Sen. Mark Hatfield

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Hatfield 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 Hatfield sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 4, 1991 to Oct 3, 1996. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Hatfield was the primary sponsor of 48 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• S. 1577 (104th): A bill to authorize appropriations for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission for fiscal years 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001.
• S.J.Res. 53 (104th): A joint resolution making corrections to Public Law 104-134.
• S. 1097 (104th): A bill to designate the Federal building located at 1550 Dewey Avenue, Baker City, Oregon, as the “David J. Wheeler Federal Building”, and for other purposes.
• S. 538 (104th): A bill to reinstate the permit for, and extend the deadline under the Federal Power Act applicable to the construction of, a hydroelectric project in Oregon, and …
• S. 455 (103rd): Payments in Lieu of Taxes Act
• S.J.Res. 217 (102nd): A joint resolution to authorize and request the President to proclaim 1992 as the “Year of the American Indian”.
• S.J.Res. 126 (102nd): A joint resolution to designate the second Sunday in October of 1991 as “National Children’s Day”.

View All »

Does 48 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

Hatfield sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Government Operations and Politics (23%) Economics and Public Finance (18%) Education (14%) Health (12%) Environmental Protection (10%) Labor and Employment (8%) Commerce (8%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (8%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Hatfield recently introduced the following legislation:

• S.Res. 320 (104th): A resolution authorizing the printing of a Senate document.
• S. 2166 (104th): Local Empowerment and Flexibility Pilot Act of 1996
• S.J.Res. 63 (104th): Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 1997
• S. 2102 (104th): A bill to nullify the Supplemental Treaty Between the United States of …
• S. 2045 (104th): National Small Business Regulatory Relief Act of 1996
• S. 1986 (104th): Umatilla Basin Project Completion Act
• S. 1944 (104th): Harold Hughes Commission on Alcoholism Act

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jan 1967 to Oct 1996, Hatfield missed 1,659 of 12,874 roll call votes, which is 12.9%. 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