Is Bernie Sanders an ineffective lawmaker? It depends on the year

As the Democratic primary has narrowed down to three major candidates, the critique of Sen. Bernie Sanders has focused on how he might govern. His critics cast him as a lawmaker who acts alone and doesn’t get much done.

That was Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s line of attack in her March 1 speech in Houston. Warren said the coronavirus crisis underscores how critical it is to have the right kind of leader in the White House. She went after Mike Bloomberg and Joe Biden, but Sanders, too.

"This crisis demands more than a senator who has good ideas, but whose 30-year track record shows he consistently calls for things he fails to get done, and consistently opposes things he nevertheless fails to stop." 

That last attack on Sanders echoes one that Sen. Amy Klobuchar made regularly before she dropped out.

"According to Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, last Congress, I was the most effective Democrat in the U.S. Senate on 15 metrics," she said in the South Carolina debate. "Bernie and Elizabeth were in the bottom half."

The Sanders campaign rebuts, noting he worked with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to increase funding for the Veterans Administration to hire more doctors, nurses and medical staff. And his campaign highlights his success outside the Senate in successfully mobilizing support for a $15 minimum wage in many cities.

There is no perfect way to measure effective leadership. But for members of Congress, there are a couple of approaches that try to put numbers to the question of how well senators can move their agenda forward. Sanders’ rankings depend on the yardstick used and period examined.

He can point to successes, but more recently, he falls in the middle and even at the bottom of the pack.

The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a joint project of Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia, produced the index that Klobuchar cited. For the most recent Congress (2017-2018) she cited it accurately. On the center’s index, Klobuchar "exceeded expectations," Warren "met expectations," and Sanders was "below expectations."

What is this based on?

The center has a complex formula that looks at how well a senator moved bills through the lawmaking process, but also factors in seniority and other variables that shape how easy or hard it is to succeed as a lawmaker.

At the end of the process, each senator gets a score, and a rating. The rating compares that score to the score the center’s complex model predicted for each senator. Do better that predicted, you Exceed Expectations. Come close, you Meet Expectations. Do a fair bit worse, you fall Below Expectations.

For the latest Congress, Sanders fell short. But looking back further, in some years, he looked like a typical senator, as did Klobuchar and Warren.

In the span of six congresses, Sanders met expectations two times, and was below four times. Warren (just three congresses) met expectations twice and fell below once. Klobuchar met expectations three times, and exceeded them three times.

The index has its limits, something Craig Volden at the University of Virginia and the center’s co-director freely acknowledges. Volden said the center focuses on moving legislation, but senators do other meaningful work, such as asking sharp questions in hearings and working behind the scenes.

"We are only able to assign credit for what is observable," Volden said. "Individuals who work behind the scenes are often able to point to their own specific contributions to legislation."

On this legislative effectiveness index, going back further to when Sanders served in the House, he had some standout years. 

On the center’s scorecard, between 1991 and 2006, Sanders exceeded expectations twice and met expectations all other years.

From 1995 to 2007, Sanders passed 17 House amendments by a recorded roll call vote — more than any other member in the House.

Political scientist Steven Smith at Washington University in St. Louis said this entire ranking system reveals little.

"These measures are very poor measures of legislative skill," Smith said. "The Senate has a long history of incubating important ideas for years, even decades, before legislation is enacted. Landmark measures on civil rights, health, and many issues have this history. Plainly, Sanders sees himself in this kind of role. It doesn’t pay off for everyone, but it is an important role in the policy-making history of Congress."

There’s another way to put numbers to Sanders’ congressional track record — the legislative database from Govtrack.

Govtrack doesn’t boil information down to a single score. Instead, it takes a number of legislative steps, such as how many bills a senator cosponsors, and how many times he or she is able to get others to cosponsor their bills. It looks at how often their bills drew cosponsors from the other party, and of course, how many of their bills became law.

Again, how good Sanders looks depends on the year. 

We took four areas where Sanders did poorly in 2018 (to match the year of the legislative effectiveness study in case anyone wants to compare the two data sets) and looked at the oldest rankings on the Govtrack website, 2013. (Some definitions: The leadership score shows the ability to get cosponsors on bills. The powerful cosponsors rank shows when committee chairs or ranking members sign on as cosponsors.)

It’s hard to get a wider swing than to go from the 90s to the single digits. In 2018, Sanders ranked in the bottom 10 for these four measures. In 2013, he ranked in the top 10 for three of them, and no worse than middling for the fourth.

While Sanders’ critics would point to the more recent numbers to cast him in a dark light, it would be at least as accurate to say that a senator’s effectiveness is not a fixed quantity. Some years, Sanders rose to the top. Others, he sank to the bottom.

But Govtrack’s founder Josh Tauberer said these measures are particularly ill suited to gauging Sanders’ impact as a lawmaker.

"When you’re at the far end of your party, you try to pull the party toward you by not supporting things and by introducing amendments that lack support," Tauberer said. "His goal was to shift people's views over decades, and that’s probably how he’s been most effective. ‘Medicare for All’ is more on the table than in the past because of Sanders’ tactics."