Sen. George McGovern

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

McGovern is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 1980 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 McGovern sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 15, 1975 to Dec 16, 1980. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

McGovern was the primary sponsor of 11 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• S. 261 (96th): Agricultural Subterminal Storage Facilities Act of 1979
• S. 1625 (96th): A bill to amend the Act of December 20, 1944, as amended.
• S. 1792 (96th): A bill to authorize the President of the United States to present on behalf of the Congress a specially struck gold medal to Simon Wiesenthal.
• S. 3085 (95th): Child Nutrition Amendments
• S. 3713 (94th): A bill to extend the Emergency Livestock Credit Act of 1974.
• S. 1236 (94th): An Act to amend and extend the Emergency Livestock Credit Act of 1974, and for other purposes.
• S. 13 (94th): A bill to amend the Food Stamp Act of 1964.

View All »

Does 11 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

McGovern sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Agriculture and Food (31%) Government Operations and Politics (17%) Economics and Public Finance (11%) Health (11%) Armed Forces and National Security (10%) International Affairs (9%) Labor and Employment (6%) Energy (6%)

Recently Introduced Bills

McGovern recently introduced the following legislation:

• S.Res. 535 (96th): A resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that a commemorative postage …
• S. 3111 (96th): A bill to amend certain provisions of the Federal Power Act, 16 …
• S. 3112 (96th): A bill to provide a two-year suspension of payment of principal and …
• S. 3083 (96th): A bill to deauthorize the Oahe Unit, James Division, Missouri River Basin …
• S. 3021 (96th): A bill to amend certain provisions of the Federal Power Act, 16 …
• S.Res. 498 (96th): A resolution expressing the sense of the Senate with respect to the …
• S. 3004 (96th): A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to make …

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jan 1963 to Dec 1980, McGovern missed 1,978 of 7,907 roll call votes, which is 25.0%. This is much worse than the median of 9.2% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Dec 1980. 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
• 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