Using a data-based system that analyzes research compiled by the Library of Congress, the nonpartisan Center for Effective Lawmaking has named Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) the most effective member of the United States Senate for the most recent Congressional term.
The score “captures the proven ability of a legislator to advance her agenda items through the legislative process and into law,” according to the organization’s website. The Center for Effective Lawmaking is a joint initiative between the University of Virginia’s Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and Vanderbilt University.
The average Legislative Effectiveness Score for Senators during the most recent Congress was .557. Hatch, meanwhile, led the Senate with a score of 3.38, making him more than six times as effective as the average Senator.
In the 114th Congress, Senator Hatch had 45 bills signed into law—the most of any of his colleagues and more than three times the Senate average. The legislation Senator Hatch passed into law included landmark reforms to: strengthen the rare disease community; support Utah’s rural health centers; improve infrastructure at Hill Air Force Base; empower teachers in the classroom; fix our nation’s roads and bridges; and advance intellectual property protections that will benefit hundreds of companies in Utah and across the nation. These are just a few of Senator Hatch’s legislative accomplishments among dozens more. You can find a full breakdown of Senator Hatch’s achievements in the last Congress here.
Background (via the lawmakers.org)
To calculate the Legislative Effectiveness Score for each member of Congress, analysts draw on fifteen indicators that collectively capture the proven ability of a legislator to advance her agenda items through the legislative process and into law.
Using a peer-reviewed mathematical formula to rank legislative effectiveness, researchers explain their basic methodology as follows:
“To generate the Legislative Effectiveness Score and related metrics, we rely on computer code to collect all relevant information from the Library of Congress website, www.congress.gov, for every public house bill (H.R.) and senate bill (S.) that was introduced into the 93rd – 114th Congresses (1973-2016). For every bill, we identify the sponsor and every step in the legislative process as identified in the “All Actions” section of the bill summary, as well as all amendments that were proposed for the bill. After collecting this information, we code the dates and incidence of each major stage of each bill’s progression through the legislative life cycle, serving as the foundation for our metrics.”
Read more at thelawmakers.org.
