Longtime SE Texas US Rep. Jack Brooks Dead at 89 Jack Brooks, who spent 42 years in Congress representing his Southeast Texas district and was in the Dallas motorcade in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, has died. He was 89. Brooks died Tuesday night at Baptist Hospital of Beaumont after a sudden illness, according to a statement from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department. Brooks, who would have turned 90 on Dec. 18, was surrounded by family when he died, Deputy Rod Carroll said. Brooks was among the last links to an era when Democrats dominated Texas politics and was the last of "Mr. Sam's Boys," protégés of fellow Texan and legendary 21-year Democratic House Speaker Sam Rayburn in the state's congressional delegation. "I'm just like old man Rayburn," Brooks, from Beaumont, once said. Just a Democrat, no prefix or suffix. He also was a contemporary and supporter of Lyndon Johnson, who was U.S. Senate majority leader in the 1950s and later president. Brooks was in the Dallas motorcade Nov. 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated. He's in the famous photo taken later that day aboard Air Force One at Dallas' Love Field, standing immediately behind the grief-stricken Jacqueline Kennedy as Johnson, his right hand raised, takes the oath of office from U.S. District Judge Sarah Hughes. FILE - In this Nov. 22,1963, file photo, provided by the White House, Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as President of the United States in the cabin of Air Force One as Jacqueline Kennedy stands at his side. Judge Sarah T. Hughes, a Kennedy appointee to the Federal court, left, administers the oath. In background, from left are, Jack Valenti, admistrative assistant to Johnson; Rep. Albert Thomas, D-Tex.; Mrs. Johnson; and Rep. Jack Brooks, D-Tex. Jack Brooks was in the Dallas motorcade Nov. 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Brooks, a Democrat who spent 42 years representing his Southeast Texas district, has died at age 89. (AP Photo/White House, Cecil Stoughton, File) Close Brooks, first elected to the House in his far Southeast Texas district in 1952, was returned to office 20 more times and was on the verge of becoming the dean of the U.S. House when he was ousted in the Republican revolution of 1994. Rayburn, whose 48 years rivaled Brooks' House tenure, put Brooks on the House Government Operations Committee, a panel Brooks eventually would chair. Brooks gained notoriety as a curmudgeon-like scourge of bureaucrats he grilled for wasting taxpayers' money, peering at witnesses over his glasses as he chewed on a cigar. "I never thought being a congressman was supposed to be an easy job, and it doesn't bother me a bit to be in a good fight," Brooks once said. A Brooks-authored law required full and open competition to be the standard for awarding federal contracts. The 1965 Brooks Act set policy for the government's computer acquisition program, requiring competitive bidding and central management. His Inspector General Act established independent Offices of Inspector General in major agencies to prevent fraud and waste. Other Brooks bills reduced federal paperwork, provided a uniform system of federal procurement, eliminated overlapping audit requirements and established the Department of Education. "He literally has saved American taxpayers billions of dollars through his actions in improving government efficiency and eliminating waste," former Texas Gov. Dolph Briscoe, a longtime friend who died in 2010, said two years earlier when Brooks donated his congressional papers, photos, correspondence and other items to the Center for American History at the University of Texas. Brooks also served on the House Judiciary Committee, where he strongly supported President Richard Nixon's impeachment and drafted the articles of impeachment the judiciary panel adopted. Nixon, who resigned Aug. 8, 1974, referred to Brooks as "the executioner." Brooks would rise to committee chairman.