The Senate next meets Nov 30, 2009; the House next meets Dec 1, 2009.

Rep. James Forbes [R-VA4]
U.S. Representative, Virginia’s 4^th District

Track James Forbes

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Outside Links

The following external websites may be of interest:

James Forbes’s Official Website

Biography from the official Congressional Biographical Directory

Campaign Contributions tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics

State:	Virginia [map]
District:	4^th Congressional District [map]
Party:	Republican
Birthday:	Feb 17, 1952 / 57 years old

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

Forbes’s latest tweet:

(see TweetCongress)

“It's not too late to get healthcare reform right - check out these commonsense principles: http://www.forbes.house.gov/Blog/?postid=155745.” (Nov 18, 2009)

Official YouTube Feed

“Breathing Life into the Word 'Liberty'” - Nov 6, 2009 9:29 PM. Watch Video.

On the Floor

Watch House proceeding 02-14-07 4:50:55 to 4:53:19 at MetaVid. More Videos | Congressional Record

Congressional Service

James Forbes has represented Virginia’s 4^th congressional district since 2001.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by James Forbes:

When	Role	Representing
2001-2010	U.S. Representative	Virginia’s 4^th	(was preceeded by Norman Sisisky)

Sponsorship Analysis

Forbes 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.

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

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

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

Voting Record

James Forbes missed 184 (3%) of 6013 votes since Jun 26, 2001. 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 Forbes in 2007-2008 was $21,500 from employees of Alion Science & Technology. James Forbes’s net worth was between $-700,986 and $5,581,992 in 2007, according to Forbes’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Forbes.

Committee Membership

James Forbes sits on the following committees:

Member, House Committee on Armed Services

Member, House Committee on the Judiciary

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

James Forbes has sponsored 49 bills since Jan 3, 2001 of which 44 haven't made it out of committee and 1 were successfully enacted. Forbes has co-sponsored 770 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Forbes 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 Forbes’s most recently sponsored bills include...

	H.R. 3584: Health Care Consumer Protection Act of 2009
	H.R. 3752: Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act Improvements Act of 2009
	H.R. 3388: Petersburg National Battlefield Boundary Modification Act
	H.Res. 397: Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation's founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as "America's Spiritual Heritage Week" for the appreciation of and education on America's history of religious faith.
	H.R. 1301: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to suspend the 180-day period for completion of a like-kind exchange in the case of the bankruptcy of a qualified intermediary or an exchange accommodation titleholder.

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.

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