Rep. George Miller O’Brien
Former Representative for Illinois’s 4th District
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
O’Brien is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 1986 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 O’Brien sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 5, 1981 to Oct 18, 1986. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
O’Brien was the primary sponsor of 2 bills that were enacted:
- H.J.Res. 427 (99th): A joint resolution designating the week beginning on May 11, 1986, as “National Asthma and Allergy Awareness Week”.
- H.J.Res. 170 (99th): A joint resolution designating the week beginning on May 5, 1985 as “National Asthma and Allergy Awareness Week”.
Does 2 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
O’Brien sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Armed Forces and National Security (21%) Transportation and Public Works (16%) Environmental Protection (16%) Labor and Employment (16%) Economics and Public Finance (11%) Foreign Trade and International Finance (11%) International Affairs (11%)
Recently Introduced Bills
O’Brien recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.J.Res. 427 (99th): A joint resolution designating the week beginning on May 11, 1986, as …
- H.J.Res. 273 (99th): A joint resolution to propose an amendment to the Constitution of the …
- H.J.Res. 170 (99th): A joint resolution designating the week beginning on May 5, 1985 as …
- H.J.Res. 463 (98th): A joint resolution designating the week beginning on May 6, 1984, as …
- H.R. 1737 (98th): A bill to amend the Export Administration Act of 1979 to provide …
- H.R. 1046 (98th): A bill to amend the Public Works and Economic Development Act of …
- H.R. 7332 (97th): A bill to amend the Export Administration Act of 1979 to provide …
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1973 to Jul 1986, O’Brien missed 1,058 of 7,535 roll call votes, which is 14.0%. This is much worse than the median of 6.2% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Jul 1986. 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.
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
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills