What Do Jason Chaffetz and Jim Matheson Have in Common?

Not much you say. Well hold on. Here are a few items:

• Chaffetz votes with his party 92% of the time, Matheson 93%.
• Chaffetz abstains 1% of the time, Matheson 2%
• Chaffetz has sponsored 26 bills and 1 was made into law, Matheson 19 and 2 were made into law

Now for the opposites (or at least wildly different):

• One of the two representatives Chaffetz most often votes with is Walter Minnick, one of the two representatives Matheson least often votes with is Walter Minnick
• One of the two representatives Chaffetz least often votes with is Parker Griffin, one of the two representatives Matheson most often votes with is Parker Griffin.
• In his current term Chaffetz had $0 in earmarks, in his current term Matheson had $71M
• Chaffetz received a 93% rating from the National Taxpayers Union in 2009 while Matheson received a 30% rating.

Is Matheson In Step with Utahns?

I thought it would be interesting to look at how a liberal group rated our congressmen so I went to the website for Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and looked at their annual rating for house members from 2001 to 2009. Over the course of that time period the average democrat was given an 86% by the ADA. Jim Matheson had an average rating of 66% so he was rated as more conservative than the average democrat. Contrast this with the ratings of the 1st (4%) and 3rd (2%) district representatives (Hansen/Bishop and Cannon/Chaffetz respectively) for that time period and you can see how out of step Matheson is with the our other congressman. I wonder which of the 3 our more closely aligned with the average Utahn. You can be the judge but it seems to me that Mr. Matheson is much more aligned with liberals than conservatives.

I also found it interesting that  in 2006 and 2008 Mr. Matheson’s liberal rating took quite a tumble. Let me see, were those election years?

I believe Morgan Philpot is more closely aligned with the largely conservative members of the 2nd Congressional District. Let’s make sure he is the one that represents us going forward.

Philpot v. Matheson Debate and the FairTax

After listening to the debate (if you haven't listened click here) I kept thinking about Matheson’s oft repeated refrain that Morgan wants to tax everything you buy at 23% and in reality that rate would likely be 30%. There is some truth to this statement but Matheson leaves a lot of information out as well.

 

What Morgan has said on a couple of occasions is that he could support a national sales tax such as the proposed Fair Tax Act of 2005 (HR 25 and S 25) which call for a 23% sales tax on all new goods and services. This proposal is explained in detail by the Americans for Fair Taxation on their website www.fairtax.org for those who want to learn more.

 

When is a Blue Dog only a Mirage?

We are less than a month away from the elections and in our congressional district we have a choice between a 10 year Democrat incumbent (Jim Matheson) and a Republican (Morgan Philpot) who was twice elected to the Utah house. Our current congressman is member of the "Blue Dog Coalition", a group the claims to promote fiscally conservative policies.

A recent article in the Salt Lake Tribute has the headline "Matheson not among Blue Dogs in jeopardy". I'm not sure where they got this headline as the article itself cites no polls that indicate which way the race is headed and only really discusses the voting record of Matheson as presented by his challenger Morgan Philpot and rebutted by Matheson.