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Sen. Jim Bunning [R-KY]
U.S. Senator, Kentucky

Track Jim Bunning

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Outside Links

The following external websites may be of interest:

Jim Bunning’s Official Website

Biography from the official Congressional Biographical Directory

Campaign Contributions tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics

State:	Kentucky [map]
Party:	Republican
Birthday:	Oct 23, 1931 / 78 years old

To contact Jim Bunning, visit his official website. (Read our tips for communicating with Congress.) See the Project Vote Smart page for Bunning for more biographical and issue information.

On the Floor

Watch Senate proceeding 02-04-10 4:56:50 to 4:57:55 at MetaVid. More Videos | Congressional Record

Congressional Service

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Jim Bunning:

When	Role	Representing
1999-2010	U.S. Senator	Kentucky	(Most Recent Term Began in 2005) (was preceeded by Wendell Ford)
1987-1998	U.S. Representative	Kentucky’s 4^th	(was preceeded by Marion Snyder)

Sponsorship Analysis

Bunning is a rank-and-file Republican according to GovTrack's own analysis of bill sponsorship.

These labels come from the Political Spectrum statistical analysis that we have carried out. The statistical analysis puts members of Congress on a scale based on patterns of bill sponsorship, and is blind to party affiliation and the content of bills. From there, we have somewhat arbitrarily divided the Members of Congress into far-left/right, rank-and-file, and moderate (i.e. centrist). For each party, the most extreme 23% of Members of Congress are labeled far-left or -right. The most centrist 30% (i.e. those closest to the other party) are labeled moderate. The remaining 47% are labeled as rank-and-file.

Bunning is somewhere between a leader and a follower. Bunning sponsors others’ bills and other Members of Congress cosponsor Bunning’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics.

To compute the leader-follower score for Bunning, we make a table that lists all other Members of Congress. Each row has the number bills sponsored by Bunning and cosponsored by the other Member of Congress divided by the number of bills sponsored by the other Member of Congress and cosponsored by Bunning.

This is a measure of who is following who. The higher the number, the more times others are cosponsoring Bunning's bills without Bunning returning the favor. We then take the mean of (the logorithms of) these ratios. Thanks to Joe Barillari for the idea.

Approval Rating

SurveyUSA reports Bunning’s job approval rating at 43% as of 2007-11-20. The average approval rating among senators in states surveyed is 53%. See their survey details for more information.

Voting Record

Jim Bunning missed 234 (3%) of 8816 votes since Jan 23, 1990. The graph to the left shows the number of missed votes over time. Click for a larger chart and a list of recent votes.

Money & Influence

The top campaign contribution to Bunning in 2007-2008 was $52,400 from employees of FMR Corp. Jim Bunning’s net worth was between $501,003 and $1,057,000 in 2007, according to Bunning’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Bunning.

Committee Membership

Jim Bunning sits on the following committees:

Member, Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment

Member, Subcommittee on Financial Institutions

Member, Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Member, Subcommittee on Energy

Member, Subcommittee on National Parks

Member, Subcommittee on Water and Power

Member, Senate Committee on Finance

Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure

Member, Subcommittee on Health Care

Member, Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness

Member, Senate Committee on the Budget

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Jim Bunning has sponsored 170 bills since Jan 3, 1989 of which 150 haven't made it out of committee and 6 were successfully enacted. Bunning has co-sponsored 1297 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Bunning and companion bills identified by CRS that were themselves enacted, but not if they were incorporated into other bills, as that information is not readily available.)

Some of Bunning’s most recently sponsored bills include...

	S.Res. 307: A resolution to require that all legislative matters be available and fully scored by CBO 72 hours before consideration by any subcommittee or committee of the Senate or on the floor of the Senate.
	S. 2567: A bill to suspend temporarily the duty on carbonaceous pastes for electrodes and similar pastes for furnace linings.
	S. 2119: A bill to suspend temporarily the duty on guanidine nitrate.
	S. 2115: A bill to suspend temporarily the duty on Polycaprolactone Diol #1.
	S. 2116: A bill to suspend temporarily the duty on Polycaprolactone Diol #2.

View All... (including bills from previous years)

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.

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