Washington, D.C. – Idaho Senators Jim Risch and Mike Crapo are two of just four U.S. Senators to score top ratings from a national taxpayer watchdog group that tracks voting records in Congress. The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) awarded Risch and Crapo its "Taxpayer Super Hero" designation in the 2010 Congressional Ratings that lists the voting records of all 535 members of Congress on measures that CCAGW tracked. The report identifies Members the group says have "stellar voting records" for "protecting taxpayers and saving money". This year is the twenty-second year that CCAGW has published its ratings.
In the Senate, Crapo and Risch earned "Taxpayer Super Hero" status. They were joined by Senators Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) and Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina). There were a total of 35 Taxpayer Heroes.
"While saving money and rooting out waste should always be a priority, that work is now extremely critical given the amount of debt our country faces," said Risch. "We need everyone in Congress to be a Super Hero if we are to get our nation’s fiscal house in order."
"Protecting taxpayers and limiting the growth of government should be at the top of our responsibilities," said Crapo. "We need to move forward with a bipartisan effort to reduce federal spending while maintaining safety net programs."
CCAGW’s 2010 Congressional Ratings scored 46 votes in the House and 62 votes in the Senate. By comparison, in 2009, CCAGW rated 120 votes in the House and 74 votes in the Senate. The average rating for the entire House was 40 percent, a 9 percentage point increase from 2009; while the Senate averaged 42 percent, a 3 percentage point increase from 2009. Republican members in both chambers averaged a rating of 90 percent, up 9 percentage points from their 81 percent score in 2009, compared to Senate Democrats who averaged a score of 8 percent, down 2 percentage points from 2009.
CCAGW President Tom Schatz said, "On behalf of taxpayers, we thank and applaud the Taxpayer Heroes and Super Heroes for their votes to cut wasteful spending, reduce taxes, and make government more accountable to taxpayers. Unfortunately, far too many members demonstrated little regard for the consequences of failing to reduce the record $1.3 trillion deficit and $14.7 trillion debt, and constituents should admonish them for their poor ratings." The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.
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