Due to House Republican term limits on committee leadership positions,[3] Bachus was succeeded by Congressman Jeb Hensarling in 2013.

In 1986, he was elected as the first Republican to the Alabama State Board of Education, serving one four-year term representing the 6th District.

[9] Upon his retirement in 2014, Norman Ornstein wrote a column in the National Journal lamenting the "Exodus of Problem Solvers on Capitol Hill.

In the 2004 Republican primary, Bachus defeated Phillip Jauregui, a member of former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's legal team.

[14] In the 2010 midterm elections, Bachus easily turned back a challenge from pastor Stan Cooke in the Republican primary, winning 75% of the vote.

[19] However, the new 6th was as heavily Republican as its predecessor, and Bachus turned back this challenge fairly easily, defeating Bailey with 71 percent of the vote.

In the 1990s he became an advocate of international debt relief for the Third World, and joined a broad coalition of activists in a one-day fast to demand action, which was ultimately successful.

Again, as Subcommittee Chairman, Bachus played a leading role in passing the Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Conforming Amendments Act of 2005 (P.L.

109-173), which reformed the federal deposit insurance system and raised the FDIC coverage limit for retirement accounts to $250,000.

Holloway attended high school in Mountain Brook, an affluent Birmingham suburb in the congressman's district.

In 2005, Bill Maher commented about the Army missing its recruiting goal by 42% in April, saying, "More people joined the Michael Jackson fan club.

In 2006, as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, Bachus worked on bipartisan draft subprime mortgage reform legislation to address abuses in the lending market.

According to the book Act of Congress by Robert G. Kaiser, "Bachus thought that if it had passed in 2005, subprime lending would have dried up, and the Great Crash could have been avoided or at least made much less serious.

Instead of the complicated plan for auctioning off toxic assets, why not just inject capital directly into the troubled banks by buying their shares?

(Months later) Paulson asked his staff to figure out how to do what Spencer Bachus had suggested on September 18 – use government money to invest directly in troubled banks.

"[32] The capital purchase provision was included in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008.

In addition, Treasury received warrants to purchase common shares or other securities from the banks at a time of the CPP investment.

[36][37] On November 4, 2010, while in the midst of a battle for the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee with Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) and immediately following the 2010 general election, Bachus told the South Shelby (Ala.) Chamber of Commerce that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and candidates she endorsed cost the Republican Party control of the U.S. Senate, saying: "The Senate would be Republican today except for states (in which Gov.

"[41] In 2010, Bachus stated that "ending the bailout of Fannie [Mae] and Freddie [Mac]" was his top priority as Chairman of the Financial Services Committee.

He said that "using taxpayer money to subsidize the mortgage market is an addiction" and that "House Republicans want to reform the housing finance system in a way that does not rely on government guarantees, that does not make private investors and creditors wealthy while saddling taxpayers with losses, and that does not set the stage for the next financial crisis.

"[42] In 2011, the FBI and American Football Coaches Association honored Bachus for his advocacy and support for the National Child Identification Program.

[44] In 2013, Bachus was the only member of Alabama's congressional delegation to vote in favor of defunding the National Security Agency's collection of phone records.

[45] Bachus was a lead House sponsor of legislation offering federal protection to the American flag, prohibiting its desecration.

Bachus was credited with being a lead advocate for locating and maintaining the National Computer Forensics Institute in the City of Hoover Public Safety Building in Hoover, Alabama: "The National Computer Forensics Institute was created in 2007 with money from local, state and federal entities.

Treasury estimated at the end of December 2012 that CPP would have an approximate lifetime income of $15 billion after all institutions had exited the program.

During this period, Bachus was one of the congressional leaders getting private briefings from Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke about the worsening financial crisis.

[49] He was subsequently cleared by the Office of Congressional Ethics, which on April 30, 2012, the announced that they had found no evidence of violations of insider-trading rules and recommended that the case against him be closed.

In October 2014, Mr. and Mrs. Bachus were honored at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society's Ambassadors Ball for their efforts on behalf of the organization's Alabama-Mississippi chapter.

[58] Bachus was nominated by President Donald Trump to be a member of the board of directors of the U.S. Export-Import Bank and he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in May 2019.