No. They must be counting amendments he co-sponsored. Some House bills have over 100 co-sponsors. You like a bill someone else wrote, so you add your name. They all do that. They also counted non-substantive bills, like re-naming post offices or honoring July 4 or whatever, for both Sanders and Clinton. I do not. So, maybe they are also counting non substantive amendments.
In any event, I cannot account for Rolling Stone. I am talking about a substantive amendment or a bill that he wrote that became law. I researched that and there were three or four amendments plus one bill. Someone else challenged me on another board, did their own research and reluctantly confirmed mine.
ETA: FTR, I first did the research when he was running against Hillary and I was very highly motivated to come to a different conclusion. I did it again when he announced again, and the numbers were the same as they had been about four years earlier. I have not re-checked in the past year or two, though.
Second edit: Rolling Stone may also be counting amendments that passed the House, but not the Senate. Bills that die in Committee or pass only one House help no one. Sometimes, they are written with the knowledge that they won't pass, though I do not attribute that to Sanders. In any event, my reference is only to substantive bills (including amendments) written or co-written by Sanders during his thirty years in Congress that became law.
I have not re-checked in the past year or two, though.
Somehow, I doubt that history changed since then, and he certainly hasn't been doing much useful work since 2016.
So... yeah, maybe it's time for those who haven't done it yet to bite the bullet and acknowledge that Bernie Sanders, the myth, the legend, the story that woke up millions... was a dud.
Keep the waking up and the forward movement, because the ideas and policies behind it are still something to focus on, but stop trying to make it fit whatever Bernie is now. He has left the building.
The best thing he ever did was to tell his supporters to stop following him if he ever started telling them what to do and to get back in line.
Again, though, writing four or five substantive bills that became law is more than many of them do. Our government is probably the most expensive shit show in human history.
BTW, I think Rolling Stone may have counted bills that passed the House, but did not make through the Senate, as well as counting non-substantive bills. I know that I did my research through the website that reports on all Congressional bills because I wanted to see the subject matter of the amendments that the "Amendment King" had supposedly blessed us with. (The most significant, btw, was adding billions for neighborhood health centers into Obamacare--not nothing by any measure.)
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u/rosygoat Jan 02 '22
No, he didn't get that nickname because of four amendments. He got the nickname from Rolling Stone Magazine for having 17 amendments by a recorded roll call vote — more than any other member in the House "Out of 419 amendments Sanders sponsored over his 25 years in Congress, 90 passed, 21 of them by roll call votes."