Fact Check

Maxine Waters Has Shown Up to Only a Tenth of Congressional Meetings for 35 Years?

A self-debunking Reddit claim that Maxine Waters missed 90 percent of "Congressional meetings" was repeated by a blog as a credible statistic.

Published June 9, 2017

 (Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com)
Image Via Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com
Claim:
Maxine Waters attended only ten percent of Congressional meetings in more than three decades holding office.

On 7 June 2017, TeddyStick.com published an article suggesting Rep. Maxine Waters was present for only ten percent of Congressional activity in a 35-year period:

Maxine Waters (D-CA) is one of the most unpleasant people to ever hold be a public servant. She is always, angry, something that she wears as a badge of honor. She has pushed the lie about President Trump having Russian connections and has even had to admit that no facts exists to condemn the White House for.

Now the demented Democrat is looking even more foolish since an observant Reddit user known as 1tch has taken the time to gather the facts together showing that “Over Her 35 Years In Congress Maxine Waters Has Missed 90% Of Congressional Meetings.”

The article linked to its "source," which was nothing more than a thread on an online web forum. However, in that very thread, people disputed the claim and asked for a source that proved Maxine Waters had been absent for 90 percent of Congressional activities. One person linked to Waters' GovTrack.com 2016 report card, instructing others to check via the "Missed Votes" section:

Democrat Maxine Waters Has Shown Up To Only 10% Of Congressional Meetings For 35 YEARS

According to GovTrack.com's 2016 Report Card for Rep. Maxine Waters, she missed 7.6 percent of votes, or 100 out of of 1,311 total votes during the 114th Congress. The claim Waters skipped out on 90 percent of "Congressional meetings" appears to have been entirely fabricated.

Sources

Di Gangi, Sam.   "Democrat Maxine Waters Has Shown Up To Only 10% Of Congressional Meetings For 35 Years."     Teddy Stick.   7 June 2017.

GovTrack.com.   "Rep. Maxine Waters’s 2016 Report Card."     Accessed 9 June 2017.

Kim LaCapria is a former writer for Snopes.