Profile of a Member of Congress

GOVT 2305

Text Reference: Gateways to Democracy, Chapter 12

Each student has been assigned a different member of the U.S. House.  To find the name of the member assigned to you, click on the student assignment file posted below.

We can learn a great deal about the operation of Congress and its role in the policymaking process by focusing on individual members of the body.  You can learn about the member of Congress assigned to you from a number of library resources as well as on the Internet. The best library resources are the most recent editions of Almanac of American Politics and Politics in America. They are excellent reference books with information about current members of Congress.

The Internet will provide you with a great deal of useful material. The information at www.house.gov will be particularly helpful because it will direct you to the website for the member of Congress that you are researching. That site will include biographical data and information about committee assignments. It will probably also tell you something about the member’s pet issues and viewpoints. Keep in mind that the member’s office provides the content of his or her website, so don’t expect anything critical or negative to appear. (If you rely solely on a member’s website for information, you may be subsequently embarrassed to discover that the member has been involved in a serious or at least interesting scandal that was not reported on the website.)  The House website will also have links to the homepages for each House committee, which will describe the policy issues each committee addresses.

The website for Project Vote Smart will be useful as well. It is located at www.vote-smart.org/. The search box at the top of the page allows users to search for a member of Congress by name.  The site includes information about campaign finances, issue positions, voting records, public statements, and interest group assessments. The interest group websites include issue scorecards in which the groups evaluate members of Congress based on their voting records. Keep in mind that the scorecards reveal how interest groups feel about the member of Congress, not vice versa.  Groups concerned with abortion are at the top, but you can use the drop down menu to find other types of groups.  Keep in mind that interest groups are not objective in their evaluations. If you aren’t sure about a particular group’s bias, you can go to its website for more information or research it online.

The Center for Responsive Politics has an excellent website providing information about members of Congress. It is located at Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.. You can use it to find detailed information about the campaign finances and election results for the representative you are researching. Click on “Congressional Elections” under the “Politicians and Elections” tab to find information about fundraising in the 2016 election campaigns. The website also has biographical information on members of Congress.

CNN, New York Times, and other news outlets will have the results of the 2016 election available online.  You can visit the New York Times site at the following address:

http://elections.nytimes.com/2016/results/house

You will also want to use an Internet search engine to look for recent stories involving the member of Congress you are researching.  Go to www.google.com and type in the name of the member of Congress assigned to you.  It will help you learn about recent events involving the member, including issues not covered on the member’s own website.

Other sites with useful information include the following:

www.govtrack.us

www.congress.org

http://thomas.loc.gov/

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd

http://www.crewsmostcorrupt.org/

Good Advice:

• • Do not wait until the day the assignment is due to begin work.  That is a prescription for a very poor grade.
• • Read the questions closely before answering them.  Students frequently lose points for failing to fully answer.  In particular, if the question asks you to write a paragraph, that means you need to write several sentences.  A paragraph is not a single sentence.  As you recall from your English class, paragraphs have topic sentences, several sentences in the body that develop the topic sentence, and a concluding sentence that ties the paragraph together.
• • Never, never, never copy and paste from a website.  The purpose of this assignment is for you to learn to do research.  That involves finding information, reporting it, and interpreting it.  Copying and pasting from a website is the opposite of research.  It is the opposite of critical thinking.  It is the opposite of what any self-respecting college student should do.  When I detect that a student has copied and pasted from a source (and it is always obvious), I immediately go into overdrive looking for opportunities to take off points.  Nothing irritates me more because it shows me that the student has no interest in learning how to think critically and write about his or her ideas.
• • Don’t provide information that has not been requested.  Don’t include information relevant to question 3 when answering question 2.  Don’t stray off topic.
• • Be sure to use correct grammar and punctuation.  One of the reasons you are in college is to learn to write correctly.  Here are some common writing errors and websites that briefly explain correct usage:
  • o Differentiating between possessives and plurals: http://www.meredith.edu/grammar/plural.htm
  • o Using apostrophes correctly: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe
  • o Avoiding run-on sentences: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/runons.htm
  • o Avoiding sentence fragments: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/fragments.htm
  • o Using semicolons correctly: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon
  • o Matching pronouns with their antecedents: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/pronouns.htm
  • o Using commas correctly: http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/commas.asp

Grading criteria:

1. • Following directions.  Please read the directions for each question carefully and follow them closely.  Be sure to address all parts of each question.
2. • Using correct English grammar.  Write in complete sentences, avoiding the sort of shortcut constructions that people use in text messages.  Because you have the opportunity to submit your project to an English tutor for assistance, I expect good writing and I will take off points for grammatical errors.  I especially watch for sentence fragments, run-on sentences, confusing plural with possessive, pronoun-antecedent agreement errors, and misuse of the semi-colon.
3. • Providing accurate and timely information.  You should have up-do-date information on the member of Congress you are researching.
4. • Thinking clearly.  Many of the questions require you to apply course concepts to real world situations.  I will sometimes also ask you to explain the reasoning process you followed in deriving your answer.
5. • Doing your own work.  Write in your own words.  If you copy and paste from a website, I will spot it easily and you will lose points.

A good way to complete the exercise is to copy and paste the questions into an RTF or Word file.  Then, supply answers after the questions, being careful to address all parts of the question.

1. Write a paragraph describing the personal, professional, and educational background of the representative before he or she entered Congress. Focus on the non-political aspects of the member’s life. In what ways is the representative you are studying typical of other members of the U.S. House? In what ways is he or she atypical? (The word atypical means not typical.) Base your judgment on the description of the typical member of Congress found in Gateways to Democracy, pp. 390-391 and the online profile of the membership of Congress found at the following Internet site: http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42964.pdf (10 pts.)
2. Write a paragraph describing the representative’s political background. Identify the elected and appointed positions in government the person you are studying has held before being elected to Congress. Identify the year the representative first won election to the U.S. House.  Is he or she a career politician? What is the basis of your judgment? A career politician is someone who wishes to earn his or her living in the political arena for an extended period of time.  (10 pts.)
3. Write a paragraph describing the district the member represents.  Where is it located in the state?  Does it include any towns? Is it part of a major city?  Is it inner-city urban, suburban, small town, or rural?  What issue or issues would you expect to be particularly important to the residents and interest groups found in the member’s district because of the nature of the district?  Identify at least one issue and explain why it is particularly important in this congressional district, whereas it might not be as important in other districts.  (10 pts.)
4. Write a paragraph discussing the representative’s committee assignments.  On which standing congressional committees does the member serve?  [Look up the term “standing committee.”]  Is the representative the chair or ranking minority member of each committee?  [Look up “ranking minority member.”] What sorts of policy issues does each of the standing committees address?  Is the representative a member of any subcommittees?  Does he/she chair any subcommittees or serve as the ranking member?  [Please note: Do NOT give me information about the member’s participation in congressional caucuses.]  (10 pts.)
5. How much money did the representative raise for the 2016 election?  How much did his or her main opponent raise?  (If the database indicates that a challenger raised no money, it means just that—the challenger raised no money.)  The Center for Responsive Politics presents data on this issue at the following Internet address: www.opensecrets.org.  What were the most important sources of the representative’s campaign funds?  Identify two or three important sources of funding.  Did the candidate self-fund to any significant degree?  (Click on the representative’s name at the website and it opens up to provide detailed data.)  The textbook discusses congressional elections on pp. 337-344. (10 pts.)
6. What percentage of the vote did the representative receive in the 2016 election? Based on the results of the 2016 election and the data on fundraising, does it appear that this representative is firmly entrenched in Congress?  (Entrenched means unlikely to be defeated for reelection anytime soon.)  Why or why not?  Is this typical for members of Congress in general?  (10 pts.)
7. The Project Vote Smart website includes links to several interest groups that rate members of Congress based on their voting records.  The group identifies a set of votes that it considers important and gives the member a score depending on whether the member supports the policy positions favored by the group.  [A high score means that the member voted the way the interest group likes most of the time.]  Select one of the groups (using the pull-down menu) and research its evaluation of the member of Congress you are studying.  What group did you select?  (Choose a specific group rather than a category of groups.)  With what sorts of issues is the group concerned?  Be specific.  How does the group feel about the member of Congress you are studying?  Would you expect the group to consider him or her an ally, an enemy, or something in between?  Discuss.  (10 pts.)
8. The Project Vote Smart website includes a link to speeches and public statements of each representative.  Review some of the recent speeches and public statements of the representative you are studying.  Identify an issue on which the representative has recently focused.  What is the issue?  Why does the representative think it is important?  What position has the representative taken? Do not just copy the statement of the representative.  (10 pts.)
9. To which political party does the member of Congress belong?  Based on his or her voting record, interest group evaluations, fundraising sources, and issue positions, would you say that he or she is typical or atypical of members of his or her party?  Explain the reasoning behind your answer. (10 pts.)
10. Do you admire the representative? Why or why not? Be specific. (10 pts.)