The Honorable Duncan Hunter
United States House of Representatives
2265 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Representative Hunter:
On behalf of the 362,000 members of the National Taxpayers Union (NTU), I write in response to comments you made about our annual Rating of Congress in a recent interview with blogger Adam Graham. When asked about your performances from 2002-2005, you responded by questioning NTU's Rating methodology and identifying the American Conservative Union as the "most accurate arbiter of conservative records." I would like to take this opportunity to explain the details of our Rating to assure you that it is both fair and accurate.
Our annual Rating of Congress takes into account every single vote that affects taxes, spending, and debt. Unlike other organizations that utilize a mere handful, NTU's inclusion of all votes on taxpayer issues provides a truly comprehensive picture of a Member's dedication to protecting the people who pay government's bills. In 2006, our Rating for the House of Representatives alone incorporated 199 such votes.
At the beginning of each year, NTU staff engages in a consultative and deliberative process that assigns a weight to each of those votes based on its importance to taxpayers. For example, in 2006, our highest-weighted vote (with a weight of 70) was on the tax reconciliation bill that extended the capital gains and dividend tax cuts. One of several votes to share the distinction as our lowest-weighted (with a weight of 1) was a vote on the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2005. After weights have been determined, it becomes simply a matter of doing the math to come up with a Member's score, calculated as a percentage.
You mentioned our very good friends at the American Conservative Union, but their rating includes votes not just on economic and budget matters, but on social and cultural issues as well as defense and foreign policy. As a result, it is not a measure of one's fiscal conservatism alone but rather one's broader conservative outlook.
Finally, you offered your votes for a "robust national security" as a partial explanation for your scores. We believe that wasteful spending remains so, regardless of which department engages in it, but we categorically reject the notion that any Member who consistently votes for a strong national defense will automatically post lower NTU Rating scores. As but one example, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has a strong pro-defense reputation, yet his average score from 1992-2006 was roughly 85 percent, as compared with your average of 68 percent.
We would be happy to provide you and your staff with a copy of our vote list and the corresponding weights should you choose to investigate our Rating methodology further. We look forward to working with you in the future to defend taxpayer interests.
Sincerely,
Andrew Moylan
Government Affairs Manager