A week or so ago, I wrote a diary on the worst -voting blue-state Democratic Senator (if you didn't read it then, consider giving it a quick look now), and someone on that diary suggested I write one like it every week.
So, I decided this week's diary would be on the worst-voting Democratic Representative from a district carried by John Kerry.
You'd think I'd be pleased because unlike Tom Carper (the worst-voting blue-state Democrat), this Representative has gotten plenty of coverage by the blogs. But I'm not.
The reason I'm not particularly pleased is that the coverage this person gets on the blogs is 100% positive, and it seems like most people here think of him as being pretty liberal (which is what's bothering me).
The man I'm talking about is John Murtha.
Now, I know that some of you are thinking, "Who are we going to believe, DemocraticLuntz? You, or our lying eyes? John Murtha is a progressive hero who is our main anti-war guy in the House."
Well, I expect that after you finish reading this diary, you resolve never to trust your lying eyes again.
General Voting Record
For the House, I'm using a rating system which measures how often a Represenative stays with the party on party unity votes (A vote is considered to be a "party unity" vote if a majority of the members of each party are on opposite sides), but doesn't count procedural votes (since Representatives are expected to toe the party line on those votes whatever they make think of the bill itself, including these votes just blurs the differences between voting records) or votes on non-binding resolutions (since they don't matter).
Here's a nice table of the Democratic Represntatives from blue districts who vote with the party less than 87.5% according to this rating system (Costa and Lipinski aren't included in the table since they haven't been in Congress a full session yet, but they'd be there otherwise).
|
Kerry victory margin |
2001-2006 |
2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
Steve Israel (NY-2) |
7.45% |
.8738 |
.7960 |
.8067 |
.8741 |
.8951 |
.9260 |
.9303 |
Joe Baca (CA-43) |
17.47% |
.8727 |
.8610 |
.8941 |
.8550 |
.9021 |
.8494 |
.9070 |
Mike Michaud (ME-2) |
5.82% |
.8727 |
* |
* |
.8683 |
.8506 |
.8988 |
.8605 |
David Wu (OR-1) |
10.57% |
.8707 |
.7844 |
.8619 |
.8819 |
.8692 |
.9025 |
.9187 |
Rick Larsen (WA-2) |
3.86% |
.8701 |
.7713 |
.8800 |
.8706 |
.8889 |
.9184 |
.8471 |
Albert Wynn (MD-4) |
57.42% |
.8686 |
.8619 |
.8792 |
.8977 |
.8594 |
.8415 |
.8750 |
Pete Visclosky (IN-1) |
11.24% |
.8648 |
.8143 |
.9007 |
.8894 |
.8671 |
.8705 |
.7883 |
Charles Gonzalez(TX-20) |
10.14% |
.8639 |
.8368 |
.9474 |
.8706 |
.8557 |
.8374 |
.8334 |
Norm Dicks (WA-6) |
8.25% |
.8626 |
.8200 |
.8544 |
.8583 |
.8851 |
.9069 |
.8907 |
Jane Harman (CA-36) |
19.38% |
.8569 |
.7895 |
.8054 |
.8907 |
.8785 |
.8686 |
.8942 |
Dutch Ruppersberger (MD-2) |
9.66% |
.8561 |
* |
* |
.8572 |
.8441 |
.8607 |
.8659 |
Ron Kind(WI-3) |
4.62% |
.8560 |
.8477 |
.8345 |
.8635 |
.8386 |
.8656 |
.8954 |
Jim Moran (VA-8) |
28.74% |
.8557 |
.7600 |
.8054 |
.8810 |
.8671 |
.9022 |
.8838 |
Mike Doyle (PA-14) |
39.60% |
.8551 |
.7517 |
.8875 |
.8504 |
.9163 |
.8725 |
.8096 |
Jim Davis (FL-11) |
16.74% |
.8433 |
.7467 |
.8224 |
.8538 |
.8602 |
.8694 |
.9211 |
Harold Ford (TN-9) |
39.57% |
.8340 |
.8220 |
.8504 |
.8541 |
.8744 |
.7783 |
.8415 |
Adam Smith (WA-9) |
7.25% |
.8271 |
.7632 |
.7888 |
.8128 |
.8151 |
.8812 |
.9147 |
Artur Davis (AL-7) |
29.03% |
.8049 |
* |
* |
.8157 |
.8344 |
.7805 |
.7765 |
Gene Green (TX-29) |
11.30% |
.8016 |
.7500 |
.8256 |
.8254 |
.8405 |
.7670 |
.7907 |
Silvestre Reyes (TX-16) |
13.00% |
.7887 |
.7740 |
.8406 |
.7728 |
.8323 |
.7535 |
.7883 |
Ed Case (HI-2) |
11.90% |
.7839 |
* |
* |
.8226 |
.7607 |
.7318 |
.8721 |
Jim Cooper (TN-5) |
4.19% |
.7621 |
* |
* |
.8034 |
.7854 |
.7416 |
.7791 |
Paul Kanjorski (PA-11) |
5.65% |
.7664 |
.6863 |
.7632 |
.8063 |
.8458 |
.7450 |
.6824 |
Jerry Costello (IL-12) |
4.21% |
.7621 |
.6471 |
.7829 |
.7889 |
.7824 |
.7643 |
.8000 |
David Scott (GA-13) |
18.40% |
.7376 |
* |
* |
.7082 |
.7555 |
.7362 |
2006 |
John Murtha (PA-12) |
2.90% |
.6712 |
.5772 |
.6986 |
.6735 |
.7555 |
.6943 |
.5358 |
Specific issues
Abortion
No Democrat from a blue district has a worse voting record on abortion than John Murtha (at least if you don't consider embryonic stem-cell research abortion-related, since he did vote for the Castle-DeGette bill last year, and several pro-life Democrats, including Pro-life Caucus co-founder Jim Oberstar (the reason he's not on the list is that he has a very good voting record on non-abortion related issues). Other than that, though, John Murtha has voted against a woman's right to choose every chance he's gotten in the last 6 years.
