GovTrack.us

 
Bookmark and Share

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee [D-TX18]
U.S. Representative, Texas’s 18th District

Photo of Jackson-Lee
State:Texas [map]
District:18th Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Jan 12, 1950 / 60 years old

To contact Sheila Jackson-Lee, visit her official website. (Read our tips for communicating with Congress.) See the Project Vote Smart page for Jackson-Lee for more biographical and issue information.

On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

Sheila Jackson-Lee has represented Texas’s 18th congressional district since 1995.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Sheila Jackson-Lee:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1995-2010
U.S. RepresentativeTexas’s 18th
(was preceeded by Craig Washington)

Sponsorship Analysis

"Ideometer"Jackson-Lee is a far-left Democrat 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"
Jackson-Lee is a follower according to our statistical analysis of bills in this legislative session. Jackson-Lee tends to cosponsors the bills of other Members of Congress who do not cosponsor Jackson-Lee’s own bills. For more, see congressional statistics.

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordSheila Jackson-Lee missed 474 (5%) of 10087 votes since Jan 4, 1995. 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 Jackson-Lee in 2007-2008 was $13,200 from employees of Reyes Construction. Sheila Jackson-Lee’s net worth was between $-128,987 and $479,997 in 2007, according to Jackson-Lee’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Jackson-Lee.

Committee Membership

Sheila Jackson-Lee sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Sheila Jackson-Lee has sponsored 207 bills since Jan 4, 1995 of which 200 haven't made it out of committee and 2 were successfully enacted. Jackson-Lee has co-sponsored 3423 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Jackson-Lee 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 Jackson-Lee’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.Con.Res. 138: Recognizing the 40th anniversary of the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas.
H.Con.Res. 215: Supporting the goals and ideals of World AIDS Day, and for other purposes.
H.Res. 930: Supporting the goals and ideals of the 20th anniversary celebration of the Harris County Hospital District's Thomas Street Health Center, which coincides with World AIDS Day.
H.R. 2572: Congressional Disclosures Protections Act of 2009
H.R. 2450: Private Prison Information Act of 2009

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.