Who Are the Most Liberal Members of Congress of Early 2009?
Right wing commentators love to throw around accusations of who is the “most liberal member of Congress”, but the funny thing about these accusations is that they are often directed against different members of Congress – whoever happens to make the right wing angry at any particular moment. These commentators don’t have any objective measure of which member of Congress is the most liberal. They just get angry and vent.
It just so happens that we here at That’s My Congress do have an objective measurement of who the most liberal member of Congress is – or at least who the most liberal senator and the most liberal U.S. Representative are. We have legislative scorecards for the House and Senate are, for the 111th Congress so far. We didn’t put these scorecards together by identifying the actions of legislators we liked, and then choosing legislation that they support. Instead, we assembled the scorecards in the opposite way, by identifying worthwhile legislation regardless of who supports it. Information on votes and cosponsorships come together to enable us to compare members of Congress on the actual work that they do, not just on their political personalities.
Now that we have these scorecards together, we can answer the question that the right wing commentators fumble at: Who is the most liberal in Congress? Who is the most liberal member of the House? Who is the most liberal in the Senate?
The answer is easy. In the House, it’s Upstate New York Representative Maurice Hinchey, who has a score of 82 (a perfect score is 100). The next most liberal member of the House is Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, who has earned a 73.
In the Senate, it’s Barbara Boxer who has the most liberal score of all 100 senators. Senator Boxer has a perfect score of 100. Next to her, the most liberal group in the Senate is a group of 7 senators who have each earned a score of just 67. Clearly, the Senate is not a very liberal place.
