When they're on the hustings, members of Congress like to tout endorsements or praise from organizations that look favorably on their voting records. One group whose support many lawmakers embrace is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the mammoth business federation with more than 3 million members.
The Chamber today announced that 260 lawmakers had qualified for its 2008 "Spirit of Enterprise" award by siding with its positions at least 70 percent of the time on the most important votes in last year's session. (Some of the lawmakers are no longer in Congress because they retired, sought other office or were defeated for re-election.)
There is a Republican skew to the list of honorees: 233 of the 260 lawmakers who got the Chamber's nod align with that party, including 188 of 204 in the House and 45 of 56 in the Senate. The Chamber's free-market positions on trade, tax and regulatory issues generally draw more support from Republicans than from Democrats, who by and large line up more frequently with the positions of labor unions.
The highest score for a House Democrat was the 83 registered by Illinois Rep. Melissa Bean, a former business owner whose pro-Chamber voting record helps explain why she's been elected three times in a historically Republican-leaning suburban district near Chicago. Jim Matheson of Utah, whose district is more Republican-friendly than Bean's, sided with the Chamber 78 percent of the time in 2008, when he was re-elected with a career-high 63 percent of the vote.
In the Senate, the 11 Democrats who cleared the Chamber's 70 percent threshold include Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. (71 percent), who represented Delaware in the Senate from 1973 until this January, and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas (75%), who almost certainly will brandish the Chamber's imprimatur as she prepares to seek re-election next year in a state that voted strongly for John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.
McCain, still a senator from Arizona, scored a perfect 100, though he missed five of the Chamber's eight key votes because he was running for president. President Obama, then a senator from Illinois, also missed five of the eight votes; he scored 67 because Obama sided with the Chamber on two of the three votes in which he did participate.
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