However, in one of his several books, Believing in America, published in 1983, Shuster stated that he was the class president at the University of Pittsburgh and was recruited by the local CIA office on campus and that this was his actual first employment.

Even after the Saturday Night Massacre, in which independent counsel Archibald Cox was fired because he refused to back down in the face of an order by the president to withdraw a subpoena for White House tapes, an event which severely eroded Congressional Republican support and set in motion the impeachment process, Shuster chose to strike out against Cox.

On October 31, 1973, Shuster introduced House Resolution 677, which called for an investigation by Congress of Archibald Cox and the staff of the Special Prosecutor's office "to determine the extent of criminal violations" and send the findings to the Justice Department for prosecution.

He accompanied the resolution with a statement about Cox: "This pompous, pious, self-righteous, supposedly independent special prosecutor is far worse than just political.

His most notable challenger came in 1984 when Nancy Kulp, the actress who played Miss Jane Hathaway on The Beverly Hillbillies won the Democratic nomination.

Shuster is best known for taking on his party leadership and U.S. President Bill Clinton in the 1990s to keep more of the taxes on motor fuels and air travel in the dedicated federal trust funds they were supposed to go to by law.

Shuster won both battles, even though then U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Clinton united to oppose him, wanting to keep the funds available for borrowing for other programs.

In 1998, Eppard was indicted for taking bribes to influence federal action on Boston's Big Dig highway construction project.

While he claimed health problems, he had also been forced to give up his chairmanship due to a Republican policy of a six-year term limit for committee chairmen.

Shuster died at his farm in Everett, Pennsylvania, on April 19, 2023, at the age of 91, from complications of a hip fracture he sustained two weeks earlier.