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Rep. John Spratt, Jr. [D-SC5]
U.S. Representative, South Carolina’s 5th District

Photo of Spratt
State:South Carolina [map]
District:5th Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Nov 1, 1942 / 67 years old

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

Official YouTube Feed
“How We Can Help” - Jan 25, 2010 6:26 PM. Watch Video.
On the Floor
Latest Floor Video from MetaVid

Congressional Service

John Spratt has represented South Carolina’s 5th congressional district since 1983.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by John Spratt:

WhenRoleRepresenting
1983-2010
U.S. RepresentativeSouth Carolina’s 5th
(was preceeded by Kenneth Holland)

Sponsorship Analysis

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

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordJohn Spratt missed 331 (3%) 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 Spratt in 2007-2008 was $17,000 from employees of Springs Industries. John Spratt’s net worth was between $6,965,022 and $33,702,995 in 2007, according to Spratt’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Spratt.

Committee Membership

John Spratt sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

John Spratt has sponsored 81 bills since Jan 3, 1989 of which 73 haven't made it out of committee and 2 were successfully enacted. Spratt has co-sponsored 1343 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Spratt 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 Spratt’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.R. 3945: To suspend temporarily the duty on Himic Anhydride.
H.R. 284: Battle of Camden Study Act
H.R. 494: To amend the Trade Act of 1974 to require the Secretary of Labor to certify a group of workers in a subdivision of a firm as eligible to apply for assistance under the trade adjustment assistance program if the subdivision is a seller of articles of the firm that employed a group of workers who received a certification of eligibility under such program and such sales are related to the article that was the basis for such certification.
H.Res. 135: Providing amounts for the expenses of the Committee on the Budget in the One Hundred Eleventh Congress.
H.Con.Res. 85: Setting forth the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2010 and including the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2009 and 2011 through 2014.

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.