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Rep. Gus Bilirakis

Representative for Florida’s 12th District

pronounced guss // bil-uh-RA-kuss

Bilirakis is the representative for Florida’s 12th congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since Jan 3, 2013. Bilirakis’s current term ends on Jan 3, 2025. He is 61 years old.

He was previously the representative for Florida’s 9th congressional district as a Republican from 2007 to 2012.

Photo of Rep. Gus Bilirakis [R-FL12]
Elections must be decided by counting votes

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 through their attempts to suppress state-certified election results at both the state and national level.

Bilirakis was among the Republican legislators who participated in this. Shortly after the election, Bilirakis 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.)
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 related criminal charges in state court. (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

Bilirakis proposed $40 million in earmarks for fiscal year 2024, including:

  • $4 million to Pasco County Housing Authority for “Magnolia Oaks Veterans Housing Community”
  • $4 million to Pasco County Board of County Commissioners for “Design of Consolidated Public Safety Facility in Pasco, FL”
  • $4.0 million to Citrus County, Florida for “Homosassa Phase V Septic to Sewer”

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

Bilirakis 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 legislators have sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Nov 26, 2024. See full analysis methodology.

Committee Membership

Gus Bilirakis sits on the following committees:

Enacted Legislation

Bilirakis was the primary sponsor of 20 bills that were enacted. The most recent include:

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Does 20 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

Bilirakis sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:

Health (45%) Armed Forces and National Security (18%) Science, Technology, Communications (14%) Commerce (6%) International Affairs (6%)

Recently Introduced Bills

Bilirakis recently introduced the following legislation:

View All » | View Cosponsors »

Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.

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Voting Record

Key Votes

Bilirakis voted Nay

Bilirakis voted Nay

Bilirakis voted Yea

Passed 272/114 on Dec 3, 2020.

Bilirakis voted Aye

Bilirakis voted No

Bilirakis voted No

Passed 304/117 on Jun 23, 2011.
The Leahy–Smith America Invents Act (AIA) is a United States federal statute that was passed by Congress and was signed into law by President Barack …

Bilirakis voted Nay

Missed Votes

From Jan 2007 to Nov 2024, Bilirakis missed 281 of 12,030 roll call votes, which is 2.3%. This is on par with the median of 2.2% 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.

Show the numbers...

Primary Sources

The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including: