Railsback was the representative for Illinois’s 19th congressional district and was a Republican. He served from 1967 to 1982.
![Photo of Rep. Thomas Railsback [R-IL19, 1967-1982]](/static/legislator-photos/408994-200px.jpeg)
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Railsback is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 1982 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 Railsback sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 4, 1977 to Dec 21, 1982. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Railsback was the primary sponsor of 4 bills that were enacted:
- H.R. 4966 (96th): A bill for the relief of the estate of Philip H. Ward.
- H.R. 1649 (94th): A bill for the relief of Howard D. Harden.
- H.R. 9199 (93rd): An Act to amend title 35, United States Code, “Patents”, and for other purposes.
- H.R. 16351 (93rd): A bill to amend the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act of 1973 to exempt from its provisions the period from the last Sunday in October ...
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
Railsback sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Government Operations and Politics (27%) Crime and Law Enforcement (21%) Taxation (12%) Labor and Employment (10%) Law (10%) Civil Rights and Liberties, Minority Issues (8%) Commerce (8%) Arts, Culture, Religion (6%)
Recent Bills
Some of Railsback’s most recently sponsored bills include...
- H.R. 6872 (97th): Federal Court Reform Act of 1982
- H.Con.Res. 331 (97th): A concurrent resolution urging the President to promote a declaration by the ...
- H.R. 5377 (97th): A bill to rescind the special tax benefits enacted during 1981 with ...
- H.R. 5104 (97th): Missing Children Act
- H.R. 4951 (97th): A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to provide ...
- H.R. 3580 (97th): Private Service of Civil Process by United States Marshals Act of 1981
- H.R. 3440 (97th): A bill to amend the Rail Passenger Service Act to provide that ...
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1967 to Dec 1982, Railsback missed 1,104 of 7,549 roll call votes, which is 14.6%. This is much worse than the median of 7.8% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Dec 1982. 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
- Biographical Directory of the United States Congress for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
