Analysis
Our unique analysis of the bills Benjamin sponsored and cosponsored provides insight into his position in the House of Representatives.
Each dot in the chart below was a member of the House of Representatives in 1982. The dots are positioned horizontally according to our progressive—conservative ideology score and vertically according to our leadership score (leaders toward the top). Benjamin is shown as a purple triangle. (analysis methodology)
Enacted Legislation
Benjamin was the primary sponsor of 4 bills that were enacted:
- H.R. 7019 (97th): Department of Transportation and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 1983
- H.R. 6029 (97th): A bill to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to acquire by exchange certain lands within the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in the State of Indiana.
- H.R. 4209 (97th): Department of Transportation and Related Agencies Appropriation Act, 1982
- H.R. 7419 (95th): A bill for the relief of Vasilios Georgios Valcanos.
We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if about one third or more of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110th Congress).
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
Benjamin sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Government Operations and Politics (19%) Foreign Trade and International Finance (16%) Transportation and Public Works (16%) Private Legislation (14%) Economics and Public Finance (14%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (8%) Emergency Management (8%) International Affairs (5%)
Recent Bills
Some of Benjamin’s most recently sponsored bills include...
- H.R. 7019 (97th): Department of Transportation and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 1983
- H.R. 6505 (97th): Fair Trade in Steel Act of 1982
- H.R. 6029 (97th): A bill to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to acquire by ...
- H.R. 4578 (97th): A bill for the relief of Bert Van Prooyen.
- H.R. 4209 (97th): Department of Transportation and Related Agencies Appropriation Act, 1982
- H.R. 2947 (97th): A bill to authorize the Secretary of Transportation to release restrictions on ...
- H.R. 1224 (97th): A bill for the relief of Steve Tandaric.
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1977 to Aug 1982, Benjamin missed 7 of 3,460 roll call votes, which is 0.2%. This is better than the median of 7.8% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Aug 1982. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- Congress-Legislators, a community project collecting election information
- United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1990 by Howard L. Rosenthal and Keith T. Poole.
- Martis’s “The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress”, via Keith Poole’s roll call votes data set, for political party affiliation for Members of Congress from 1789 through about year 2000
- GPO.gov/FDSys, for sponsored bills
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