Billionaire bankers. DADT. Global warming. Torture. Spying on Americans. Debt, massive, overwhelming debt. Globalism. Big hair. Collapsing bridges. Education. Medicare. Social Security.
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah. Iraq and Afghanistan. Actually, grading Congress on them. I like to describe the workings of my brain as being like a frog, not a caterpillar. I don't progress steadily from one place to the next, I bounce around. Kind of like a Congressman. You'd think I'd have an easy time of it, deciding what I like in a Congresscritter. But I'm subject to attention whiplash. My technique for assessing members of Congress is to evaluate in multiple areas, and do an arithmetic compilation, vs trying to magically integrate my analysis of every possible issue into one simplified position. But today, I'll look at only one major area. Hence, today, Iraq and Afghanistan.
In evaluating Congress, I look at it as though I'm the teacher, and I'm dealing with two classes; one with 100 students, and one with 435. I don't teach, and I don't write the tests, the "students" do. I only grade the tests. There are two grades; one for a Yes vote, and one for a No vote. The "students" decide how many tests there will be, but I decide which ones I will grade, and how much they'll count for the final grade. I may decide that one test (i.e, vote) will be multiplied by 50, while another will be included only once. The final grade will be composed of the total accumulation of votes that I grade, with each test vote being given a particular weight.
My conclusions
Here is how my grading came out. Note the final grade, showing the average grade for Democrats, Republicans, and Congress as a whole. (I know, I should show separate values for the House vs the Senate. Later).
Grades (Sorry, but I can't get the image to show. It keeps showing as "this image or video has been moved or deleted", even though it works fine when I plug it into a test page on my machine).
By my grading, both Republicans and Democrats suck on this issue. The average grades definitely tilt towards Democrats as I grade in other areas, though. YMMV.
And here is the report card for Congress. For this one, I've removed Senators, and legislators no longer in office (checkboxes at the top), so it's just currently serving House members.
Results
The results may be interesting, to this politigeek anyway, but I think they become much more interesting, and more useful, as you grade more votes in more areas. When you've done that, you'll have a good indicator of where you can best direct your support; to one of your "good guys", or to an opponent of the bad guys.
The process
It usually drives me nuts to watch political commercials, especially the arrant BS that says the opposite of what someone actually does. And I'm not satisfied looking only at the representative and senator(s) that I can actually vote for. You don't think Goldman Sachs looks only at Shumer and Gillibrand, do you? The national Chamber of Commerce doesn't just look at a few people. I want to know what they're all doing. I can't do that by asking them questions, I can't do that by guessing based on their statements, I can only do it by looking at their votes. So that's what I'm doing.
While there are some fine sites with information about members of Congress, I couldn't find a web site that allowed me to assess rollcall votes, and derive assessments for all the members from that. So I created one; Politigrade; that's where the images linked above originated. I should have had this site active years ago, and after next week, I'll have a lot of legislators to add, plus plenty to mark as no longer in office. But it is what it is. It's rough, and it lacks critical functions, but it tells me the basic information I want to know.
In looking at Iraq and Afghanistan, I focused on the supplementals. Bush took this route for his entire administration, and Obama, despite statements to the contrary, has resorted to the same technique, most notably for the Afghanistan "surge". What follows is a collection of votes which I've graded. Many of them got the same vote and grade. I would have weighted them more, but the votes generally cover one year, as compared to something like the Bush tax cuts, which last for 10 years. Also, the database I've built up only starts in 2003, so votes like the AUMF aren't yet available.
• 2003 H 108 HR1559 War supplemental.
• 2003 H 562 HR3289 War supplemental (voice vote in Senate)
• 2005 H 77 HR1268 War supplemental (included tsunami aid)
• 2005 S 117 HR1268 War supplemental (included tsunami aid)
• 2007 H 425 HR2206 War supplemental
• 2007 S 181 HR2206 War supplemental
• 2009 H 348 HR2346 War supplemental
• 2009 S 210 HR2346 War supplemental
• 2010 S 176 HR4899 War supplemental
• 2010 S 168 HR4899 War supplemental, S.Amdt.4204 require timetable for Afghan. withdrawal
And then there's the shifty House voting in 2010. Obama asked for $30 billion for a "surge" in Afghanistan. The House passed a bill with additional spending. The Senate took it and ripped out the extra $20 billion which the House had added for domestic measures. When the bill came back to the House, voting was done not on the bill, but on House Resolution 1500, which split amendments into 5 parts. I know the details are hidden somewhere, but I've misplaced the link. For me, the critical vote is House rollcall # 431. If a member of the House whines that they were forced to vote on the bill because of funding for other critical items, look at that vote. The vote on "Amendment 3" was to remove all supplemental funding for Afghanistan. A No vote on that amendment is a clear vote to support the war, and in particularly, the "surge" in Afghanistan. Number of Yes votes, to remove that funding? 25. I conclude from that vote that the overwhelming majority of the members of the House, regardly of party, support the military operations in Afghanistan. Whatever your views on Afghanistan, you may want to give this vote higher weight; rarely are votes so clear-cut as this one.
• 2010 H 428 HR4899 War supplemental, H Res 1500
• 2010 H 430 HR4899 War supplemental, S Amdt 2
• 2010 H 431 HR4899 War supplemental, S Amdt 3; remove all war funding
• 2010 H 432 HR4899 War supplemental, S Amdt 4; money only for withdrawal
• 2010 H 433 HR4899 War supplemental, S Amdt 5; 4, plus more
• 2010 H 474 HR4899 War supplemental
If you go to Politigrade and grade a few of these votes (either through the links on the main page, or directly from the Grades page), you can then go to the Results page and see a list of all the members of Congress, ordered by their grade.
And you can see who is "on your side", based not on last-second claims, based not on the attention whiplash of daily "news", but based on a reasoned evaluation of the job that legislators are doing.