration Subcommittee.
In 1978 she secured an extension of the deadline for state legislatures to ratify the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution. (House Joint Resolution No. 638 was approved by the 95th Congress.)
Rep. Holtzman helped pass legislation in 1978 to expel more Nazi war criminals who had immigrated to the United States. It established the U.S. DOJ Office of Special Investigations within the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division to investigate and bring legal action to denaturalize or deport them. The Immigration and Naturalization Service had kept a list of suspects but had not pursued them.
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—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
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