Fountain was the representative for North Carolina’s 2nd congressional district and was a Democrat. He served from 1953 to 1982.
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Fountain is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 1982 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 Fountain sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 4, 1977 to Dec 21, 1982. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Fountain was the primary sponsor of 6 bills that were enacted:
- H.J.Res. 604 (97th): A joint resolution designating the month of November, 1982, as “National Diabetes Month”.
- H.R. 7112 (96th): State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act Amendments of 1980
- H.R. 8588 (95th): Inspector General Act
- H.J.Res. 1004 (95th): A resolution to designate October 7, 1978, as “National Guard Day”.
- H.R. 13367 (94th): Fiscal Assistance Amendments
- H.R. 11236 (93rd): Joint Funding Simplification Act
Does 6 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
Fountain sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Private Legislation (23%) Government Operations and Politics (23%) Armed Forces and National Security (14%) Economics and Public Finance (14%) Education (9%) Housing and Community Development (9%) Native Americans (9%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Fountain recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.R. 7173 (97th): A bill to make certain changes in the membership and operations of …
- H.J.Res. 604 (97th): A joint resolution designating the month of November, 1982, as “National Diabetes …
- H.Con.Res. 341 (97th): A concurrent resolution expressing the sense of the Congress that housing and …
- H.R. 7112 (96th): State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act Amendments of 1980
- H.R. 6952 (96th): Emergency Home Purchase Assistance Authority Amendments of 1979
- H.R. 6271 (96th): Veterans Judicial Review Act
- H.R. 6280 (96th): A bill for the relief of Clater P. Killebrew, Junior.
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1953 to Dec 1982, Fountain missed 581 of 9,083 roll call votes, which is 6.4%. This is on par with the median of 7.8% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Dec 1982. 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
- 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
