Scorecard of the House

I have been asked to present the entire Scorecard of the House in one file with the information on how the members voted. If you are interested in a simple text file I would point you to the two previous posts on the economic axis and the social axis of the scorecard. One problem with those files is that they are listed by score. To help make it easier to look up specific members, I am also posting the Excel file that has all of the data. That way you can sort by whatever characteristic you are most interested in. Members highlighted in yellow either left Congress during the session, entered Congress during the session, or do not traditionally vote on every bill (The Speaker of the House.) I've also been asked about Bernie Sanders. The graph below includes all of the members of the House on the Nolan Chart and Bernie Sanders is represented by a green dot.

Attachment	Size
House 2005 Final Scorecard.xls	202 KB
House2005FinalChart.JPG	48.19 KB

Anyone else find it VERY frickin interesting that Bernie Sanders comes out as fiscally slightly to the "right" of the Republican average?

I just want to repeat that I do have a slight disclaimer about the economic axis. I don't think it seriously impacts the overall scorecard. The scorecard produced a small 4 point edge for the Democrats on the economic axis. If the scorecard had available more economic votes, like the one I will be doing for the Senate, we might predit (based on the old Senate scorecard) that the Republicans come out about 4 points ahead of the Democrats. Overall, a small 8 point shift, but it's worth pointing out.

Still, the conventional wisdom assumes that an admitted socialist would get a zero. It says a lot about just what the government tends to actually do that he would show up like that. Almost as if he's so busy opposing Corporate Socialism he doesn't have much time to propose what he wants.

Perhaps if Democrats focused entirely on opposing Corporate Socialism they'd be able to unite a lot of voters behind them.

There's such an opening for such a comprehensive agenda that it's pathetic they haven't jumped on it.

Imagine if the Democratic Party went into the next elections proposing a full-scale attack on corporate subsidies, special tax breaks for connected businesses, use of legislative tricks to ladle out pork, the extent of corporate power & corruption in general, all bundled up as a REAL slashing of government in contrast to the hypocritical GOP. Add on top some clever sloganeering to drill in the message that what's really standing in the way of the benefits of a free-market is intereference favorable to big business, & that sound you next here is a Democratic majority being voted in.

are the two 0,0 members?

Rob Portman of Ohio is one of them. He didn't serve for the entire session so he is based on only a handful of votes from the start of the session. This may help explain the 0/0. The other is the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert of Illinois. He was only scored on the few votes he actually made. Traditionally the Speaker of the House does not vote unless it's a very close and important vote. This too may explain the 0/0. No 'normal' Congressman scored 0/0, which may be reassuring.