In the wake of the passage of health care reform by both houses of Congress in March 2010, Republican legislators rushed for the title of The One who introduced repeal legislation. In the last days of March, representatives Michele Bachmann of Minnesota (H.R. 4903), Steve King of Iowa (H.R. 4972), Jerry Moran of Kansas (H.R. [...]

Last month, Senator John McCain introduced S. 3081, a bill giving the government power to imprison its own citizens without criminal charges or a trial. The sweeping new powers would apply anywhere in the world, even within the borders of the United States itself. On the say-so of a presidential administration, you and anyone else [...]

The habit of voting along with the Republican Party has not made Brad Ellsworth a more successful member of Congress.

The beginning of a new month marks a good time to look back at the old. And so, with an update of our LGBT Equality Caucus Report, let’s consider what members of one of the largest caucuses on Capitol Hill were up to in January of 2010. In the month of January, 3 new bills [...]

In February of 2009, second-term congressman Bruce Braley of Iowa announced the formation of a new Congressional Member Organization in the House of Representatives: the Populist Caucus. A year later, the Populist Caucus has grown from 23 to 30 members and has built a record through mission statements, advisory letters and a “Blueprint for Recovery” [...]

Yesterday we released our new report, “Call and Response,” which covers the extent of reciprocation in the House of Representatives in 2009. To measure reciprocation, we tabulated patterns of sponsorship and cosponsorship for the 4,412 substantive “H.R.” bills introduced to the House that year. A bill’s sponsor is the legislator whose office authors a bill [...]

Today That’s My Congress publishes “Call and Response,” a new report regarding the give and take of legislating in the U.S. Congress in 2009. For the report’s analysis, we tabulated patterns of sponsorship and cosponsorship for the 4,412 substantive “H.R.” bills introduced to the House that year. For each of the 435 Representatives in the [...]

In March of 2009, we reviewed the congressional activity of the-members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is a coalition of liberals in the House of Representatives, one that has been characterized by the right wing as relentless in their pursuit of Red Army extremism. We found that, despite conservatives’ characterization of [...]

If you’ve been following Rep. Michele Bachmann in the news, you’re not alone; the Minnesota Republican has a way of grabbing media attention by doing things like calling for the revival of the McCarthy Hearings or telling her followers to slit their wrists. But Bachmann is hardly the only active member of Congress out there: [...]

Whenever a Democratic member of Congress is running for election, the most common line of attack by Republicans is to label that Representative or Senator as a “hardcore liberal,” or “one of the most liberal members of Congress.” In 2004, Senator John Kerry was unsurprisingly labeled as the “most liberal Senator” by the RNC, and [...]