![Photo of Rep. Edolphus “Ed” Towns [D-NY10, 1993-2012]](/static/legislator-photos/400409-200px.jpeg)
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Towns is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 2013 positioned according to our liberal–conservative ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).
The chart is based on the bills Towns sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 4, 2007 to Jan 1, 2013. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Towns was the primary sponsor of 10 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:
- H.R. 4053 (112th): Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Improvement Act of 2012
- H.R. 6086 (111th): To amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Company Act of 1940, and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 to provide for certain disclosures under ...
- H.R. 430 (110th): To designate the United States bankruptcy courthouse located at 271 Cadman Plaza East in Brooklyn, New York, as the ‘Conrad B. Duberstein United States Bankruptcy Courthouse’.
- H.R. 3179 (110th): Local Preparedness Acquisition Act
- H.R. 3267 (110th): Healthy Start Reauthorization Act of 2007
- H.R. 3012 (108th): To redesignate the facility of the United States Postal Service, located at 315 Empire Boulevard in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York, as the “James E. Davis Post ...
- H.R. 363 (105th): To amend section 2118 of the Energy Policy Act of 1992 to extend the Electric and Magnetic Fields Research and Public Information Dissemination Program.
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
Towns sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Government Operations and Politics (26%) Health (20%) Economics and Public Finance (14%) Social Welfare (11%) Education (10%) Commerce (8%) Families (7%) Transportation and Public Works (5%)
Recent Bills
Some of Towns’s most recently sponsored bills include...
- H.R. 5852 (112th): To amend title 5, United States Code, to provide that spouses and ...
- H.R. 5718 (112th): To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to revise the new ...
- H.R. 5637 (112th): To extend the temporary suspension of duty on certain golf bags.
- H.R. 4053 (112th): Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Improvement Act of 2012
- H.R. 3566 (112th): Fairness in Foreclosures Act of 2011
- H.R. 3519 (112th): To amend to exempt the Medicare program from fallback sequestration under the ...
- H.R. 3405 (112th): Increased Student Achievement Through Increased Student Support Act
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 1983 to Jan 2013, Towns missed 2,025 of 18,002 roll call votes, which is 11.2%. This is much worse than the median of 2.6% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Jan 2013. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
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
- Congressional Pictorial Directory for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
