Posted on 10/14/2004 10:44:51 AM PDT by dennisw
Saturday, July 31, 2004
John Kerry in the Senate: "The Man Who Wasn't There"
Yesterday on ABC's World News Tonight, John Kerry attempted to refute the notion that he has a thin record in the United States Senate, stating, "I've introduced many pieces of legislation that are the law of the land today…" The reality is that during his 19 years in the United States Senate, only five bills and four resolutions John Kerry has been a lead sponsor on have become laws. These bills and resolutions are listed below, following a quote from Dick Morris on Kerry's meager Senate record during the Clinton years.
Dick Morris: Kerry Is A "Back-Bencher." "Where did his 20 years in the Senate go? Oddly, his absence of biography confirms the impression I formed of him during my White House years: He's a back-bencher. I never can recall a single time that his name came up in any discussion of White House strategy on anything. He was the man who wasn't there." (Dick Morris, "The Bagel Candidacy," The New York Post, 7/30/04)
Kerry's Five Bills That Became Law:
Kerry's Four Resolutions That Became Law:
_______________
My commentary:
John Kerry claimed during last night's debate:
KERRY: Once again, the president is misleading America. I've actually passed 56 individual bills that I've personally written and, in addition to that, and not always under my name, there is amendments on certain bills.
After last night's debate the John Kerry campaign came out with this. It's an instant response to last night's debate:
57 bills and resolutions John Kerry has sponsored over the years have passed the U.S. Senate. Countless others have been improved because of his work, including the Clean Air Act, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the COPS program.
http://blog.johnkerry.com/rapidresponse/archives/003473.html#more
Notice the sly wording, how Kerry's 57 bills and resolutions passed the US Senate. Only got past the US Senate and no further is my conclusion. However this 57 most likely includes the 9 the Republicans mentioned, that made it past the House and got signed by the President into law. So the Kerry breakdown is probably:
9 John Kerry bills and resolutions got signed into law
48 John Kerry bills and resolutions got passed by the US Senate and got no further. IOW they were duds.
**** The numbers 57 and 56 are not my errors. Are as quoted
Thanks for posting this. Good research......
Thanks much. It took me an hour to clarify this since the Kerry campaign issued a slippery rejoinder last night. Since their candidate was slippery during the debate. Trying to conflate Kerry's bills that got passed by US Senate into Kerry's bills that were signed into legislation.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish that he would go away.
I couldn't resist. When I read that fifth bill that became law I wondered: who the hell is "Kil Joon Yu Callahan". Besides being an interesting blend of Asian and Irish names, what kind of relief did he need?
So I googled it and found this:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d100:62:./temp/~bdjv3t:@@@D&summ2=m&
"Authorizes the granting of a visa and admission to the United States for permanent residence to a named individual."
So here we are. What a wonderful use of our governments resources. Couldn't he just make a phone call?
My internet research says he had 56 bills/resolutions that passed the US Senate. 47 bills/resolutions got no further! They were duds! Of these 56 only 9 passed the House and got signed into law. Of these 9, most are totally useless legislation
I wish Bush would of been coached better on this. He did OK, but armed with this he could of nailed Kerry
Gotta love Flipper and a bill to save flipper..
We can now call him the Dolphin Safe candidate and pack him in 100% water..
bump!
And 48 bills and resolutions that got chopped in bi-congressional committee that could not pass the final cut.
I was listening to Laura Ingraham this morning (she will be on Hannity & Colmes tonight) and she was all excited about Bush after last night. She was talking about the fact that Bush had finally exposed how little Kerry had accomplished. How can he complain about the lack of health care, border control, etc. when he didn't even try to do anything about it in Senate.
Well, then Dick Morris came on and said that Kerry will win the election because, since the LAST debate people will hear was about domestic issues, unfortunately , he said, the country just doesn't feel scared enough anymore about the terrorist problem to vote for Bush and Kerry has promised the lazies everything in the world. So, bottom line is the last thing people will remember will be the promises of Kerry instead of the message about "I will keep you safer" from Bush. What do ya'll think? Morris right?
