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Sen. Thomas “Tom” Daschle

Former Senator for South Dakota

Daschle was a senator from South Dakota and was a Democrat. He served from 1987 to 2004.

He was previously the representative for South Dakota’s at-large district as a Democrat from 1983 to 1986; and the representative for South Dakota’s 1st congressional district as a Democrat from 1979 to 1982.

Photo of Sen. Thomas “Tom” Daschle [D-SD, 1987-2004]

Analysis

Ideology–Leadership Chart

Daschle is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 2004 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 Daschle sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 6, 1999 to Dec 8, 2004. See full analysis methodology.

Enacted Legislation

Daschle was the primary sponsor of 27 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

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Does 27 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

Daschle sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:

Government Operations and Politics (20%) Economics and Public Finance (14%) Law (13%) Commerce (12%) Health (11%) Finance and Financial Sector (10%) Labor and Employment (10%) Social Welfare (9%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Daschle recently introduced the following legislation:

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Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

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Voting Record

Missed Votes

From Jan 1987 to Dec 2004, Daschle missed 84 of 6,222 roll call votes, which is 1.4%. This is better than the median of 2.0% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Dec 2004. 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: