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 liberal–conservative 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 Aug 6, 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: STOP Using Human Shields Act
• S. 2220: National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2017
• S. 1892: A bill to provide tax relief related to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.
• S. 442: National Aeronautics and Space Administration Transition Authorization Act of 2017
• S.J.Res. 23: 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 (36%) Taxation (14%) Health (12%) Science, Technology, Communications (10%) Immigration (9%) Government Operations and Politics (7%) Finance and Financial Sector (6%) Education (5%)

Recent Bills

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

• S. 4505: A bill to provide one-time grants to parents and guardians for student education ...
• S.Res. 675: A resolution congratulating the men and women of the Commercial Crew Program of ...
• S. 4376: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to permanently allow ...
• S. 4340: A bill to ensure that a State or local jurisdiction is ineligible to ...
• S. 4345: A bill to amend section 212 of the Immigration and Nationality Act to ...
• S. 4297: A bill to allow participants in certain retirement plans to delay their 2020 ...
• S. 4266: A bill to provide civil liability for injuries in law enforcement free zones, ...

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Voting Record

Key Votes

Missed Votes

From Jan 2013 to Aug 2020, Cruz missed 265 of 2,343 roll call votes, which is 11.3%. This is much worse than the median of 1.7% 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