Who are the absolute deadweight Senators in the chamber as of now?

[Meeker]

I think this is a flawed question. All these guys do stuff that never makes it on to national news - or even local news - but it still makes an impact. For instance, Jeff Bingaman (mentioned upthread) is the Chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He's been a major player in legislation in that field for more than two decades, but it's not a widely reported on subject area in the media so I doubt most people have heard of anything he's done.

I don't think "ability to think of something they've done off the top of my head" is really a fair metric of quality of Senator. I think that you could somehow make a list of "10 worst Senators" or something, but frankly I don't really think anyone on this forum has enough information to actually make that judgement call.

[Meeker]

What does Mikulski do? I honestly don't know much about her, but I saw this:

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...and I know chairing committees isn't the sole factor of weighing a Senator's "purpose;" I'm simply just curious.

Also, to be fair to Mikulski, her only two committees are Appropriations (nearly impossible for any Senator to get under the seniority system) and the H.E.L.P. committee, which Kennedy was Chairman of for so many years (though Mikulski is in line for the Chair now if/when Harkin retires).