Rep. William “Bill” Thomas

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Thomas is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives 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 Thomas sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2001 to Dec 8, 2006. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Thomas was the primary sponsor of 29 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• H.R. 1492 (109th): To provide for the preservation of the historic confinement sites where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II, and for other purposes.
• H.R. 5865 (109th): Returned Americans Protection Act of 2006
• H.R. 4297 (109th): Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005
• H.R. 1270 (109th): To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to extend the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund financing rate.
• H.R. 241 (109th): Tsunami Relief bill
• H.R. 4520 (108th): American Jobs Creation Act of 2004
• H.R. 1308 (108th): Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004

View All »

Does 29 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

Thomas sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Government Operations and Politics (17%) Taxation (14%) Economics and Public Finance (13%) Law (12%) Labor and Employment (11%) Commerce (11%) Social Welfare (11%) Finance and Financial Sector (10%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Thomas recently introduced the following legislation:

• H.R. 6420 (109th): Tax Exempt Hospitals Responsibility Act of 2006
• H.R. 6406 (109th): To modify temporarily certain rates of duty and make other technical amendments …
• H.R. 6408 (109th): Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006
• H.R. 6346 (109th): To extend certain trade preference programs, to authorize the extension of nondiscriminatory …
• H.Con.Res. 495 (109th): Authorizing the printing as a House document of “United States House of …
• H.R. 6320 (109th): To create an additional judgeship for the eastern district of California, and …
• H.R. 6264 (109th): Tax Technical Corrections Act of 2006

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jan 1979 to Dec 2006, Thomas missed 958 of 14,953 roll call votes, which is 6.4%. This is much worse than the median of 2.9% among the lifetime records of representatives 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 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
• 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
• Congressional Pictorial Directory for the photo
• GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills