The 2004 election brought significant turnover in the United States Senate. What will the Senate election mean for taxpayers? Because most of the incoming Senators have previous service in the House of Representatives, a comparison can be made of the fiscal records of the outgoing Senators and most of the new Senators.

To undertake the analysis, this Issue Brief utilizes the most recent National Taxpayers Union (NTU) Rates Congress grades for outgoing and incoming Senators. Of course, 2003 grades were available for all nine outgoing Senators. Grades were available for six of the nine incoming Senators (Senator-elect Obama (IL), Senator-elect Salazar (CO), and Senator-elect Martinez (FL) did not have previous service in the United States House of Representatives).[1]

The NTU Rates Congress data presents a comprehensive picture of the fiscal records of these Senators and Senators-elect. Unlike those of other organizations, NTU's annual Rating does not simplistically focus on only a handful of equally-weighted "key votes." For this reason, it has received praise from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. NTU's Rating is based on every roll call vote affecting fiscal policy (in 2003, NTU included 287 House and 269 Senate votes), and assigns a "Taxpayer Score" to each Member of Congress that indicates his or her commitment to reducing or controlling federal spending, taxes, debt, and regulation.

Table 1 provides an overview of all nine states with new Senators. Among the highlights of the data:

• The latest NTU Rates Congress grade of four of the nine outgoing Senators (44 percent) was "F."

• The lowest grade earned by any of the six incoming Senators with previous House service was "B-." Only three of the nine outgoing Senators (33 percent) achieved a "B-" or better in the 2003 NTU Rates Congress.

• In five of the six cases where both outgoing and incoming Senators had grades in NTU Rates Congress, the incoming Senator has a better mark. In the sixth instance (Oklahoma), both the outgoing and incoming Senator received an "A" in their most recent NTU ranking. In other words, in no instance does a new Senator have a lower grade than the outgoing Senator.

The bottom line is that supporters of limited government and lower taxes got very good news in the 2004 Senate elections. Come January 2005, taxpayers will have new allies in the Senate on critical votes on appropriations bills, budget process reform, pending energy and transportation bills bloated with pork, Social Security reform, and tax relief.

John Berthoud is President of the National Taxpayers Union

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