Sen. Max Baucus

Analysis

Legislative Metrics

Read our 2013 Report Card for Baucus.

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Baucus is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 2014 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 Baucus sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 6, 2009 to Dec 12, 2014. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Baucus was the primary sponsor of 45 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• S. 789 (113th): A bill to grant the Congressional Gold Medal, collectively, to the First Special Service Force, in recognition of its superior service during World War II.
• S. 391 (113th): A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to include vaccines against seasonal influenza within the definition of taxable vaccines.
• S. 141 (113th): A bill to make supplemental agricultural disaster assistance available for fiscal years 2012 and 2013, and for other purposes.
• S. 3311 (112th): A bill to designate the United States courthouse located at 2601 2nd Avenue North, Billings, Montana, as the “James F. Battin United States Courthouse”.
• S. 3705 (112th): Protect our Kids Act of 2012
• S. 3521 (112th): Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty Act of 2012
• S. 3326 (112th): A bill to amend the African Growth and Opportunity Act to extend the third-country fabric program and to add South Sudan to the list of countries eligible …

View All »

Does 45 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

Baucus sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Foreign Trade and International Finance (32%) Taxation (21%) Health (11%) Armed Forces and National Security (10%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (9%) Social Welfare (7%) Water Resources Development (5%) Agriculture and Food (4%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Baucus recently introduced the following legislation:

• S. 2000 (113th): SGR Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act of 2014
• S. 1997 (113th): Dry-Redwater Regional Water Authority System Act of 2014
• S. 1965 (113th): A bill to amend the East Bench Irrigation District Water Contract Extension …
• S.Res. 336 (113th): A resolution designating the first week of April 2014 as “National Asbestos …
• S. 1900 (113th): Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities Act of 2014
• S. 1871 (113th): SGR Repeal and Medicare Beneficiary Access Act of 2013
• S. 1878 (113th): Protecting Youth At-Risk for Sex Trafficking Act

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Key Votes

Missed Votes

From Feb 1979 to Feb 2014, Baucus missed 283 of 12,444 roll call votes, which is 2.3%. This is on par with the median of 2.1% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Feb 2014. 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
• Congressional Pictorial Directory for the photo
• GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills