McCarthy is the representative for California’s 20th congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 3, 2023. McCarthy is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 58 years old.
He is also Speaker of the House, a party leadership role. Party leaders focus more on setting their party’s legislative priorties than on introducing legislation.
He was previously the representative for California’s 23rd congressional district as a Republican from 2013 to 2022; and the representative for California’s 22nd congressional district as a Republican from 2007 to 2012.
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 instead by incumbent politicians running in the very same election. 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.
McCarthy was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, McCarthy 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.) On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, McCarthy voted to reject the state-certified election results of Arizona and/or Pennsylvania (states narrowly won by Democrats), which could have changed the outcome of the election. These legislators have generally changed their story after their vote, claiming it was merely a protest and not intended to change the outcome of the election as they clearly sought prior to the vote. In the days after the January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol which succeeded in halting, for a time, the electoral count that determined the outcome of the presidential election, McCarthy said President Trump “bears responsibility” and urged him to resign ahead of his impeachment for inciting the insurrection at the Capitol, and said his behavior was “atrocious and totally wrong,” but he returned to supporting the former president shortly after. In 2022, McCarthy defied a subpoena to testify in the investigation of the January 6th Committee.
![Photo of Rep. Kevin McCarthy [R-CA20]](/static/legislator-photos/412190-200px.jpeg)
Analysis
Legislative Metrics
Read our 2022 Report Card for McCarthy.
Ideology–Leadership Chart
McCarthy 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 McCarthy has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Mar 23, 2023. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
McCarthy was the primary sponsor of 15 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:
- H.R. 2695 (116th): To rename the Success Dam in Tulare County, California, as the Richard L. Schafer Dam.
- H.R. 5509 (115th): Innovations in Mentoring, Training, and Apprenticeships Act
- H.R. 6888 (115th): Asia Reassurance Initiative Act of 2018
- H.R. 1988 (115th): To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1730 18th Street in Bakersfield, California, as the “Merle Haggard Post Office Building”.
- H.R. 1989 (115th): VET TEC Act
- H.R. 39 (115th): TALENT Act of 2017
- H.R. 6007 (114th): To amend title 49, United States Code, to include consideration of certain impacts on commercial space launch and reentry activities in a navigable airspace analysis, and for …
Does 15 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
McCarthy sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
International Affairs (29%) Health (21%) Armed Forces and National Security (21%) Government Operations and Politics (14%) Water Resources Development (14%)
Recently Introduced Bills
McCarthy recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.Res. 11: Establishing the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and …
- H.R. 8168 (117th): Save Our Sequoias Act
- H.Res. 1159 (117th): Electing Members to certain standing committees of the House of Representatives.
- H.R. 7690 (117th): To prohibit the use of Federal funds to establish or carry out …
- H.Res. 1004 (117th): Expressing the profound sorrow of the House of Representatives on the death …
- H.R. 5566 (117th): FORWARD Act of 2021
- H.Res. 554 (117th): Raising a question of the privileges of the House.
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
As Speaker of the House, McCarthy may be focused on his responsibilities other than introducing legislation, such as setting the chamber’s agenda, uniting his party, and brokering deals.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2007 to Mar 2023, McCarthy missed 218 of 10,915 roll call votes, which is 2.0%. This is on par with the median of 1.5% 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
