Rep. Steve Scalise
House Majority Leader and Representative for Louisiana’s 1st District
pronounced steev // skuh-LEESS
Scalise is the representative for Louisiana’s 1st congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since May 7, 2008. Scalise is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 58 years old.
He is also House Majority Leader, a party leadership role. Party leaders focus more on setting their party’s legislative priorties than on introducing legislation.
Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. President Trump, his advisors and associates, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided by themselves rather than by voters. Their attempts to suppress state-certified vote counts without adjudication in the courts and by using lies and fraudulent documents was a months-long, multifarious attempted coup.
Scalise was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, Scalise joined a case before the Supreme Court calling for all the votes for president in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that were narrowly won by Democrats — to be discarded, in order to change the outcome of the election. In the case, Republicans proffered lies and a novel legal theory which the Supreme Court rejected. (Following the rejection of several related cases before the Supreme Court, another legislator who joined the case called for violence.) On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Scalise voted to omit Arizona and/or Pennsylvania from the counting of presidential electors, which could have altered the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor.
In 2023, Trump associates and top advisors pleaded guilty to submitting a fraudulent slate of electors to Congress from Georgia, making false statements about purported widespread fraud in the election, and tampering with voting machines after the election, admitted in civil court to posing as fake electors in Wisconsin, and were convicted of contempt of Congress for withholding documents during its investigation and assaulting police officers at the Capitol. Trump associates and top advisors are also facing charges for submitting fraudulent slates of electors to Congress (in Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Wisconsin) and Trump himself faces criminal charges for coordinating the fraudulent slates of electors and other aspects of this coup. He was also convicted in 2024 of falsifying business records to cover up acts that he believed might have hurt him in the 2016 election. The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups one member of which was convicted of sedition, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors.
Earmarks
Scalise proposed $36 million in earmarks for fiscal year 2024, including:
- $28 million to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District for “Morganza to the Gulf MR&T Project”
- $8 million to St. Bernard Port, Harbor and Terminal District for “North-South Connecting Road Project”
- $500,000 to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District for “Houma Navigation Canal”
View all requests and justifications on Scalise’s website »
View analysis and download spreadsheet from Demand Progress Education Fund »
These are earmark requests which may or may not survive the legislative process to becoming law. Most representatives from both parties requested earmarks for fiscal year 2024. Across representatives who requested earmarks, the median total amount requested for this fiscal year was $39 million.
Earmarks are federal expenditures, tax benefits, or tariff benefits requested by a legislator for a specific entity. Rather than being distributed through a formula or competitive process administered by the executive branch, earmarks may direct spending where it is most needed for the legislator's district. All earmark requests in the House of Representatives are published online for the public to review. We don’t have earmark requests for senators. The fiscal year begins on October 1 of the prior calendar year. Source: Appropriations.house.gov. Background: Earmark Disclosure Rules in the House
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Scalise is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the House of Representatives 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 Scalise has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Jul 9, 2024. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Scalise was the primary sponsor of 1 bill that was enacted:
Does 1 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
Scalise sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
Science, Technology, Communications (33%) Energy (33%) Taxation (20%) Commerce (13%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Scalise recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.R. 8364: Firearms Interstate Commerce Reform Act
- H.Con.Res. 93: Providing for a joint session of Congress to receive a message from the …
- H.R. 7423: To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 103 …
- H.R. 6843: To expand the boundaries of the Atchafalaya National Heritage Area to include Lafourche …
- H.Res. 810: To inform the Senate of the election of the Speaker.
- H.Res. 811: Authorizing the Clerk to inform the President of the election of the Speaker.
- H.R. 1: Lower Energy Costs Act
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
As House Majority Leader, Scalise may be focused on his responsibilities other than introducing legislation, such as setting the chamber’s agenda, uniting his party, and brokering deals.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From May 2008 to Jul 2024, Scalise missed 609 of 10,435 roll call votes, which is 5.8%. This is much worse than the median of 2.1% among the lifetime records of representatives currently serving. 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
- The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
- GPO Member Guide for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills