Rep. Garret Graves
Representative for Louisiana’s 6th District
pronounced GAR-it // grayvz
![Photo of Rep. Garret Graves [R-LA6]](/static/legislator-photos/412631-200px.jpeg)
Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. President Trump, his senior government advisors, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided by themselves rather than by voters. Their attempts to suppress entire state-certified vote counts without adjudication in the courts and using a disinformation campaign of lies and conspiracy theories was a months-long, multifarious attempted coup.
Graves was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Graves voted to skip Arizona and/or Pennsylvania in the counting of presidential electors, states which returned certified results for Trump’s opponent. These legislators pumped the lies and preposterous legal arguments about the election that motivated the January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol. The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors. President Trump was indicted in 2023 for soliciting the Vice President to subvert Congress’s certification of the election and his role in the fraudulent slates of electors and the insurrection at the Capitol.
Earmarks
Graves proposed $105 million in earmarks for fiscal year 2024, including:
- $36 million to USDA-ARS Sugarcane Research Unit for “Completion of the USDA/ARS Sugarcane Research Facilities, Houma, LA”
- $28 million to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District for “Morganza-to-the-Gulf”
- $8 million to Louisiana Department of Transportation & Development for “415 Connector Design & Right-of-Way Acquisition”
View all requests and justifications on Graves’s website »
View analysis and download spreadsheet from Demand Progress Education Fund »
These are earmark requests which may or may not survive the legislative process to becoming law. Most representatives from both parties requested earmarks for fiscal year 2024. Across representatives who requested earmarks, the median total amount requested for this fiscal year was $39 million.
Earmarks are federal expenditures, tax benefits, or tariff benefits requested by a legislator for a specific entity. Rather than being distributed through a formula or competitive process administered by the executive branch, earmarks may direct spending where it is most needed for the legislator's district. All earmark requests in the House of Representatives are published online for the public to review. We don’t have earmark requests for senators. The fiscal year begins on October 1 of the prior calendar year. Source: Appropriations.house.gov. Background: Earmark Disclosure Rules in the House
Analysis
Legislative Metrics
Read our 2022 Report Card for Graves.
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Graves is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the House of Representatives 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 Graves has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Sep 30, 2023. See full analysis methodology.
Committee Membership
Garret Graves sits on the following committees:
Enacted Legislation
Graves was the primary sponsor of 5 bills that were enacted:
- H.R. 8049 (117th): American Aerospace Supply Chain Resiliency, Innovation, and Advancement Act of 2022
- H.R. 5126 (116th): DESCEND Act of 2020
- H.R. 1079 (116th): Creating Advanced Streamlined Electronic Services for Constituents Act of 2019
- H.R. 1679 (115th): FEMA Accountability, Modernization and Transparency Act of 2017
- H.R. 3462 (114th): Sport Fish Restoration and Recreational Boating Safety Act of 2015
Does 5 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
Graves sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
Transportation and Public Works (32%) Environmental Protection (19%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (11%) Energy (11%) Emergency Management (8%) Science, Technology, Communications (8%) Finance and Financial Sector (5%) Armed Forces and National Security (5%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Graves recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.R. 5840: To require the Transportation Security Administration to streamline the enrollment processes for individuals …
- H.R. 5616: BRIDGE Production Act of 2023
- H.R. 5479: To amend title 10, United States Code, to give the Secretary of Defense …
- H.R. 4547: Laws Ensuring Safe Shrimp Act
- H.R. 4165: United States-Russian Federation Seafood Reciprocity Act of 2023
- H.R. 3969: To provide for a rulemaking on operation of unmanned aircraft beyond visual line …
- H.R. 3767: To require the Council on Environmental Quality to submit to Congress a report …
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2015 to Sep 2023, Graves missed 94 of 5,000 roll call votes, which is 1.9%. This is on par with the median of 1.7% among the lifetime records of representatives currently serving. 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
- The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
- GPO Member Guide for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
