Kerry's votes
This bit from the debate was also interesting, Kerry said:
Once again, the president is misleading America. I've actually passed 56 individual bills that I've personally written and, in addition to that, and not always under my name, there is amendments on certain bills.Even if we give him his numbers, this seems a little light for a twenty year career in the Senate. According to congresslink.org between 1985 and 2000 6474 Bills were passed. If each Bill had a single author, that would be about 65 per senator. I believe that most legislation has multiple authors, the McCain-Feingold bill for example. I was unable to find any data for the last 4 years, but obviously that would increase the number. The average number of bills passed for each of these years was 809, so if we add in that number for 2001, 2002 and 2003 giving Kerry a pass on 2004 since it is not over yet, the Senate has probably passed about 8901 bills in Kerry's career for an average of 89 per Senator if each bill was authored singularly. That would mean, if all Bills had single authors, Kerry has performed about 63% as much as the average Senator. Translate that to a letter grade if you wish. Perhaps though, quality makes up for quantity. I found this list of 57 Bills and Resolutions John Kerry Sponsored. I assume these are what Senator Kerry was talking about, but I cannot be sure and I cannot account for the one extra in this list from the Senator's number. However, take a look at them and decide if you think that these are substantial legislation or not. It is also interesting that this list included the number of cosponsors. The total, assuming I didn't flub the math, is 737 cosponsors.
posted by Dave Justus | 10/13/2004 08:47:00 PM
2 Comments:
Preface: I'm not defending Kerry in what follows, just trying to throw in a few general considerations that it seems you left out. These become important when you look at the record of any Senator candidate.
1) There were quite a bit more than 100 senators between 1985 and 2000. So 65 per senator would only be a very rough average. There could be factors which make the distribution radically non-normal. Do ambitious first-term senators sponsor more bills than staid career senators? Conversely, does it take years to gain enough standing to sponsor many non-fluff bills?
2) What relevance is it that he has always shared a state with Ted Kennedy? Does being a perpetual junior senator play a role? Do senior senators get priority?
3) What's the distribution of roles like? Do individual senators focus on different parts of the job? Do some different senators participate more or less in committees, floor deliberation, back-room consensus-building, and sponsorships?
I don't know the answers to any of these, nor whether or which would reflect on John Kerry. But they do say something about you analysis. And that is to say: without a lot more information, we can't say that Kerry's quantity or quality is atypical *in any way*--positively or negatively.
Andrew, your first point doesn't apply because there are always (barring short term exceptions for deaths etc.) 100 Senators and so over Kerry's Senate career he has always been 1% of the Senate. Certainly I would not expect someone who has served 2 years in the Senate to produce as much as someone who has served 20 years.
Your second and third point are valid, especially the second one as junior Senators certainly have less clout than Senior Senators. However, we are trying to elect someone to be the leader of the free world here. If, after 20 years, even as a junior Senator, John Kerry hasn't been able to rise to enough prominence in the Senate to get done the things he feels needs to be done, how can we trust him to have the leadership abilities to be President?
As for point three, perhaps if Kerry would talk about his Senate career occasionaly, explaining his role and what he has done we would perhaps be better able to evaluate this. He has been notoriously quiet on the subject.
Now personally, I feel that in general the less laws that are passed the better off we all are so a short list of legislative accomplishments isn't in and of itself a problem for me. However, I certainly have no evidence that John Kerry shares my philosophy here so I have to attribute his behavior to other factors. While I cannot say for sure what factor have caused Kerry to have so few accomplishments in the Senate, laziness and lack of leadership abilities are both possible. Either would be a troubling trait in the Commander-in-Cheif.
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