Shannon was the representative for Massachusetts’s 5th congressional district and was a Democrat. He served from 1979 to 1984.
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Shannon is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 1984 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 Shannon sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 15, 1979 to Oct 11, 1984. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Shannon was the primary sponsor of 2 bills that were enacted:
- H.R. 2568 (98th): A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to repeal the provision which terminates the exclusion for amounts received under certain educational assistance programs.
- H.R. 3409 (98th): A bill to amend the Federal Supplemental Compensation Act of 1982 with respect to the number of weeks of benefits paid in any State.
Does 2 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
Shannon sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Taxation (42%) Education (13%) International Affairs (12%) Foreign Trade and International Finance (9%) Labor and Employment (7%) Social Welfare (6%) Energy (6%) Government Operations and Politics (6%)
Recent Bills
Some of Shannon’s most recently sponsored bills include...
- H.Con.Res. 379 (98th): A concurrent resolution to correct the enrollment of H.R. 3398.
- H.R. 6436 (98th): Tax Equity and Efficiency Act
- H.J.Res. 612 (98th): Security and General Nuclear Disarmament Resolution
- H.R. 5867 (98th): Lebanese Multinational Peacekeeping Force Memorial Act of 1984
- H.R. 5351 (98th): Oil Company Acquisition Moratorium Act
- H.R. 5312 (98th): A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to exclude ...
- H.Res. 467 (98th): A resolution directing the President of the United States to provide certain ...
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1979 to Oct 1984, Shannon missed 409 of 2,994 roll call votes, which is 13.7%. This is much worse than the median of 7.0% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Oct 1984. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses and major life events.
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
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
