A Vice Presidential Comparison

With the presidential election just around the corner and the lion’s share of media attention going to the nominees, we at Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) thought it might make sense to shed some light on the candidates for Vice President. On November 6, one of these men will be elected President of the Senate and the second most prominent member of the Executive Branch. He will be first in line to assume the highest office in the land, a transition that has occurred without an election nine times.

Since 1989, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) has examined all roll call votes to determine which members of Congress stand up for the taxpayers’ interests and which fail to promote fiscal responsibility, separating the praiseworthy from the profligate on critical tax, spending, transparency, and accountability issues. This year, both candidates for Vice President happen to have spent long careers in Congress before rising to the presidential ticket, so a comparison of voting histories is apt. Washington is often long on cheap talk and short on accountability, but actions speak louder than words, and voting records speak volumes.

The results emphatically indicate that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) voting record is far superior to that of former senator and current Vice President Joe Biden. Chairman Ryan’s 92 percent lifetime rating with CCAGW earned him the status of ‘Taxpayer Hero,’ a distinction that he has earned both in the aggregate and during each of the 12 years that his votes have been rated. In contrast, Vice President Biden earned an ‘unfriendly’ lifetime rating of just 22 percent during the 18 years in which CCAGW rated his votes. In short, Chairman Ryan has done a much better job of protecting the interests of taxpayers.

In addition to his stellar voting record, Rep. Ryan has led the charge against skyrocketing federal budgets that threaten the government’s fiscal solvency and the prosperity of future generations. His fiscal year (FY) 2012 “Path to Prosperity” budget, which attempted serious reform of sections of the federal budget that threaten to overwhelm all other spending, like Medicare and Social Security, was approved in the House of Representatives by a vote of 228-191, and his FY 2011 version received 40 votes in the Senate. The budgets proposed by President Obama and Vice President Biden in FY 2011 and 2012 received a grand total of zero votes in both the House and Senate, two years in a row.

On earmarks, a subject near and dear to our hearts at CAGW, Chairman Ryan wins again in a landslide. 2008 was the only fiscal year in which Sen. Biden and Rep. Ryan were sitting members of Congress and lawmakers were required to attach their names to earmark requests. In that year, Rep. Ryan requested just three earmarks worth a total of $5.4 million, while Sen. Biden managed to funnel $119.7 million in federal funds to 70 different projects in Delaware.

Chairman Ryan’s plan has been called ‘extreme’ by his opponents, including Vice President Biden. Often ignored in that discussion is the annual budget deficits of more than $1 trillion and accumulated $5.6 trillion in debt that has accumulated under the Obama administration. In other words, when it comes to the candidates for Vice President, one has a long history of proposing serious, meticulous plans that would reign in wasteful spending and move the country toward fiscal solvency. The other has a long history of spending other people’s money.

  — Luke Gelber