Sen. Larry Pressler

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Pressler is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 1996 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 Pressler sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 4, 1991 to Oct 3, 1996. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Pressler was the primary sponsor of 28 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• S. 1994 (104th): Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act of 1996
• S. 1840 (104th): Federal Trade Commission Reauthorization Act of 1996
• S. 1831 (104th): National Transportation Safety Board Amendments of 1996
• S. 652 (104th): Telecommunications Act of 1996
• S. 190 (104th): Court Reporter Fair Labor Amendments of 1995
• S. 1926 (103rd): Food Stamp Program Improvements Act of 1994
• S. 1777 (103rd): A bill to extend the suspended implementation of certain requirements of the food stamp program on Indian reservations, to suspend certain eligibility requirements for the participation of …

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Does 28 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

Pressler sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Government Operations and Politics (22%) Commerce (12%) Transportation and Public Works (12%) Agriculture and Food (11%) International Affairs (11%) Law (11%) Foreign Trade and International Finance (11%) Economics and Public Finance (10%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Pressler recently introduced the following legislation:

• S. 2091 (104th): Small Business and Farm Transportation Regulatory Relief Act
• S. 2086 (104th): International Tax Simplification for American Competitiveness Act
• S.Res. 292 (104th): A resolution designating the second Sunday in October of 1996 as “National …
• S. 1994 (104th): Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act of 1996
• S. 1957 (104th): Intermodal Safe Container Transportation Amendments Act of 1996
• S.Con.Res. 65 (104th): A concurrent resolution expressing the sense of the Congress that Members should …
• S. 1862 (104th): Interstate Distribution of State-Inspected Meat Act of 1996

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Feb 1979 to Oct 1996, Pressler missed 467 of 7,052 roll call votes, which is 6.6%. This is much worse than the median of 2.6% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Oct 1996. 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
• The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
• 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