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Rep. Joe Barton [R-TX6]
U.S. Representative, Texas’s 6th District

Photo of Barton
State:Texas [map]
District:6th Congressional District [map]
Party:Republican
Birthday:Sep 15, 1949 / 60 years old

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

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Joe Barton has represented Texas’s 6th congressional district since 1985.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Joe Barton:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1985-2010
U.S. RepresentativeTexas’s 6th

Sponsorship Analysis

"Ideometer"Barton 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.

"Leader-Follower Score"
Barton is somewhere between a leader and a follower. Barton sponsors others’ bills and other Members of Congress cosponsor Barton’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics.

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordJoe Barton missed 777 (6%) of 12677 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 Barton in 2007-2008 was $23,650 from employees of Nucor Corp. Joe Barton’s net worth was between $32,004 and $130,000 in 2007, according to Barton’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Barton.

Committee Membership

Joe Barton sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Joe Barton has sponsored 106 bills since Jan 3, 1989 of which 82 haven't made it out of committee and 4 were successfully enacted. Barton has co-sponsored 1179 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Barton 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 Barton’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.R. 3932: Strengthening of FDA Integrity Act of 2009
H.Res. 927: Declaring that it shall continue to be the policy of the United States, consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act, to make available to Taiwan such defense articles and services as may be necessary for Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.
H.R. 1815: Consumer Product Safety Solutions Act of 2009
H.R. 3385: To authorize the use of amounts in the Nuclear Waste Fund to promote recycling of spent nuclear fuel, and for other purposes.
H.R. 390: College Football Playoff Act of 2009

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.