Sen. Ted Cruz

Analysis

Legislative Metrics

Read our 2019 Report Card for Cruz.

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Cruz 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 Cruz has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 6, 2015 to Nov 18, 2020. See full analysis methodology.

Ratings from Advocacy Organizations

Committee Membership

Ted Cruz sits on the following committees:

• Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
  • Aviation and Space subcommittee Chair

  Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet, Science, Oceans, Fisheries, and Weather, Security subcommittees
• Senate Committee on the Judiciary
  • the Constitution subcommittee Chair

  Border Security and Immigration, Crime and Terrorism subcommittees
• Joint Economic Committee
• Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
  Africa and Global Health Policy, Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism, Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, and Global Women's Issues subcommittees
• Senate Committee on Rules and Administration

Enacted Legislation

Cruz was the primary sponsor of 9 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• S. 1635: A bill to designate the community-based outpatient clinic of the Department of Veterans Affairs in Odessa, Texas, as the “Wilson and Young Medal of Honor VA Clinic”.
• S. 3257 (115th): Sanctioning the Use of Civilians as Defenseless Shields Act
• S. 2220 (115th): National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2017
• S. 1892 (115th): A bill to provide tax relief related to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.
• S. 442 (115th): National Aeronautics and Space Administration Transition Authorization Act of 2017
• S.J.Res. 23 (115th): A joint resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to drug testing of unemployment compensation applicants.
• S. 1297 (114th): U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act

View All »

Does 9 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

Cruz sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

International Affairs (34%) Taxation (16%) Health (12%) Science, Technology, Communications (11%) Immigration (9%) Government Operations and Politics (7%) Finance and Financial Sector (6%) Armed Forces and National Security (5%)

Recent Bills

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

• S.J.Res. 76: A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States ...
• S. 4805: A bill to create a point of order against legislation modifying the number ...
• S. 4799: SHAME Act
• S. 4798: National Child Identification Act of 2019
• S. 4744: Republic of Texas Legation Memorial Act
• S. 4604: SUSPEND Act
• S. 4537: RECOVERY Act

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Voting Record

Key Votes

Missed Votes

From Jan 2013 to Nov 2020, Cruz missed 265 of 2,424 roll call votes, which is 10.9%. This is much worse than 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