Sen. Marsha Blackburn

Analysis

Legislative Metrics

Read our 2019 Report Card for Blackburn.

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Blackburn 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 Blackburn has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 6, 2015 to Sep 29, 2020. See full analysis methodology.

Ratings from Advocacy Organizations

Committee Membership

Marsha Blackburn sits on the following committees:

• Senate Committee on Armed Services
  Cybersecurity, Emerging Threats and Capabilities, Readiness and Management Support subcommittees
• Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
  Aviation and Space, Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet, Manufacturing, Trade, and Consumer Protection, Security subcommittees
• Senate Committee on the Judiciary
  Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, the Constitution, Intellectual Property subcommittees
• Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs

Enacted Legislation

Blackburn was the primary sponsor of 10 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• S. 1235: Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commemorative Coin Act
• H.R. 5799 (115th): Medicaid Drug Review, Utilization, Good Governance Improvement Act
• H.R. 375 (115th): To designate the Federal building and United States courthouse located at 719 Church Street in Nashville, Tennessee, as the “Fred D. Thompson Federal Building and United States ...
• H.J.Res. 86 (115th): Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to “Protecting the Privacy ...
• H.R. 2435 (114th): To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with regard to the Reagan-Udall Foundation.
• H.R. 5729 (113th): Adding Ebola to the FDA Priority Review Voucher Program Act
• H.R. 1817 (111th): To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 116 North West Street in Somerville, Tennessee, as the “John S. Wilder Post Office Building”.

View All »

Does 10 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

Blackburn sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

Health (40%) Science, Technology, Communications (12%) Immigration (10%) Commerce (10%) Crime and Law Enforcement (9%) Government Operations and Politics (7%) International Affairs (7%) Education (5%)

Recent Bills

Some of Blackburn’s most recently sponsored bills include...

• S. 4577: A bill to require online enrollment for the PreCheck Program of the Transportation ...
• S. 4525: A bill to ensure that health care providers do not incur additional Federal ...
• S. 4429: K2 Veterans Toxic Exposure Accountability Act of 2020
• S. 4343: Triple A Study Act
• S. 4161: Ban Birth Tourism Act of 2020
• S. 3820: Open Technology Fund Authorization Act
• S. 3592: Stop COVID Act of 2020

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Voting Record

Key Votes

Missed Votes

From Jan 2019 to Sep 2020, Blackburn missed 9 of 624 roll call votes, which is 1.4%. This is on par with the median of 1.8% 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