Here's another nice table detailing Murtha's votes on abortion.
Roll call vote description. |
Number of Democrats voting anti-choice. |
Murtha's vote |
An amendment to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act
to allow abortions whenever the mother's health is
at stake. Due to this provision not being included
, the act was found unconsitutional (2003-241)
|
40 |
anti-choice |
Passage of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act,
which completely banned the use of the dilation &
extraction method of abortion under any
circumstance. (2003-530) |
62 |
anti-choice |
Scott amendment to exempt "taxicab drivers, bus drivers, nurses, medical providers or others in the business of professional transport" from the transportation provision of the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act.(2005-141). |
34 |
anti-choice |
Jackson-Lee amendment to exempt "a grandparent of the minor or clergy person" from being prohibited to tranport the minor across state lines to get an
abortion by the Child Interstate Abortion Notification
Act. (2005-142) |
37 |
anti-choice |
Passage of the Child Interstate Abortion
Notification Act, which would The prohibit transporting a minor across state lines for an abortion in order to avoid their home state's parental notification and/or consent laws. (2005-144) |
54 |
anti-choice |
Current law does not allow women to have abortions
in overseas military medical facilities, even ones that the women pay for themselves, except to save the life
of the mother, or in cases of rape or incest. During consideration of the 2006 Defense Authorization bill (H.R. 1815), Susan Davis offered an amendment to repeal this ban. (2005-216)
|
30 |
anti-choice |
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA does not currently receive funding from the U.S. government,
because of a law known as the Kemp-Kasten Anti-Coercion Amendment. Carolyn Maloney offered an amendment to
prohibit enforcement of "any provision of law that prohibits or restricts funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)." (2005-266).
|
24 |
anti-choice |
Environment
Murtha's also really, really bad on the environment.
Although there were three blue-district Democrats with a worse ranking from the LCV than Murtha in 2005, 9 Republicans had a better ranking.(Bill Jefferson and Gene Green are explained by ties to oil, I don't know what the reason for Edolphus Towns's terrible record is).
But his voting record has generally been much, much worse. It's rare that he gets even as high as a 50 percent rating from the LCV. For the 107th Congress, he had a dismal ranking of 41 percent. 27 Republicans had higher scores than him.
He's consistently voted against Ed Markey's amendment to strip the ANWR drilling provision from energy bills, (votes on this are here, here, and here, and has always voted for the energy bill, even for the much more environmentally harmful bills initially passed by the House (the Senate is less anti-environment, so some of the more harmful parts of the bill were removed in conference).
But Murtha has cast votes far worse than drilling in ANWR . In 2003, he voted against a motion to instruct the House conferees on the Energy Bill (it failed, but fortunately the Senate didn't pass the bill that year, and it was removed from last year's bill that did pass during conference). This motion was to instruct them to drop an amendment by extreme anti-environmentalist Joe Barton.
From the League of Conservation Voters 2003 scorecard:
Under the Clean Air Act, areas with unhealthy air are required to reduce ozone pollution by strict statutory deadlines.
If these areas fail to meet their deadlines, they are given more time to meet their target, but in return, they must adopt more rigorous air pollution control measures.
Even though Joe Barton's district is in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area (a map of the district is
here), which fails EPA limits on ground-level ozone, Barton felt it was more important to protect his buddies over at "Hallibarton" (not a typo, but a lame attempt at humor) who
fund his campaign instead of the health of his constituents. Therefore, in his capacity as Chairman of the Committee on Energy & Commerce, he inserted language into the bill which would allow polluters to take their time in complying with the EPA rules, but not have to meet more rigorous standards.
Back to Murtha. Eddie Bernice Johnson made a motion to instruct the conferees to drop this language in the House-Senate conference, but due to John Murtha and 30 other Democrats voting against it it failed.
But one of his worst votes on the environment was on mining regulations, which affects a significant number of his constituents in Western Pennsylvania.
