WASHINGTON -- Health and Human Services Secretary Richard Schweiker has resigned, making him the fourth member to leave President Reagan's Cabinet in the last year, administration sources said Tuesday night.
NBC News reported Schweiker is leaving to head the American Council of Life Insurance, a lobbying group, and that his resignation will be effective next month.
White House aides said they had no comment. But other officials confirmed they learned of the Schweiker resignation when President Reagan returned to the White House from a Texas trip.
Officials said the resignation would be formally announced Wednesday, although a formal letter of resignation was not yet in the White House. The officials said they expect the resignation to be accepted.
There was no immediate word from the Health and Human Services Department on Schweiker's resigntion.
Schweiker is the fourth cabinet official to leave the Reagan administration.
Alexander Haig resigned as Secretary of State last June, Energy Secretary James Edwards resigned in November and Drew Lewis has tendered his resignation as Transportation Secretary effective Feb. 1.
Schweiker joined the Cabinet administration after 20 years in Congress -- 12 in the Senate and eight in the House -- during which he was popular with liberal and labor groups.
Schweiker proposed an ill fated plan to cut Social Security benefits in 1981 that lasted about 24 hours before it was withdrawn by Reagan under a storm of protest.
On Monday, he said he intends to require federally funded clinics to notify parents whose daughters under 18 seek prescriptions for birth control products.
Schweiker was considered a liberal when Reagan announced in 1976 the Pennsylvania Republican would be his running mate if he won the Republican presidential nomination.
Reagan failed to wrest the nomination from President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election, but when he moved into the White House in 1981 he named Schweiker secretary of Health and Human Services and gave him the job of cutting down the nation's social welfare bureaucracy.
'The country has turned decidedly conservative in the last three years,' Schweiker said recently in describing his switch.
Born in the Philadelphia suburb of Norristown, Pa., June 1, 1926, Schweiker was educated at Slippery Rock State College and Pennsylvania State University.
Schweiker worked for 10 years as an executive in a family business in Philadelphia before he entered politics by defeating Rep. John LaFore in a 1960 Republican primary and went on to win the fall House election.
In 1968 he defeated two-term Democratic Sen. Joseph Clark.
