Sen. John Stennis

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Stennis is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 1988 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 legislators sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 26, 1983 to Oct 22, 1988. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Stennis was the primary sponsor of 21 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

• S. 2749 (100th): Defense Authorization Amendments and Base Closure and Realignment Act
• S. 2621 (98th): A bill to designate the Delta States Research Center in Stoneville, Mississippi, as the “Jamie Whitten Delta States Research Center”.
• S.J.Res. 171 (98th): A joint resolution to provide for the designation of July 20, 1984, as “National P.O.W./M.I.A. Recognition Day”.
• S. 379 (98th): A bill to cancel certain indebtedness in connection with disaster relief activities.
• S. 428 (96th): Department of Defense Appropriation Authorization Act of 1980
• S. 429 (96th): Department of Defense Supplemental Appropriation Authorization Act of 1979
• S. 3486 (95th): Department of Defense Appropriation Authorization Act

View All »

Does 21 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

Stennis sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Private Legislation (33%) Economics and Public Finance (13%) Labor and Employment (13%) Immigration (13%) Government Operations and Politics (13%) Armed Forces and National Security (13%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Stennis recently introduced the following legislation:

• S.Res. 502 (100th): A resolution commending A. Blair Crownover for his service to the Senate.
• S.Res. 498 (100th): A resolution commending Cornel H. Petrassevich for his service to the United …
• S. 2749 (100th): Defense Authorization Amendments and Base Closure and Realignment Act
• S.Res. 369 (100th): An original resolution authorizing expenditures by the Committee on Appropriations.
• S. 1923 (100th): Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 1988
• S.Res. 322 (100th): An original resolution authorizing supplemental expenditures for the Committee on Appropriations.
• S.J.Res. 164 (100th): A joint resolution to designate June 25, 1987, as “National Catfish Day”.

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Nov 1947 to Oct 1988, Stennis missed 1,916 of 13,605 roll call votes, which is 14.1%. This is much worse than the median of 5.9% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Oct 1988. The chart below reports missed votes over time.

We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.

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
• 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