skip to main content

 
Sen. Richard “Rick” Santorum

Former Senator for Pennsylvania

(About Ads | Hide These Ads)

Santorum was a senator from Pennsylvania and was a Republican. He served from 1995 to 2006.

He was previously the representative for Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district as a Republican from 1991 to 1994.

Photo of Sen. Richard “Rick” Santorum [R-PA, 1995-2006]

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Santorum is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 2006 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 Santorum sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 22, 2001 to Dec 8, 2006. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Santorum was the primary sponsor of 11 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

View All »

Does 11 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

Santorum sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Foreign Trade and International Finance (19%) Government Operations and Politics (19%) Commerce (13%) Science, Technology, Communications (11%) Taxation (10%) Health (9%) Law (9%) Social Welfare (9%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Santorum recently introduced the following legislation:

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jan 1995 to Dec 2006, Santorum missed 79 of 4,156 roll call votes, which is 1.9%. This is on par with the median of 2.0% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Dec 2006. 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: