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Rep. Brian Higgins [D-NY27]
U.S. Representative, New York’s 27th District

Photo of Higgins
State:New York [map]
District:27th Congressional District [map]
Party:Democrat
Birthday:Oct 6, 1959 / 50 years old

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

Congressional Service

Brian Higgins has represented New York’s 27th congressional district since 2005.

Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Brian Higgins:

WhenRoleRepresenting
2005-2010
U.S. RepresentativeNew York’s 27th
(was preceeded by Jack Quinn)

Sponsorship Analysis

"Ideometer"Higgins is a rank-and-file 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"
Higgins is somewhere between a leader and a follower. Higgins sponsors others’ bills and other Members of Congress cosponsor Higgins’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics.

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

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

Voting Record

Voting RecordBrian Higgins missed 219 (5%) of 4129 votes since Jan 4, 2005. The graph to the left shows the number of missed votes over time. Click for a larger chart and a list of recent votes.

Committee Membership

Brian Higgins sits on the following committees:

Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship

Brian Higgins has sponsored 25 bills since Jan 4, 2005 of which 22 haven't made it out of committee and 2 were successfully enacted. Higgins has co-sponsored 782 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by Higgins 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 Higgins’s most recently sponsored bills include...

H.R. 3574: Restoring Confidence Through Smarter Campaigns Act
H.R. 3834: Green Energy Investment Zone Act of 2009
H.R. 2328: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow a credit against income tax for the installation of residential micro-combined heat and power property.
H.R. 2366: Cancer Drug Coverage Parity Act of 2009
H.R. 2775: To prohibit, as a banned hazardous substance, certain household dishwashing detergent containing phosphorus.

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

Photo from the Congressional Pictorial Directory.