Baldus was the representative for Wisconsin’s 3rd congressional district and was a Democrat. He served from 1975 to 1980.
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Baldus is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 1980 positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).
The chart is based on the bills Baldus sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 14, 1975 to Dec 13, 1980. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Baldus was the primary sponsor of 2 bills that were enacted:
- H.R. 6285 (96th): Egg Research and Consumer Information Amendments of 1980
- H.R. 4167 (96th): A bill to amend section 201 of the Agricultural Act of 1949, as amended, to extend until September 30, 1981, the requirement that the price of milk …
Does 2 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.
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 at least about half 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
Baldus sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Agriculture and Food (31%) Government Operations and Politics (22%) Commerce (18%) Education (12%) Taxation (9%) Foreign Trade and International Finance (5%) Armed Forces and National Security (4%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Baldus recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.R. 7258 (96th): Paperwork Elimination and Control Act of 1980
- H.R. 6285 (96th): Egg Research and Consumer Information Amendments of 1980
- H.R. 5069 (96th): A bill to amend the Egg Research and Consumer Information Act.
- H.R. 4167 (96th): A bill to amend section 201 of the Agricultural Act of 1949, …
- H.Res. 244 (96th): A resolution to encourage the strengthening of U.S. farmer cooperatives, as a …
- H.Res. 230 (96th): A resolution expressing the sense of the House of Representatives concerning an …
- H.R. 2482 (96th): Small Business Employee Ownership Act
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1975 to Dec 1980, Baldus missed 256 of 4,089 roll call votes, which is 6.3%. This is better than the median of 8.6% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Dec 1980. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional 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
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