Lurch and Bush are most unimpressive in this regard.
Excellent summation!
Kerry has spent 20 years in the Senate writing plans. After all what are bills but plans for how laws should be. The vast majority of his plans weren't worth being voted into law. His plans weren't worth the paper they were written on.
He was also rarely able to build a consensus among his fellow Senators to approve his plans and even less able to persuade those in the House to agree with him.
John Kerry has a 20 year history of failure of leadership.
From his attendance records, it sounds like he has been a part-timer. ;~))
A Joint Resolution Designating November 13, 1992, As "Vietnam Veterans Memorial 10th Anniversary Day." (S.J. Res. 318, Latest Major Action: 10/24/1992 Became Public Law No: 102-518)
A Joint Resolution Designating September 18, 1992, As "National POW/MIA Recognition Day," And Authorizing Display Of The National League Of Families POW/MIA Flag. (S.J. Res. 337, Latest Major Action: 9/30/1992 Became Public Law No: 102-373)
How DARE he?!
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
The Senate Record of John F. Kerry
The following, drawn from the “THOMAS” service provided by the library of Congress, is the entire record of bills introduced into the Senate by Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts which then were either signed by the President or otherwise became law. By way of summary, in nineteen years in the Senate, Senator Kerry has introduced exactly eleven bills which have gone on to become actual laws (I have omitted entirely symbolic resolutions from the count, as I have done for other individuals whose records I have considered).
Of those eleven bills, seven involve either offering specific recognition to an individual (the only bill Senator Kerry has had signed into law in the past five years is one awarding a Gold Medal to Jackie Robinson). Two of the eleven both deal with designating a week as “World Population Awareness Week.” Another calls for a day commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, presumably to be designated as “Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Memorial Day.” The sixth designates one day as National POW/MIA Awareness day while the seventh renamed a minor Federal Building in Massachusetts.
The rest, what might be called the Senator’s substantive record, consists of a bill (passed in 1999) which appropriated $12 million for Women’s Small Business Centres, a bill to designate some portion of a few rivers as a, “component of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System,” a bill (passed in 1993) to try to stop commercial fishermen from harming marine mammals, an appropriations bill (in 1991) for the National Sea Grants College Act, and a bill (passed in 1987) to grant permanent residence in the United States to a Kil Joon Yu Callahan.
By way of comparison former Vice President Dan Quayle, who was widely considered to have had an undistinguished record in the Senate, saw sixteen bills that he had introduced passed into law during his eight years in the Senate. Of those sixteen bills, eight were largely pointless resolutions (which, at least, Senator Quayle seems to have bothered to reintroduce year after year).
To use another measure, over his career in the Senate, John Kerry has had roughly .58 bills a year passed into law, whereas Senator Quayle had exactly two. Now, I don’t mean to suggest that Senator Kerry is less than a third the legislator that Senator Quayle was, but that’s got to at least raise a few eyebrows.
If you compare Kerry to other Senators, his record begins to look even poorer. In the 99th through the 107th Congress, Senator Strom Thurmond (who would have been eighty-two years old on the day John Kerry took his seat in the Senate) saw some thirty-seven bills and resolutions either signed by the President or passed into law. In other words Senator Thurmond beat Senator Kerry by a margin of more than three to one if you measure success in the Senate by the number of bills which are passed by both houses of Congress.
Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, in the period that he’s served alongside Senator Kerry, has sponsored some seventy-four items which have passed into law (or been signed by the President), versus Senator Kerry’s eleven.
In the same period (1985 to present), Senator Kerry’s senior colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, has seen forty bills introduced by him move as far along as Senator Kerry’s eleven.
posted by Adam at 10:28 PM
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:pwu3hQSPoDAJ:www.adamyoshida.com/2004/08/senate-record-of-john-f-kerry.html+Kil+Joon+Yu+Callahan&hl=en
That's why we need to get the word out on this. Pass it on.
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