One of the last things the Interior Department did was issue some regulations in an attempt to control toxic pollution from hardrock mines, the mining industry being the industry responsible for the most toxic pollutants.
These regulations (according to the LCV 2001 scorecard):
- Established mining-specific environmental and cleanup
standards to protect public lands, surface and ground
water, wildlife habitat and surrounding communities;
- Required mining companies, rather than taxpayers, to
foot the bill for cleanups;
Gave the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) the right to deny permits for mines that would irreparably damage
environmentally sensitive public lands.
Of course, once Gale Norton was confirmed as Secretary of the Interior, one of her first actions was to announce her intention suspend these rules.
Jay Inslee offered an amendment to prevent her from doing so. It passed the House narrowly, but John Murtha voted against it. Only 13 other Democrats voted for it, only 11 of whom were "real" Democrats (Uber-corrupt James Traficant and party-switching Ralph Moody Hall's voting records essentially made them DINOs). Possibly due to its failure to pass by a larger margin, the provision was removed during conference, and later that year, the Interior Department suspended the regulations.
Finally, Murtha voted for Richard Pombo's overhaul of the Endangered Species Act, which passed thanks to his and 35 other Democrats supporting it (34 Republicans voted against it).
Miscellaneous economic issues
Murtha has been slightly better on economic issues, and he may not the worst blue-district Democrat in the House on non-environmental economic issues alone. For instance, he voted against the 2005 estate tax repeal bill, even though it was supported by 15 blue-district Democrats, 7 of whom (G.K. Butterfield, William Lacy Clay, Sheila Jackson-Lee, William Jefferson, David Scott, Edolphus Towns, and Albert Wynn) are members of the Congressional Black Caucus (which is irrelevant to the diary, but I thought it was interesting enough to bring up).
However, he has his fair share of bad votes. For instance, he voted for the netroots-detested Bankruptcy Act (This time I checked to make sure), but then again, so did 72 other Democrats. A far less excusable vote was his vote for the bill to cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits (it also shields drug-makers against damages if their products were approved by the FDA. Only 13 other Democrats joined him in voting for it, only one of whom (David Scott) is from a blue district. (thanks to Democratic and Republican trial-lawyer supported filibusters, it hasn't passed the Senate).
But Murtha's voting record is generally not quite so bad on purely economic issues.
War
Ironically, the issue which has made John Murtha extremely popular among the netroots is perhaps the issue on which his voting record is the worst.
Most members of the netroots know that John Murtha voted for the Iraq War resolution, and he did (however, unlike Jane Harman, he voted against the motion to recommit with instructions (the motion was also supported by most House progressives, and was sponsored by Kucinich (for the actual language, look at page 7796 of the Congressional record here)).
But his hawkishness goes back much farther than that. It goes back at least to his first race, when Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz started out as Jackson's staffers, and he is sometimes considered the father of the neo-conservative movement. He was hated by anti-Vietnam activists.) campaigned hard for him.
Since then, he has compiled an extremely pro-military record, earning him the Scoop Jackson Distinguished Service Award from the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (other prominent honors include Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Max Cleland, Joe Lieberman, and Jane Harman).
Here are some of the ultra-pro-military votes he has cast in recent years.
- He voted against the DeFazio amendment to require Congressional approval before the U.S. makes any more pre-emptive attacks (Jane Harman voted YEA).
- He voted against the Kucinich amendment to direct the U.S. representatives to the U.N. to begin negotiating a ban on space-based weapons. (Harman also voted NAY).
- He voted against the Tauscher amendment to transfer the funds appropriated for studying the feasibility of bunker-busting earth-penetrating nuclear weapons to conventional weapons research (Harman voted YEA).
- He voted against the Lee amendment to study how much intelligence the Pentagon and the intelligence community shared with the Hans Blix and the other U.N. Inspectors searching for WMD's. (Harman voted YEA).
But, has he changed since he came out against the war? In all likelihood, no. Even on the issue of Iraq, he still isn't that great. For instance, he's neither co-sponsored Neil Abercrombie's bill to require the President to develop a withdrawal plan, (H.J. Res. 55, introduced June 16, 2005, several months before he made his withdrawal speech), and he hasn't signed the discharge petition either.
So, why did I write this diary? It's not because I support a primary challenge against him, partly because the primary's already happened, partly because his district is too narrowly Democratic to be considered safe for us, and mostly because he's been loyal to the Democratic party).
One of the reasons I wrote this diary is as part of my crusade against Kossacks placing far too much of an emphasis on rhetoric, and basing their opinions of politicians exclusively on it.
However, the main reason I wrote this is because politicians are going to do thing like this to take advantage of the netroots in the future. I'm not accusing John Murtha of this, but I expect politicians to start doing things like his withdrawal speech and voting the netroots position on things that get a lot of coverage here, but voting terribly on things that get less coverage in order to keep us from running primary challenges against them. We've already seen a little of this on the Hayden nomination (where four of the 14 Democrats to vote NAY are possible presidential contenders in 2005). Let's make sure it doesn't happen at all in the future.