Tenure
On January 5, 2011, Fitzpatrick failed to attend the swearing-in ceremony for members and attempted to take the oath-of-office remotely at a reception. However, House rules require that the oath be taken within proximity of the Speaker. The oath was administered the following day, but two votes that he cast prior to taking the oath were nullified according to the Constitution. Some activists contended the reception was a fundraiser and called for an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. A spokesperson for Fitzpatrick denied the event was a fundraiser and asserted that donations made went to cover the cost of campaign-provided buses to Washington.
Fitzpatrick supported reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. On January 5, 2016, the House Committee on Financial Services reauthorized the Task Force to Investigate Terrorism Financing with Fitzpatrick as Chairman and Stephen Lynch (D-MA) as Ranking Member. Over the course of a two-year period, the Task Force investigated the financial mechanisms used to fund terrorist activities, specifically the vulnerabilities of the global financial system, trade-based money laundering, assistance for developing world, and the sale and trafficking of illicit goods.
Since December 2014, Fitzpatrick has been a leading voice in Congress on medical device safety. He has pressed the FDA after dangerous medical devices remained in use after causing serious injury and death. On June 8, 2016, Fitzpatrick and Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY) introduced two bills to reform the medical device review and approval process. The first bill, Ariel Grace's Law, would allow victims of dangerous medical devices to seek legal recourse. The second bill, the Medical Device Guardians Act, would require physicians to identify and report unsafe medical devices and would protect them from having their reports used against them in a civil court.
Fitzpatrick was ranked as the 10th most bipartisan member of the U.S. House of Representatives during the 114th United States Congress (and the most bipartisan member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania) in the Bipartisan Index created by The Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy that ranks members of the United States Congress by their degree of bipartisanship (by measuring the frequency each member's bills attract co-sponsors from the opposite party and each member's co-sponsorship of bills by members of the opposite party).
