Sen. Jon Tester

Analysis

Legislative Metrics

Read our 2020 Report Card for Tester.

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Tester is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the Senate 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 Tester has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2017 to May 16, 2022. See full analysis methodology.

Committee Membership

Jon Tester sits on the following committees:

• Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs Chair
• Senate Committee on Appropriations
  • Defense subcommittee Chair

  Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, Energy and Water Development, Homeland Security, Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies subcommittees
• Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
  Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection, Housing, Transportation, and Community Development, National Security and International Trade and Finance subcommittees
• Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
  Aviation Safety, Operations, and Innovation, Communications, Media, and Broadband, Surface Transportation, Maritime, Freight, and Ports, Tourism, Trade, and Export Promotion subcommittees
• Senate Committee on Indian Affairs

Enacted Legislation

Tester was the primary sponsor of 30 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• S. 3779: Adjustable Interest Rate (LIBOR) Act
• S. 3023: A bill making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2022, and for other purposes.
• S. 1910: Major Medical Facility Authorization Act of 2021
• S. 682: SAVE LIVES Act
• S. 4910 (116th): GRACE for Homeless Veterans Act of 2020
• S. 785 (116th): Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act of 2019
• S. 3637 (116th): A bill to amend the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to extend lease protections for servicemembers under stop movement orders in response to a local, national, or global …

View All »

Does 30 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

Tester sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

Armed Forces and National Security (47%) Education (10%) Native Americans (9%) Health (9%) Taxation (8%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Tester recently introduced the following legislation:

• S. 4223: A bill to increase, effective as of December 1, 2022, the rates of …
• S. 4169: Expanding Veterans’ Options for Long Term Care Act
• S. 4156: VA Workforce Improvement, Support, and Expansion (WISE) Act of 2022
• S. 3958: China Trade Cheating Restitution Act of 2022
• S.Res. 561: A resolution designating the first week of April 2022 as “National Asbestos Awareness …
• S. 3870: Meat and Poultry Special Investigator Act of 2022
• S. 3844: Economic Continuity and Stability Act

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Key Votes

Missed Votes

From Jan 2007 to May 2022, Tester missed 53 of 5,025 roll call votes, which is 1.1%. This is better than the median of 2.3% among the lifetime records of senators 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 and major life events.

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
• The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
• GPO Member Guide for the photo
• GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills