Just got an email from Americans for Prosperity announcing that they have launched their own Congressional scorecard, to evaluate "how focused your legislators are on promoting economic freedom."
You can view the scorecard at www.afpscorecard.org. The website is very interactive and lets you search by state, name, issue, and during any Congress from the 110th to the current one (the 113th).
I haven't had a chance to get into the details of AFP's methodology behind these scores, but they don't seem out of line compared to ratings I've seen from similar organizations. Note that AFP focuses on economic freedom issues - national debt, spending, taxes, regulation, etc. - so issues like abortion and foreign policy are not included in AFP scores as they might be in scores from other groups.
File this under "News That Will Shock Absolutely No One"...looking at the states where I've lived recently, the scores were exactly as I would have predicted (looking at the 112th Congress, the most recent completed Congress):
Florida's Democratic delegation received abysmal scores, many in the single digits. More interesting is the wide variety among the Republicans, with a number of representatives scoring in the 60s and only Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Dennis Ross receiving perfect 100% scores.
Massachusetts was a disaster. The lone Republican, former Senator Scott Brown, scored 44%, and top score among the remaining delegation (all Democrats) was 10%.
Texas' delegation performed much better, with the Democrats swimming in the single digits and teens but the lowest Republican score was 77%. Representative Randy Neugebauer received the only perfect score, and Senator John Cornyn was very close behind at 97%.
Again, big surprise. Massachusetts is true blue, Texas is redder than red, and Florida is purple. Perhaps the potential for improvement will be not only at the ballot box in 2014 and 2016, but also in finding issues where some of the Democrats can be encouraged to support, and pushing lower-scoring Republicans to reconsider their positions.
What do you think? How did your representatives score?
View all scores here: AFP Congressional Scorecard
UPDATE: Just wanted to point out that in the 113th Congress, Senator Ted Cruz and a number of representatives have perfect scores so far.
You can view the scorecard at www.afpscorecard.org. The website is very interactive and lets you search by state, name, issue, and during any Congress from the 110th to the current one (the 113th).
I haven't had a chance to get into the details of AFP's methodology behind these scores, but they don't seem out of line compared to ratings I've seen from similar organizations. Note that AFP focuses on economic freedom issues - national debt, spending, taxes, regulation, etc. - so issues like abortion and foreign policy are not included in AFP scores as they might be in scores from other groups.
Florida's Democratic delegation received abysmal scores, many in the single digits. More interesting is the wide variety among the Republicans, with a number of representatives scoring in the 60s and only Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Dennis Ross receiving perfect 100% scores.
What do you think? How did your representatives score?
View all scores here: AFP Congressional Scorecard
UPDATE: Just wanted to point out that in the 113th Congress, Senator Ted Cruz and a number of representatives have perfect scores so far.
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