Sweeney was the representative for Texas’s 14th congressional district and was a Republican. He served from 1985 to 1988.
Alleged misconduct & resolution
On Sep. 11, 1986, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct investigated Sweeney for use of official resources for political purposes and requiring congressional staff to campaign as a condition of continued employment and determined that the campaign activities occurred in the district office with no evidence Sweeney directed or condoned the improper activities.
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Sweeney is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 1988 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 Sweeney sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 1983 to Oct 22, 1988. See full analysis methodology.
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
Sweeney sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Health (20%) Social Welfare (13%) Armed Forces and National Security (13%) Finance and Financial Sector (13%) Government Operations and Politics (13%) Water Resources Development (13%) Agriculture and Food (13%)
Recent Bills
Some of Sweeney’s most recently sponsored bills include...
- H.R. 5456 (100th): A bill to establish a joint congressional committee to be known as ...
- H.R. 5298 (100th): Medicare Wage Index Equity Act of 1988
- H.R. 5258 (100th): A bill to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to transfer title ...
- H.R. 5259 (100th): Small Rural Hospital Preservation Act of 1988
- H.R. 4831 (100th): A bill to move forward the date by which the terms of ...
- H.R. 4382 (100th): A bill to direct the Secretary of the Army to carry out ...
- H.R. 3819 (100th): A bill to prohibit additional appropriations for the analysis and study for ...
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1985 to Oct 1988, Sweeney missed 250 of 1,829 roll call votes, which is 13.7%. This is much worse than the median of 5.5% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Oct 1988. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses and major life events.
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
