WASHINGTON -- Four Illinois lawmakers earned a dubious distinction Thursday, making a list of House members who have skipped the most votes this year.
Out of 435 voting members of the House, only 21 failed to show up for 90 percent of the votes -- an arbitrary cutoff point -- including Republican Rep. Henry J. Hyde and Democratic Representatives William O. Lipinski, Luis V. Gutierrez and Bobby Rush, according to a Congressional Quarterly study published Thursday.
Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), who is running for president, showed up for only 10 percent of the roll calls, the worst attendance record in the House so far this year.
On average, members showed up for 95.8 percent of the 457 votes between the start of the 108th Congress in January and the summer recess. The study did not make a distinction between substantive and minor procedural measures.
Hyde scored the lowest for Republicans, making 73 percent of the votes. He cited a back surgery in March and his duties as House International Relations Committee chairman as reasons for missing the roll calls.
He often meets with foreign dignitaries and it would be, he said, "diplomatically unacceptable to interrupt for a vote, especially for a procedural vote." And, a few days after his surgery, Hyde said he "rushed to the House floor at midnight because House leadership needed my vote on the budget and stayed until 3 a.m. despite doctors' orders to stay home and rest."
Lipinski came in at 84 percent, Gutierrez at 86 percent and Rush at 88 percent. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) voted only 14 percent of the time, but, by custom, the House speaker rarely votes.
Roll calls tell only a part of the story of how a lawmaker functions. For example, Hyde pushed through the AIDS funding bill this year, and Lipinski is quarterbacking the city and state's drive to find more money in the rewrite of the transportation bill.
Lipinski's office did not return three calls asking for comment, but he has been known not to make a priority of showing up for procedural votes on minor matters.
Gutierrez, like Lipinski, does not sweat the procedural votes.
"On many occasions, when I have votes on Tuesday, I can make the decision to be home or come here and spend 20 minutes voting and then nothing. I have opted on numerous occasions to be a husband and father first," Gutierrez said.
Rush said in a statement, "I am confident that I will be in the high 90 percent range of voting by the end of this term."
In contrast, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) has an almost perfect record, missing, he said, just one vote in eight years.
"If I made 100 percent of the substantive votes and zero on the procedural, someone would say I am in Congress only 50 percent of the time," Jackson said. "If this was a prize fight and you did not come out of your corner, they would count you out."
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