Two members of the freshman class achieved the best scores in the 1995 Republican Liberty Index of Congress:  Sen. Ashcroft (R-MO), with an 86 (out of 100), and Cong. Bass (R-NH), with an 83. These are the combined scores posted by members of Congress, compiled from a total of forty roll call votes, twenty in each of two distinct areas--economic liberties and civil liberties. As in prior indexes, Republicans showed themselves much more devoted than Democrats to free-market economics, including lowering taxes and spending, balancing the budget, deregulating and privatizing. Republicans also showed themselves no worse than Democrats in the area of civil liberties, which includes the areas of political liberties and non-interventionist foreign policy.

Rollcall Votes
     In the economics area, roll call votes included the balanced budget amendment, the budget resolution, the line-item veto, un-funded mandates, tax cuts, Medicare reform, subsidies for agriculture and transportation, labor regulations, energy and environmental legislation, telecommunications deregulation, and several billion-dollar boondoggles.
     In the civil liberties area, roll call votes included the flag desecration amendment and government funding of speech, the federalization of crime, protection of the rights of the accused, legal reform, draft registration, drug policy, immigration policy and speed limits. On the issue of abortion, we have one vote concerning taxpayer-funding and a second vote concerning restrictions on access to abortion as a condition of employment with the federal government. In the area of political liberties, we have votes on term limits and on cloture. And, in the area of foreign policy, we have a vote to unilaterally lift the arms embargo on Bosnia.
     The reader may notice that, on the issue of abortion (and analogously with several other “hot-button” social issues when included), the index includes one or more “pro-life” votes and one or more “pro-choice” votes in order to identify the distinctly libertarian view as opposed to the conservative approach which isn’t sensitive to intrusiveness, and as opposed to the liberal approach which isn’t sensitive to the force implicit in taxation.

Senate Rating Leaders
     In the Senate, there was a complete dichotomy between Republicans and Democrats, with the highest scoring Democrat (Baucus of Montana who got a combined score of 46) getting a lower score than the lowest scoring Republican (Hatfield of Oregon who got a combined score of 48). This polarization is quite evident in the attached scatter plot. Democrats are bunched in the lower-left-hand quadrant of the Nolan Chart, whereas Republicans are bunched in the upper-right-hand quadrant. The only real outlier is Sen. Hatfield.
     Notice, too, the general orientation of the political axis. It’s not quite the 45 degree line emanating from the origin, which would indicate a complete shift of the American political spectrum, from liberal-versus-conservative to authoritarian-versus-libertarian. Rather, a Senator having a score of zero on the economics component of the index, would be predicted to have a score of about 20 on the civil liberties component. A Senator having a score of 100 on the economics component of the index, would be predicted to have a score of about 80 on the civil liberties component. Thus, we can say there has been a partial, but not a complete shift in the political spectrum. (The smaller difference between House Republicans and House Democrats in the civil liberties component [compared to the difference between Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats] also cautions against the argument that there has been a complete shift.)

House Rating Leaders
     In the House of Representatives, there was a small overlap. Only two Republicans got average scores of less than 50 (McDade of Pennsylvania getting the lowest, 42); and only eight Democrats got average scores of more than 50 (Hall of Texas and Brewster of Oklahoma getting the highest, 67 and 58).
     This year, for the first time since Cong. Armey (R-TX), now the majority leader of the House of Representatives, did the trick in 1990, a Member of Congress got a perfect score of 100 in the area of economics. Indeed, six did so, including our two overall winners Ashcroft and Bass, along with Cong. Chabot (R-OH), Christensen (R-NE), Klug (R-WI) and Smith (R-MI). Among those congressmen who came within one vote of a perfect score, the most common wrong ballot involved the space station.
     The highest scores in the area of civil liberties were achieved in the House of Representatives by Cong. Metcalf (R-WA) and Watts (R-OK), who got 75, and in the Senate by Sen. Grassley (R-IA) and Kempthorne (R-ID), who got 78.
     The eight members of the Constitutional Liberty Caucus got an average score (72) that was the six points higher than the average Republican score in the House of Representatives (66), and included two of the highest scores in the House, Cong. Stockman’s (R-TX) 79 and Shaddag’s (R-AZ) 78.

State Consolidations
     The Senate, which has exactly two members from each state, allows us to address two interesting issues: First, what is the best and what is the worst state, in terms of our index? At the top is Idaho, both of whose Senators scored at least 80, and, at the bottom is West Virginia, neither of whose Senators scored higher than 25. “Mountain Men Are Free” is the motto of West Virginia, but that apparently means something different to the mountain men of the Appaliachias than it does to the mountain men of the Rockies.
     A second issue concerns the pure effect of electing a Republican as opposed to a Democrat. In single-member Congressional Districts, it would take multi-variable statistical analysis to separate the effect of the political orientation of the voters of the district, from the effect of the voting propensities of members of a particular political party once elected to office. But, there are eighteen states that have one Republican and one Democratic Senator, and this provides us, naturally, with a sample in which the “other things” that effect voting behavior are held constant.
     In the eighteen states with split Senate delegations, Republican Senators got an average score of 71, while Democratic Senators got an average score of 34. Thus, we can conclude that electing a Republican means 37 points. A few years ago, when I first performed this calculation, I found a difference of 25 points. At that time, I concluded that there was a quarter’s worth of difference. Now, I conclude there’s three-bits worth.

     In closing, I’d like to thank Don Ernsberger, Mike Holmes and Andrew Spark for their help in compiling this year’s index, and exonerate them from the errors that remain in it.

Clifford F. Thies e-mail

Past Chairman, Republican Liberty Caucus
Professor of Economics and Finance
  at Shenandoah University