Rep. Paul Tonko

Analysis

Legislative Metrics

Read our 2019 Report Card for Tonko.

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Tonko is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the House of Representatives positioned according to our liberal–conservative ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).

The chart is based on the bills Tonko has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 6, 2015 to Apr 3, 2020. See full analysis methodology.

Ratings from Advocacy Organizations

Committee Membership

Paul Tonko sits on the following committees:

• House Committee on Energy and Commerce
  • Environment and Climate Change subcommittee Chair

  Energy, Oversight and Investigations subcommittees
• House Committee on Natural Resources
  National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands subcommittees
• House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
  Environment, Research and Technology subcommittees

Enacted Legislation

Tonko was the primary sponsor of 5 bills that were enacted:

• H.R. 583: PIRATE Act
• H.R. 6870 (115th): To rename the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 in honor of Representative Louise McIntosh Slaughter.
• H.R. 4005: Medicaid Reentry Act
• H.R. 6414 (114th): Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act of 2016
• H.R. 4425 (111th): To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 2-116th Street in North Troy, New York, as the “Martin G. ‘Marty’ Mahar Post Office”.

View All »

Does 5 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

Tonko sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

Health (25%) Energy (25%) Science, Technology, Communications (18%) Armed Forces and National Security (10%) Environmental Protection (8%) Education (5%) Transportation and Public Works (5%) Water Resources Development (5%)

Recent Bills

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

• H.R. 5544: American Innovation and Manufacturing Leadership Act of 2020
• H.R. 5530: Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Rebate Act of 2019
• H.R. 5335: American Energy Opportunity Act of 2019
• H.R. 5263: Stopping Grinch Bots Act of 2019
• H.R. 5057: Pass-Through Technical Corrections Act
• H.R. 4709: Take Unsafe Limos Off the Road Act
• H.R. 4708: SAFE Limos Act

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Voting Record

Key Votes

Missed Votes

From Jan 2009 to Mar 2020, Tonko missed 52 of 7,798 roll call votes, which is 0.7%. This is better than the median of 2.2% among the lifetime records of representatives 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