Evan Bayh Rarely Attended Committee Hearings as U.S. Senator

Evan Bayh’s senatorial campaign said that the reason the former Indiana senator skipped 92 percent of his Aging Committee hearings was because of the demands of other more important committees he was on, but records show that Bayh’s propensity to skip hearings went beyond just the Aging Committee.

The Bayh campaign defended his attendance record in the Senate after it was reported last week that he skipped 92 percent of hearings that the Aging Committee held during the 12 years Bayh was on it. The report noted that Bayh skipped every single hearing during his final five years.

The campaign discounted the criticism, telling Roll Call that his absence was only because of his position on other “A-level” committees.

“Bayh’s campaign points out that for 21 of about 85 Aging Committee hearings the senator missed during the last five years of his tenure, he was attending Banking, Armed Services, or Intelligence hearings,” Roll Call wrote.

An analysis of hearing records, however, found that Bayh was rarely present at any Senate Armed Services Committee hearings either.

Publicly available records from the Armed Services Committee, which records attendance for each hearing, show that Bayh was absent for more than 76 percent of hearings during his eight years on the committee.

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