Sen. Dale Bumpers

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Bumpers is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 1998 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 Bumpers sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 5, 1993 to Oct 21, 1998. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Bumpers was the primary sponsor of 29 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• S. 2232 (105th): A bill to establish the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site in the State of Arkansas, and for other purposes.
• S. 2171 (105th): A bill to extend the deadline under the Federal Power Act applicable to the construction of a hydroelectric project in the State of Arkansas.
• S. 731 (105th): A bill to extend the legislative authority for construction of the National Peace Garden memorial, and for other purposes.
• S. 268 (104th): A bill to authorize the collection of fees for expenses for triploid grass carp certification inspections, and for other purposes.
• S. 549 (104th): A bill to extend the deadline under the Federal Power Act applicable to the construction of three hyrdroelectric projects in the State of Arkansas.
• S. 2060 (103rd): Small Business Administration Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 1994
• S. 2087 (103rd): An Act to extend the time period for compliance with the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 for certain food products packaged prior to August 8, …

View All »

Does 29 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 110^th Congress).

Bills Sponsored

Issue Areas

Bumpers sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Government Operations and Politics (19%) Economics and Public Finance (17%) Commerce (14%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (13%) Law (11%) Science, Technology, Communications (10%) Environmental Protection (9%) Armed Forces and National Security (8%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Bumpers recently introduced the following legislation:

• S. 2289 (105th): Grand Jury Reform Act of 1998
• S. 2232 (105th): A bill to establish the Little Rock Central High School National Historic …
• S. 2171 (105th): A bill to extend the deadline under the Federal Power Act applicable …
• S. 2030 (105th): Grand Jury Due Process Act
• S. 1973 (105th): Telephone Privacy Act of 1998
• S. 1586 (105th): Consumer and Main Street Protection Act of 1997
• S. 1401 (105th): Transition to Electric Competition Act of 1997

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jan 1975 to Oct 1998, Bumpers missed 708 of 10,131 roll call votes, which is 7.0%. This is much worse than the median of 1.9% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Oct 1998. 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.

Show the numbers...

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
• The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
• 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
• Biographical Directory of the United States Congress for the photo
• GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills