Ever feel baffled by congressional voting record scorecards form issue organizations? I know I do. Not only are there so many of them, thus making it difficult to develop a composite of any Congressional voting record, but very few of these scorecards offer clear explanations of their methodology. Further, many seem to never separate the wheat from the chaff, as though a resolution honoring the Boy Scouts is somehow of equal importance to the Bankruptcy Bill.
To remedy this situation, I spent all day developing and compiling a simplified scorecard for all members of the House of Representatives. The basic goal is to measure party loyalty on important votes. Here are the criteria I used:
- Only the first session of the 109th Congress (the current session) was used.
- The vote must be on the final passage of an actual piece of legislation. Thus, these scores do not include amendments, rules packages for the chamber, sense of the chamber resolutions, or useless things like "honoring the contribution of Catholic schools."
- The majority of Democrats who voted must vote different from the majority of Republicans who voted. Thus, only votes that separated the two parties are included.
The point of these criteria is to determine when Democrats and Republicans have crossed party lines on important votes. It is, in essence, a means to measure of party loyalty of each individual member, and of each caucus as a whole. The results were revealing, and deserve further study. I present a summary of what I found here, and over the coming days I hope to present a more detailed picture of current Congressional voting patterns.
So far in the 109th Congress,
of the 132 roll call votes in the House of Representatives, there have been eight votes that meet these criteria I described above. These eight piece of legislation, all of which passed the House, were the
Real ID Act, the
Class Action Fairness Act, the
Job Training Improvement Act, the
Congressional Budget for Fiscal Year 2006, the
Schiavo legislation, the
Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act, the
Bankruptcy Abuse and Consumer Protection Act, and the
Energy Policy Act of 2005.
In all eight cases, the majority of Republicans who voted were in favor of the legislation, and the majority of Democrats who voted were opposed to the legislation. So, if anyone ever asks you how Democrats and Republicans are different, these are the eight ways that they were different from one another during the first one-hundred and nine days of the 109th Congress in the House of Representatives. If you ask me, these amount to major, major differences, enough to make Democrats an extremely attractive choice over Republicans even without any other issues being mentioned.
Caucus Loyalty: Republicans Tow the Party Line Far More Often
Overall, there were 55 total Republican votes against these eight pieces of legislation, out of a possible total of 1856 dissenting votes (8 votes multiplied by 232 House Republicans). Thus, the total dissent among the House Republican caucus was 3.0%. By contrast, there were 299 Democratic votes in favor of these eight pieces of legislation, out of a possible total of 1624 (8 votes multiplied by 202 Democrats and one independent). Thus, the total dissent among the House Democratic caucus was 18.4%. I don't think there can be any doubt that current Democratic loyalty is inadequate.
Individual Loyalty
If a member is not listed by name, they were either one of the 94 who opposed every aspect of the Republican agenda, or one of the 189(!) who supported every aspect of it. As you will see, Republicans are not exactly the free thinkers they claim to be:
- Opposed Eight Bills: 94 (93 Democrats and one Independent). These are the true blues. I will provide a list of these ninety-four tomorrow.
- Opposed Seven Bills: 35 all Democrats. They are Abercrombie, Andrews, Berkley, Clay, Cleaver, Crowley, Cummings, DeFazio, Doyle, Emmanuel, Engel, Farr, Fattah, Filner, G. Green, Hoyer, J. Jackson Jr., Kildee, Langevin, Larson (CA), Lynch, Menendez, Oberstar, Pastor, Price (NC), Rahall, Rush, Rothman, L. Sanchez, Schwartz, Serrano, Spratt, Smith (WA), Stupack, Thompson and Visclosky. One dissenting vote is not a big deal, and no repercussions are necessary. For many of the African-American members listed here, the lone dissent was on the Schiavo legislation.
- Opposed Six Bills: 19, all Democrats. They are Brady, Butterfield, Ethridge, Harman, Israel, Jackson-Lee, Kind, McCarthy, McNulty, Meek (FL), Moore (KS), Moran (VA), Ortiz, Ryan (OH), Snyder, Strickland, Tauscher, Towns and Wu. Two dissenting votes out of eight are a little worrisome. Had Kerry become President, these would have been the people needed to sustain any veto he might have made.
- Opposed Five Bills: 24, all Democrats. They are Baca, Baird, Barrow, Boswell, Boyd, Cardoza, Case, Cooper, Davis (FL), Gonzales, Gordon, Al Green, Higgins, Hooley, Jefferson, Kanjorski, Larsen (WA), Meeks, Michaud, Mollohan, Murtha, Rahall, Reyes, Ruppersberger and Salazar. This is not good. While all of these Democrats voted better than every single Republican, and thus deserve our support, this level of dissent is problematic, and should carry with it repercussions in terms of committee seats and appropriations.
- Opposed Four Bills: 12, eleven Democrats, one Republican. While some may argue that even the best Republican is worse than the worst Democrat, this is the point where we might start seeing a few exceptions to that rule. The one Republican who actually opposed the Republican agenda half of the time was Ron Paul of Texas, the former Libertarian Presidential candidate. The eleven Democrats who supported the Republican agenda literally half of the time were: Costa, Davis (AL), Herseth, Hinjosa, Lipinski, Marshall, McIntyre, Pomeroy, Tanner, Taylor (MS), Thompson and Wynn. The voting habits of these eleven Democrats are very worrying. If any of these are also in the fainthearted faction might even deserve a primary challenger in addition to other repercussions. Is that too harsh?
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- Opposed Three Bills: 13, eleven Democrats, and two Republicans. The two Republicans are Shays and Smith (NJ). I'm surprised the Club for Growth hasn't launched a primary challenge against those tow (maybe they have). The eleven Democrats are Bean, Berry, Bishop (GA), Boucher, Chandler, Costello, Ford, Gordon, Holden, Ross and Skelton. WTF is going on here? These are Democrats who for the past few months actually are voting worse than at least one Republican. What should be done about this?
- Opposed Two Bills: 15, eight Democrats and seven Republicans. We are to believe that the political middle is opposing only one-quarter of Bush's agenda? I do not accept that. The seven Republicans are Castle, Flake, Gerlach, Hostettler, Jones (NC), Leach and Wamp. I suppose Vernon Jones is the great voice of moderation within the Republican Party now. The eight Democrats are Boren, Cuellar, Davis (TN), Edwards, Matheson, Melancon, Peterson (MN) and Scott (GA). These are unacceptable voting patterns. With the exception of Peterson, who opposed the budget and didn't vote on Schiavo, they all opposed the budget (every Democrat opposed the budget) and the job training bill. That means they support all of the following: the Real ID Act, the Class Action Bill, the repeal of the estate tax, the bankruptcy bill, the Schiavo legislation (except maybe Peterson), and the energy bill. Rather than what to do about them, I would actually rather hear reasons to support these eight members at all, if you can think of any. I actually believe that there are some Republicans who are better than these eight Democrats.
- Opposed One Bill: 34, one Democrat and 33 Republicans. The Democrat who supported all of these pieces of legislation with the exception of the budget is Bud Cramer from Alabama. He actually is voting worse than Vernon Jones. Perhaps we should start laying bets on how long it will be before he switches parties. The thirty-three Republicans are Bartlett (MD), Boehlert, Bradley (NH), Brown-Waite, Dent, the two Diaz-Balarts, Doolittle, Duncan, Ehlers, Emerson, Fitzpatrick (PA), Gilchrest, Goode, Green (WI), Gutknecht, Hensarling, Inglis (SC), Johnson (CT), Johnson (IL), Kirk, LoBiondo, Pombo, Reichert, Ros-Lehtinen, Royce, Saxton, Schwarz (MI), Sensenbrenner, Simmons, Tancredo, Wilson (NM) and Young (AK). Any claims about any of these Republicans being moderates are just lies.
- Opposed Zero Bills: 189, all Republicans. That's right: over eighty percent of the Republicans in Congress never dissented, not once, from the important votes that divided the two parties. Republicans also have 222 Congressman, an absolute majority, who basically never dissent from the Republican agenda. Thus, pretty much any conservative wet dream can be expected to pass in the House.
That is it for now. As new pieces of legislation are voted on, I will update the rankings. Also, I will include Social Security in these rankings soon. Hopefully, I will eventually have enough time to go back through the previous Congress as well. Finally, I will be developing a scorecard of the Senate soon.
