Sen. Frank Lautenberg

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Lautenberg is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 2014 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 Lautenberg sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 6, 2009 to Dec 12, 2014. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Lautenberg was the primary sponsor of 42 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• S. 314 (113th): Sudden Unexpected Death Data Enhancement and Awareness Act
• S. 1952 (112th): Hazardous Materials Transportation Safety Improvement Act of 2011
• S. 3013 (111th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 216 Westwood Avenue in Westwood, New Jersey, as the “Sergeant Christopher R. Hrbek …
• S. 904 (109th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1560 Union Valley Road in West Milford, New Jersey, as the “Brian P. …
• S. 1296 (106th): Lower Delaware Wild and Scenic Rivers Act
• S. 362 (106th): A bill to authorize appropriations for the Coastal Heritage Trail Route in New Jersey, and for other purposes.
• S. 833 (105th): A bill to designate the Federal building courthouse at Public Square and Superior Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio, as the “Howard M. Metzenbaum United States Courthouse”.

View All »

Does 42 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

Lautenberg sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Transportation and Public Works (23%) Environmental Protection (16%) Crime and Law Enforcement (14%) Foreign Trade and International Finance (14%) Health (13%) Education (11%) Taxation (5%) Economics and Public Finance (5%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Lautenberg recently introduced the following legislation:

• S. 1036 (113th): Foreign Language Education Partnership Program Act
• S. 1009 (113th): Chemical Safety Improvement Act
• S. 979 (113th): Drunk Driving Repeat Offender Prevention Act of 2013
• S. 903 (113th): Alien Gun Violence Prevention Act of 2013
• S. 880 (113th): Safe Highways and Infrastructure Preservation Act of 2013
• S. 814 (113th): Protecting Communities from Chemical Explosions Act of 2013
• S. 826 (113th): Tobacco Tax and Enforcement Reform Act

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Key Votes

Missed Votes

From Feb 1983 to May 2013, Lautenberg missed 359 of 9,614 roll call votes, which is 3.7%. This is worse than the median of 2.1% among the lifetime records of senators serving in May 2013. 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
• Congressional Pictorial Directory for the photo
• GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills