Robert Bennett (R) – Standing at nearly 6’6’’, the lumbering Bob Bennett may seem hard to misplace amongst his congressional chums in the Senate Banking Committee; however, he has been a key maverick (yes eat your heart out, John!) behind the scenes of various economic issues. During the 1994 Mexican Peso crisis, Bennett helped prevent economic disaster by working furtively off the radar to secure American capital for the collapsing Mexican economy. With a 91% CATO rating, Bennett has tirelessly stood up for free-market principles throughout his political career.CATO: 91%
US COC: 100%
NTU: 73%
Votes With Party: 88%
Hot or Not: Not
Michael Bloomberg (I) – Twice consecutively (and likely soon to be third) elected Mayor of New York City and billionaire, Michael Bloomberg turned a staggering $6 billion NYC deficit into a $3 billion surplus through enacting innovative tax reform and cutting the ineffective spending of various state agencies. The Harvard educated businessman exclaimed during a speech to the UK Conservative Party: “Being a fiscal conservative is not about slashing programs that help the poor, or improve health care, or ensure a social safety net. It's about insisting that state services are provided efficiently, get to only the people that need them, and achieve the desired results.”
His penchant for inventive pragmatism can be further reflected in his membership into the ‘Pigou Club’ – an increasingly popular group of elite economists and public policy experts which advocate a carbon tax to curb greenhouse emissions, promote economic growth, and ensure national security. Bloomberg’s style of governance is indicative of a politician which emphasizes methodology over ideology, which resonates well with the dismal science of economics.
Hot or Not: Hot!
Maria Cantwell (D) - Now serving her second term as Washington State's second female
Senator, Cantwell epitomizes a potential new generation of Democrats which look to abandon traditional methods of representing the working class through the (often counterproductive) protectionist approach, instead looking to empower them through human capital enhancing policies and exploiting the advantages a globalized economy has to offer the lower-middle class of Washington State. She did this by voting against repealing tax subsidies to US companies which operate offshore and voicing her support for CAFTA, earning her resentment amongst many of her Democratic counterparts. Despite having voted with her party 95% of the time (a somewhat misleading statistic), she was the sole vote against a 2007 measure that would allow US companies to seek anti-dumping duties on goods from any country that maintains a "fundamentally misaligned" exchange rate after being formally cited by the United States.
US COC: 39%
NTU: 15%
Votes With Party: 95%
Hot or Not: Not
Judd Gregg (R) – A ranking member in the Senate Budget Committee, Judd Gregg has been a fiscal watchdog for reining in federal spending which doesn’t have the bang for its buck and overburdens future generations, earning him the nickname ‘Judd Dredd’ (okay not really, but wouldn’t that be pretty sweet?). Committed to his fiscal conservatism, Senator Gregg has not been reluctant to vote against his own party, most notably on prescription drug legislation and energy subsidies to ethanol. Yes, Gregg understands that there’s no point in complaining about stale bread on a shit sandwich of national debt.
CATO: 92%
US COC: 78%
NTU: 80%
Votes With Party: 83%
Hot or Not: Hot!
http://www.ontheissues.org/
http://www.opencongress.org/
Other honorable mentions include:
Susan Collins
Chuck Hagel
3 comments:
I would be interested to hear how you came up with your choices. Did you find a list somewhere or just do lots of research or some combonation of the two. Also kinda cool to hear that we here in washington made your list.
I now see you made two links to your choices. Somehow I missed that. Also what do the acronyms mean?
http://www.ontheissues.org/Notebook/Note_02n-CATO.htm
http://www.ontheissues.org/Notebook/Note_03n-COC.htm
http://www.ontheissues.org/Notebook/Note_03n-NTU.htm
I tried to be empirical using those indicators above but also went with figures that had a reputation which precedes them on economic matters. And obviously the list could a lot bigger (as indicated by the honorable mentions) but I mostly wanted to pick an interesting few the average person might otherwise would have known about (excluding Bloomberg).
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