Vice President James “Dan” Quayle

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Quayle is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 1990 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 Quayle sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 1985 to Oct 28, 1990. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Quayle was the primary sponsor of 18 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• S.J.Res. 248 (100th): A joint resolution to designate the week of October 2, 1988, through October 8, 1988, as “Mental Illness Awareness Week”.
• S.J.Res. 76 (100th): A joint resolution to designate the week of October 4, 1987, through October 10, 1987 as “Mental Illness Awareness Week”.
• S. 2069 (99th): Job Training Partnership Act Amendments of 1986
• S.J.Res. 298 (99th): A joint resolution to designate the week of October 5, 1986, through October 11, 1986, as “Mental Illness Awareness Week”.
• S. 2329 (99th): Student Financial Assistance Technical Corrections Act of 1986
• S.J.Res. 314 (99th): A joint resolution to designate the week beginning July 27, 1986, as “National Nuclear Medicine Week”.
• S. 1264 (99th): Arts, Humanities, and Museums Amendments of 1985

View All »

Does 18 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

Quayle sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Education (22%) Labor and Employment (21%) Economics and Public Finance (14%) Government Operations and Politics (12%) Health (10%) Armed Forces and National Security (9%) Taxation (7%) Foreign Trade and International Finance (5%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Quayle recently introduced the following legislation:

• S. 2700 (100th): Pension Benefit Protection Act
• S. 2679 (100th): At-Risk Youth Employment and Training Amendments of 1988
• S. 2579 (100th): Library Improvement Act of 1988
• S.Res. 444 (100th): A resolution to express the sense of the Senate on the Internal …
• S. 2546 (100th): Choices in Child Care Act of 1988
• S. 2376 (100th): A bill to encourage the advance notification of major employment reductions, and …
• S. 2343 (100th): Pension Portability Act of 1988

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jan 1981 to Oct 1988, Quayle missed 127 of 3,167 roll call votes, which is 4.0%. This is better than the median of 5.9% among the lifetime records of senators 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, 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