Dismantling the Olympia Snowe Myth
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As documented previously, one of the main arguments employed by the Hatch campaign staff is that if their boss is not re-elected to his seventh term, then Senator Olympia Snowe will become chair of the influential Finance Committee. This is all couched in rhetoric that communicates fear and worry—after all, you don’t want Snowe raising taxes on us all, do you? After all, as Hatch’s campaign is quick to remind us, she voted to pass Obamacare out of committee!
So I thought it would be enlightening to examine the records of these two senior Senators to see if the argument has any merit. Opencongress.org’s comparison tool shows that since January 2007, they have voted the same 72% of the time. That’s one overlapping Venn diagram! (See above right.)
However, that’s not a complete picture. It only goes back a few years, and it covers a ton of legislation that either was innocuous or an obvious vote. So to dig deeper, I decided to review the votes compiled at HatchRecord.com to see how they both voted. Since Olympia Snowe first assumed her office in 1995, I only went back that far.
For the 47 votes analyzed, the two Senators voted the same 43 times, or 91.4% of the time. For the other four votes listed on HatchRecord.com, Senator Snowe voted the right way in opposition to Hatch. This list is a record of some of Hatch’s anti-liberty, pro-big-government votes in recent years. Thus, it cannot be said (at least truthfully) that Orrin Hatch is a fiscal saint when compared to Olympia Snowe. While they have their differences (and while some of Hatch’s better votes may have been voted on the other way by Snowe), the two are so similar as to render the campaign’s claim patently absurd.
To vote for Hatch in order to keep the chairmanship of the Finance Committee away from Olympia Snowe is like cheering Hillary Clinton’s loss of the Democratic nomination, and Barack Obama’s win. Ultimately they are nearly identical, so fighting for one over the other is largely a moot point. Whether a politician’s voting record supports big government 70% of the time vs. 90% of the time, it’s still too much.
So, whether Utah keeps Hatch in office and he gets the chairmanship, or whether Utah denies him his seventh six-year term in office and Senator Snowe gets the chairmanship (assuming she is re-elected), things in the Finance Committee will proceed according to the status quo. You can count on that.
It’s time for Hatch to go. Now that the Olympia Snowe argument has been debunked, what leg does the Hatch campaign have to stand on?
I noticed on the website Open Congress that Hatch and Olympia Snowe are only 1% point different in terms of their voting. And honestly, if we begin voting out the dead wood, new blood fills the vacancies, and the old ideas of senority being the number one factor in chairing a committee, go away all on their own.
Nice find! It’s this kind of stuff that will help us get him called back to Utah for good.
I like Orrin Hatch. I think he is a great man. I just don’t think he is a very good Senator. Your article above proves it. He needs to be replaced.
I wrote the following a few days ago to Evelyn Call, a paid member of Hatch’s reelection staff, in response to her claim on Facebook that only Hatch can save the United States from Olympia Snowe and out of control federal spending:
You make a lot of assumptions about Hatch’s influence. Let me number all those assumptions, all of which must be true in order for your prediction to come true that Hatch alone can fix the federal government’s spending problems: 1) Hatch now suddenly takes the debt crisis seriously and will actually try to do something about it, 2) Republicans will take over the Senate (necessary so that Hatch becomes Finance chairman), 3) Republicans will win the White House (necessary because a Democrat President would never allow for meaningful finance reform), 4) Republicans will keep the House, 5) Senate Democrats won’t successfully filibusterer whatever meaningful finance reform it is you believe Hatch would come up with, 6) Olympia Snowe will win the GOP nomination in Maine, 7) Snowe will win the general election in Maine, 8) Republican Senate leaders will put Olympia Snowe, perhaps the most moderate Republican Senator, in charge of the Senate Finance Committee, 9) as chairwoman, Snowe would wield total control over entitlement and spending reform and legitimate reforms would become impossible to make with her in charge, and 10) the House won’t do the hard work first of passing legitimate spending reforms (thus leaving the Senate with the relatively easy job of passing, rejecting, or merely tweaking the House bill).
Call me a skeptic, but I highly doubt all 10 of those points will come to pass. If even one of them does not occur, then your argument that Hatch alone can fix federal spending will fall apart. (Not to mention the fact that countless Utahns and I simply don’t believe that Hatch suddenly cares about out of control federal spending. See point #1.)