Rep. John Moolenaar
Representative for Michigan’s 2nd District
pronounced jon // MUUL-uh-nahr
Moolenaar is the representative for Michigan’s 2nd congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 3, 2023. Moolenaar is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 62 years old.
He was previously the representative for Michigan’s 4th congressional district as a Republican from 2015 to 2022.
![Photo of Rep. John Moolenaar [R-MI2]](/static/legislator-photos/412634-200px.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.
Moolenaar was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, Moolenaar joined a case before the Supreme Court calling for all the votes for president in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that were narrowly won by Democrats — to be discarded, in order to change the outcome of the election, based on lies and a preposterous legal argument which the Supreme Court rejected. (Following the rejection of several related cases before the Supreme Court, another legislator who joined the case called for violence.) 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
Moolenaar proposed $14 million in earmarks for fiscal year 2024, including:
- $2.9 million to Michigan Community Capital for “Cadillac Lofts Phase II”
- $2.0 million to Kent County Youth Agricultural Association for “Grand Agricultural Center of West Michigan”
- $2.0 million to Office of the Midland County Drain Commissioner for “County of Midland, MI Snag and Debris Removal Flood Prevention and Watershed Protection Project”
View all requests and justifications on Moolenaar’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 Moolenaar.
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Moolenaar 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 Moolenaar has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Sep 22, 2023. See full analysis methodology.
Committee Membership
John Moolenaar sits on the following committees:
Enacted Legislation
Moolenaar was the primary sponsor of 1 bill that was enacted:
Does 1 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
Moolenaar sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
Education (22%) Government Operations and Politics (19%) Taxation (15%) Armed Forces and National Security (11%) Native Americans (11%) Science, Technology, Communications (7%) Health (7%) Crime and Law Enforcement (7%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Moolenaar recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.R. 5546: Native American Health Savings Improvement Act
- H.R. 5411: To prohibit the Secretary of Energy from finalizing, implementing, or enforcing the proposed …
- H.Res. 673: Expressing support for the designation of the week of September 11 through September …
- H.R. 5256: Medicare Access to Rural Anesthesiology Act of 2023
- H.R. 3663: SOAR Permanent Authorization Act
- H.R. 937: Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act of 2023
- H.R. 808: Veterans Patient Advocacy Act
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2015 to Sep 2023, Moolenaar missed 25 of 4,890 roll call votes, which is 0.5%. This is better than 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
