Eckhardt was the representative for Texas’s 8th congressional district and was a Democrat. He served from 1967 to 1980.
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Eckhardt is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 1980 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 Eckhardt sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 14, 1975 to Dec 13, 1980. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Eckhardt was the primary sponsor of 4 bills that were enacted:
- H.R. 11567 (95th): An Act to amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to authorize appropriations for the Securities and Exchange Commission for fiscal years 1979 and 1980, and for ...
- H.R. 8331 (95th): Securities Investor Protection Act Amendments
- H.R. 12563 (95th): A bill to amend the Magnuson-Moss Warranty-Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act to extend the filing date of a study of rulemaking procedures under section 18 of the ...
- H.R. 5777 (93rd): Hobby Protection Act
Does 4 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
Eckhardt sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Government Operations and Politics (22%) Economics and Public Finance (15%) Public Lands and Natural Resources (14%) Commerce (12%) Energy (10%) Environmental Protection (10%) Finance and Financial Sector (9%) Law (8%)
Recent Bills
Some of Eckhardt’s most recently sponsored bills include...
- H.R. 8025 (96th): A bill to limit medicare and medicaid payments for certain drugs.
- H.R. 7599 (96th): A bill to designate various areas as components of the National Wilderness ...
- H.R. 7073 (96th): A bill to amend the Federal Trade Commission Act to provide that ...
- H.R. 6931 (96th): Hazardous Waste Act of 1980
- H.R. 6835 (96th): A bill for the relief of Eleazar Mendez-Ortiz and Alma Grijalva de ...
- H.R. 6541 (96th): Household Goods Shipper Protection Act
- H.R. 6052 (96th): A bill to amend the Act establishing the Big Thicket National Preserve ...
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1967 to Dec 1980, Eckhardt missed 919 of 6,732 roll call votes, which is 13.7%. This is much worse than the median of 8.6% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Dec 1980. 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.
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
- 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
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
