This marked the last year of Democratic hegemony over the U.S. Congress. Our analysis of roll call votes during that year shows the emergence of a pattern that became clear during the first hundred days of the new, Republican-controlled Congress: a very substantial difference between the House Republicans and Democrats in the area of economic liberties. Differences in the Senate, and in the House in the area of civil liberties were much less pronounced.

Rating Leaders
     Repeating as the #1 Senator, Don Nickles (R-OK) achieved an overall score of 78 (out of 100). And, in the House, Dana Rohrabacker (R-CA) registered the top overall score, an 81, finishing first or tied for first for the fourth year in a row.
     As usual, almost all the high scores were made by Republicans, and almost all the low scores by Democrats. A notable exception was Congressman Penny (D-MN), who did not seek re-election in 1994, who finished in the top twenty with an overall score of 74.
     While there were no perfect pro-freedom scores, Congressman Paxon (R-NY) did come closer with a 96 in the area of economic liberties. On the other hand, Congressman Traficante (D-OH) got a perfectly awful mark of zero in the area of economic liberties.

Rollcall Votes
     In the economic liberties area, roll call votes involve taxation, spending, balancing the budget, free trade, privatization, deregulation, labor policy, industrial policy, and a series of what I'll call billion dollar boondoggles. In the civil liberties area, roll call votes deal with draft registration, interventionism in foreign policy, federal-ization of crime, choice and local control of education, immigration policy, and government funding of speech.
     Once the roll call votes are identified, I adjust scores, preserving rankings, so that the average score in each component is about 50. Thus, the index is a relative one. I should point out that it couldn't be otherwise. The only votes we have to work with are those actually taken by the Congress. We don't have definitive positions on whatever it is that defines libertarianism, in an absolute sense.
     Libertarians support both the civil liberties that are defended by liberals, e.g., the right against unreasonable search and seizure protected by the 4th Amendment, and those that are defended by conservatives, e.g., the right to keep and bear arms protected by the 2nd. In recent years, we've noticed that the civil liberties defended by liberals has shrunk, and those defended by conservatives expanded. For example, liberals nowadays endorse all kinds of race-based preferences, whereas conservatives are the champions of the equal rights protected by the 14th Amendment.
     Because our position doesn't exactly match up with the left-right political spectrum, we sometimes have to cobble together a libertarian position by using one vote that's reflects a conservative position with another vote that reflects a liberal position. For example, for the Senate, we have two votes dealing with the highly-charged issue of homosexuality. Our, unique libertarian position is defined as the knee-jerk conservative on one vote, and the knee-jerk liberal position on the other. We don't think the government should either prohibit or promote homosexuality.

     Over the years I've gotten a lot of flack for trying to do this job. And, while I accept the criticism that what I've done isn't perfect (indeed, I have always volunteered this qualification), I have yet to be criticized on the basis that I could've done a better job.
     This doesn't mean that the criticism has been useless. By keeping me on my guard, my critics have helped to keep me from succumbing to the temptation of biasing the index too much in favor of Republicans.

Clifford F. Thies e-mail

Past Chairman, Republican Liberty Caucus
Professor of Economics and Finance
  at Shenandoah University