By Richard G. Thomas
Thomas Voting Reports

(Editor’s Note: This pre-Election Day report was released Oct. 20, 2006, for publication by our newspaper subscribers. It was later edited into the past tense and posted here.)

With incumbents promoting their legislative records as credentials for re-election and challengers citing those same records as a reason to unseat them, constituents in the crossfire were able to turn to a more objective resource -- actual voting records -- to separate truth from fiction in the closing weeks of the 2006 House and Senate campaigns.

If nothing else, examining Congress' official box score of the yeas and nays was a good way for voters to debunk misleading or untruthful broadcast ads along with the wild claims about voting records that regularly surfaced in candidate debates.

While each race in the midterm elections turned on its own mix of personalities and issues, nationwide opinion polls in mid-October showed Iraq to be the voters' dominant concern, followed by issues such as terrorism, national security, illegal immigration and scandal in Congress. October opinion sampling found voters to be also mindful of topics such as tax cuts and the economy, wages and job security, the global spread of nuclear weapons, deficit spending, healthcare and "values" issues such as gay marriage and abortion.

Congress spent considerable time in 2006 debating many of those issues, and although the GOP-run body rarely agreed on a final measure to be sent to President Bush, it conducted no shortage of revealing votes along the way. This pre-Election Day report spotlighted 40 of the year's most newsworthy votes out of a total of 516 roll calls conducted in the House and 263 in the Senate through September. Congress was scheduled to reconvene the week after the 2006 congressional elections.

While Senate voting in 2006 reflected growing public concern over events in Iraq, House GOP leaders virtually blacked out floor debate and votes on the subject in their chamber.

The Senate, with open debate rules, voted on at least 17 amendments dealing directly with Iraq. The measures concerned topics such as repudiating amnesty for insurgents, funding research for the treatment of GIs' traumatic brain injuries, reviving the hunt for Osama bin Laden, investigating fraud in war contracts and raising spending for battlefield equipment and vehicles.

But in the House, where rules permit the majority party to block consideration of any proposed amendment not to its liking, Republican leaders allowed votes on only four substantive amendments concerning Iraq. They dealt with whether to build permanent U.S. bases there, the award of reconstruction contracts, Pentagon policies for recalling reservists and the military's issuance of PR contracts to put events in Iraq in a positive light.

The House in 2006 conducted only one major vote on overall policy in Iraq, a non-binding resolution supporting administration actions and assuring Iraqis the U.S. plans to stay the course. GOP leaders denied Democrats an opportunity to offer a competing measure during the June 16 debate.